“This is Rambert”, Festival of Two Worlds, Spoleto

Annie M Loui in Province of Perugia
★★★★☆
28 June 2026

In its centenary year, UK contemporary dance company Rambert is touring internationally. A full, young, enthusiastic house in Soleto’s Roman amphitheatre soon realized that after a century of continuous and evolving dance-making, the London-based company and school is definitely in step with its audience.

Photo credit: Damiano Mongelli.

Performed by a vibrant and markedly diverse company, the dancing was clearly fueled by a love of motion and of engagement.  Costuming reflected casual street clothes while projection and lighting were secondary. The emphasis here was on social confrontations, resolutions, and relentless unison combinations that deliver pure joy.

The dances that formed the programme all had different choreographers but shared a sense of immediacy and energy and a reflection of contemporary urban life.

(LA)Horde is a French multi-disciplinary artistic collective. Its Hop(e)storm was the centre piece of the show.  Gangs of men and women confronted each other in sequential moves similar to those of chess pieces. Repeated attacks bringing both partners to the ground were re-enacted in different permutations that suddenly became a giant Busby Berkeley-style star rotation and then splintered into one of the most joyous and relentless sequences of jitterbug pairings I have seen.

Photo credit: Damiano Mongelli.

The mood was euphoric and the music was also becoming euphoric.  There was a refreshing non-theatrical attitude to the performances. Encounters felt genuine, engagement was with each other and not with the audience, and somehow you felt completely in the middle of whatever street scene or club the performers were at.

“Gallery of Consequence.”
Photo credit: Yiling Zhao.

In Emma Evelein’s Gallery of Consequence the vocabulary shifts to an airport terminal filled with humans who move robotically.  Flight departure and arrival times are projected effectively on a large, curved screen. We see a man in robotic motion presenting internal feelings of boredom, unease and escalating anxiety as he looks at his watch, checks his suitcase, and negotiates the airport layout.  When he erupts with anger, he is contained by other robotic movers, and the absurdity and humour expand with layer upon layer of permutations of travelers and suitcases headed for flights, all of them self-absorbed.  A woman with dark skin is subjected to a second passport check as everyone else boards the plane.

At one point we realize that half of the dancers are seated waiting at a gate with numbness seemingly the commonality.  The departures board occasionally blinks with statements like “Isolation”, “Anxiety” instead of arrival times.  The sense is that energetic zombies with suitcases have taken over the airport and are self- choreographed like a perverse piece of clockwork.  The music drives the action, and even in robotic mode, the dancers are engaging with the general vibe being contagious.

The crowd left the amphitheatre stoked and humming, and later in the underground walkway I saw a young woman repeating some of the moves on the escalator as she made her way home.  That is surely testimony to the high quality and engaging nature of an excellent piece.