After Einstein and relativity in 2005, we now have Darwin and On the Origin of Species: Mark Baldwin finds scientific anniversaries – Darwin’s theories were published 150 years ago – an inspiration for repertory. So he showed us his commemorative The Comedy of Change, as the culmination of Rambert Dance’s performance on Tuesday.

Darwinian dance: ‘The Comedy of Change’

There is a programme note by the zoologist Nicola Clayton concerning those notions of change and natural selection central to Darwinian theory to be observed in the dance of birds. These may have intrigued Baldwin, but the realisation is hardly enthralling. The cast wear cover-all tights, black behind, white in front, and emerge from cocoons on a black stage. Julian Anderson’s score provides fascinating sonorities. The dance proposes social groupings, Darwinian rivalries and a mysterious incident as a fetish object is found to be hollow when the curtain falls. But alas, Nature is in no hurry to produce a choreographic master-race. Baldwin is inventive in shaping dance, but the sum effect here is less than that of its parts. (And I recall Frederick Ashton’s sage words that “ballet is about steps, not ideas”.)

Concerning the rest of the evening, considerable misgivings. Siobhan Davies’s Carnival of the Animals has been a delight since she first made it in 1982, and Rambert’s restaging last year was a happy event. Witty, stylish, thoughtful, the choreography touched the audience by its sensitivities quite as much as by its humour. In this performance, it disintegrated within moments of curtain-rise. Lethargic musical tempi begot dance in shreds. Leaden pauses destroyed emotional momentum. The cast looked glum, as if someone had discovered Fido dead in a dressing-room. A delightful work lay in tatters at their feet.

About the evening’s other novelty, Henri Oguike’s Tread Softly, I report with reluctance. I have admired Oguike’s creativity in the past, but this brutal piece mauls its score – Schubert’s Death and the Maiden in Mahler’s thick-cut orchestration – while the cast behave badly, the men like neurotic gymnasts, the women as blatant sexual predators. Movement is coarse, vehement, tireless. Devotedly, exhaustingly danced, brilliantly well lit by Yaron Abulafia, it tramples the score underfoot. I thought it loathsome, a huge disappointment.

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