Hush/ Awakenings/ Cardoon Club, Rambert Dance, Sadler's Wells

A new Christopher Bruce masterpiece: Rambert strikes it right again

by Judith FlandersWednesday, 10 November 2010

Estela Merlos in Henrietta Horn's 'Cardoon Club'Photo: Eric Richmond/Rambert

“Nice is different from good,” sings one of Stephen Sondheim’s characters. And mostly, it is different, “nice” rarely being “good”. Christopher Bruce, however, blows that theory right out of the water, because Hush, his 2006 piece which opens Rambert’s Sadler’s Wells season, is both good and nice. And that’s much more remarkable than it seems: attempting to find the beauty, the depth and the radiance of “good” has caused many great artists to stumble. That Bruce achieves his goals with such serenity and power seems little short of miraculous.

In Collins’s beautiful piece, all of Sacks’s cleverness has been pushed to one side, and we are left with the haunting story

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