6 – 8 November
A double bill about chance and choice feels almost too neat for our lives of missed connections and sudden swerves. Rambert’s Kismet earns the premise by giving it body: first as the choreography of a crowd in transit, then as a gale that blows certainty clean away.
Gallery of Consequence, choreographed by Emma Evelein, locates itself in an airport, not the glossy postcard version but the strange half-time where people rush, idle, doze, argue, and become briefly legible to each other before vanishing through a gate. The dancers sketch that limbo with quick cuts of unison that fracture into small human misfires: a hand that cannot quite meet another, a shoulder that turns too late, a soloist trembling against the current. Under Ryan Joseph Stafford’s shafts of cold light and AMIANGELIKA’s flickering projections, you feel as if you’re watching life behind glass.
Raven Bush’s sound design collages electronica by Jon Hopkins and Four Tet with the hum of engines and tannoy ghosts, creating a rhythm that feels both womb-like and mechanical. It keeps time as the dancers fracture and reform, mirroring the tension between collective rhythm and private dissonance. Evelein’s smartest choice is to let the ensemble surge as one organism, then break it apart to show the cost of keeping pace. The image that lingers is of closeness without intimacy, a portrait of connection and exhaustion that feels instantly recognisable.
After the interval, Johan Inger’s B.R.I.S.A. enters like a breath that turns into weather. The bare, softly lit stage (Tom Visser’s lighting and Bregje van Balen’s fluid costumes) becomes an alien landscape, the dancers moving crab-like, testing gravity and balance as if discovering new rules. Amos Ben-Tal’s score, weaving in Nina Simone’s Black Swan, Wild Is the Wind, and Sinnerman, transforms the piece from strange to jubilant. A fan passed between dancers becomes a prize, a flirtation, a fight; Inger’s choreography veers into physical comedy before bursting into something ecstatic.
Then comes the coup: a giant wind turbine descends, scattering air and paper as the dancers move with wild, exhilarating abandon. It is a moment of theatrical audacity that lands, less gimmick than revelation. The piece builds to pure exhilaration, a joyous reminder of how movement can speak the language of freedom better than words ever could.
Across both works, Rambert’s dancers are exceptional: precise yet human, capable of conjuring whole worlds with the smallest shift of weight. Kismet moves from the quiet rhythm of waiting to the chaos of release, finding beauty in the unpredictable. It is an evening of astonishing craft, wit and grace, and one that rewards being fully seen.
★★★★☆ Tilly Marshall, 7 November 2025
Rambert Dancers: Adél Bálint, Alessio Corallo, Cali Hollister, Coke Lopez, Conor Kerrigan, Dylan Tedaldi, Hannah Hernandez, Hua Han, Jau’mair Garland, Max Day, Naya Lovell, Seren Williams, Siang Huang, Simone Damberg-Würtz, Sungmin Kim, Tom Davis-Dunn.
Photography credit: Daniel Shea/Yiling Zhao
