Review: The Köln Concert, Sadler’s Wells

The extensive stage of Sadler’s Wells East is sparsely dressed with seven piano stools and one large speaker. A man stands close to the audience, a dress hanging loosely from his neck. Without preamble, he begins to move. The music that accompanies him is not, as may be expected from the work’s title, Keith Jarrett’s seminal Köln Concert.

In fact, there doesn’t seem to be a direct connection between the concert, or the meaning and artistic vision behind it, and what’s happening on stage. Jarrett’s jazz doesn’t actually come into the piece for some time, which is prefaced instead by a series of Joni Mitchell tracks.

This sense of disconnect extends to the performance as a whole. At first, there’s a hint of narrative; choreographer Trajal Harrell plays out a sort of elevated kitchen sink drama, evoking a woman reflecting on a relationship. The choreography is an overly direct interpretation of the lyrics at times, yet there’s interest – where will this story go?

The answer, it seems, is nowhere. The piece quickly transitions into abstraction, with occasional flashes pulling it back into the almost-plot, but mostly jettisoning that for nods to voguing and Ancient Greece, among other references. If those sound incongruous it’s because, for the most part, they are. The Köln Concert bounces between ideas without ever fully diving into any of them, resulting in a quite muted collection of parts. Nearly all the emotional expression of the piece comes from the soundtrack, with the choreography’s bursts of energy and interest sparingly scattered throughout.

It’s clear that the dancers are talented, but they’re given so little to work with that brief moments of beauty get lost in a sea of filler. Much of the choreography consists of swaying and wafting arms, which are valuable as transition but dull when taking up the bulk of a sequence. It’s hypnotic at times, the ensemble moving in and out of sync with one another, but in a way that is more soporific than may have been intended.

Similarly, extended passages of the dancers walking around as if on a catwalk become tedious after a time. At first there’s interest – they walk with a particular bounce to their steps, as if wearing heels, with some swishing glamorous fur coats as they parade across the stage. Once each of them has done a few rounds of this, though, with minor costume changes, there’s a sense of anticipation, a question of ‘what next’, that is never resolved.

One dancer, Thibault Lac, has a frenetic solo towards the end of the piece that sees him pulled around the stage as if controlled by some invisible power, liquid limbs flailing somehow gracefully in a performance that almost feels like it means something – but in the wider context, that meaning is lost. There are similar moments for most of the ensemble, diluted by the blandness of what surrounds them.

There are times during The Köln Concert when it seems like things are about to get going, that the piece is ready to begin, to say something. But it never manages to get past that point, instead hovering in an amorphous space of potential. Jarrett’s concert is ripe with opportunity for further artistic exploration, but this is a journey that goes nowhere.

Staging, choreography, set, soundtrack and costumes: Trajal Harrell
Dancers: New Kyd, Maria Ferreira Silva, Trajal Harrell, Rob Fordeyn, Thibault Lac, Songhay Toldon, Ondrej Vidlar
Music: Keith Jarrett, Joni Mitchell
Lighting: Sylvain Rausa
Dramaturgy: Katinka Deecke

The Köln Concert has completed its current run.