Mark Baldwin looks back over ten years as Artistic Director
2005
Constant Speed was my first piece for the Company after taking up the Artistic Directorship. Although I had to wait two years for the opportunity, I was very pleased to fill the repertoire up with pieces by other choreographers until I was able to identify a clear gap for something like Constant Speed. The work was a commission from the Institute of Physics, and was something of a revelation for myself as I knew nothing about physics! I had my own professor, Ray Rivers, who came to have coffee with me whenever he could. He explained three very important theories, which I used in an abstract and dance way to generate movement for the piece. They were ‘E = mc2', ‘Brownian motion' and the ‘photoelectric effect'. 
For me, ‘Brownian motion' is the most choreographic. Brown had observed pollen molecules jiggling around on water and wondered why. Einstein explained in one of his papers that the water molecules are continually moving, although this is something you cannot see. This action makes the pollen molecules jig up and down also. Ray brought in a child's toy in the shape of a ball covered in large, soft spikes, battery operated, which vibrated out of control moving all over the room. He explained that this was the perfect example of how a molecule moves in space; no front and back, no up and down, but completely random. I loved it! We even tried playing with it to music. The other very choreographic idea was the ‘photoelectric effect', the idea that different colours have different frequencies. Blue, for instance, gives off a much stronger energy than red; blue light fired at a sheet of gold could start a reaction but red light could not. And I dealt with ‘E = mc2' by having different groups of dancers at different speeds in the same space. You could say this all started me on a scientific journey to understand more about the natural world and its laws.
The designer Michael Howells had done physics at school and also very much enjoyed the process with me. He commissioned a huge mirror ball which sprayed the stage and the theatre with little squares of light because, as Ray had explained, light arrives in packets. The other interesting thing about light is the speed at which it travels, harking back to Einstein's Theory of Relativity; it is the only constant, hence the ballet's title Constant Speed.
Constant Speed was nominated for an Olivier Award and actually won a TMA Award, which I'm completely chuffed about!
2004
We have received two Olivier Awards in my career as artistic director of Rambert; one for Swamp in 2005 and the other an Outstanding Achievement Award for the Company in 2010 - my piece The Comedy Of Change led the tour that year. I have also had two nominations myself; one for Constant Speed in 2006 and another for The Man with the Moustache with London City Ballet in 1999.
Rambert staged the revival premiere of Michael Clark's Swamp at The Lowry in 2004. I was a dancer in the original production, and had loved it then. It was commissioned for Rambert by Richard Alston in 1986, and first performed at Sadler's Wells to mark the Company's 60th anniversary. It is quite classical in its dance vocabulary and beautifully structured, with Michael's slow build-up leading to an explosive ending. It is always technically challenging to perform this particular work, but this makes it especially satisfying for audience and dancers alike. I remember the band Wire coming to play for the first performance (the work starts with a short song then morphs into a soundscape by Bruce Gilbert). I first met Michael in 1980 when he was 17 and attending the Gulbenkian course for choreographers and composers. He was a brilliant young dancer, and joined Rambert shortly after. One of the original dancers from his Company, Ellen Van Schulenburg, came to teach Swamp to us, and Ellen still teaches at Rambert regularly now. As a dancer I was amazed at much I could remember from all those years ago, incredible how the muscle memory of the body can be resusitated.
It is interesting that for many of the works I have commissioned, I have either had a long association with or have known the choreographer for some time. For the last twenty years the Company has performed Merce Cunningham's (1919-2009) works, one of the American greats. The challenges and the difficulty of the steps take real concentration and strength, and the dancers often improve because of it. To me there is an unmistakeable sensibility in Michael Clark's work, which has grown out of the Cunningham work as well as his Royal Ballet School training; a reliance on the dancers' technique to produce moments of interest and consequence, and movement as poetry rather than as a tool to tell stories. These works are always fabulously structured, something that is very important for audiences.
2003
Living Toys was something I had listened to for years, and it was so good to see it developing in the repertoire. Tom Adès, the composer, had allowed me to use a small piano piece of his called Darkness Visible when I had my own company, the Mark Baldwin Dance Company. My music mentor Sir John Drummond had pointed out Tom's brilliance then, consequently it was lovely to see Living Toys being toured by Rambert.
The choreographer Karole Armitage had no problem at all dealing with Living Toys, essentially the story of a young boy dreaming of images, perhaps even soldiers. Karole chose designer Peter Speliopoulos who worked with Donna Karan. His costumes suggested armour and mannequins, dividing the body up into its organic parts; hip to knee, knee to ankle, shoulder to elbow, elbow to hand and ribcage. This worked really well as it somehow suggested the feel of the music.
At the time we had several women in the Company with really striking arabesques (when a dancer elevates one of their legs to the back directly behind their torso, while keeping their back upright). I remember one of the reviewers describing the Company as having "uber-arabesques"! I also recall a group of German critics coming to the show in Glasgow, some of whom thanked me for using such a contemporary and unusual choice in Tom Adès. (As a footnote, he is frequently used for dance now; both the New York City Ballet and the Dutch National Ballet have recently premiered new works to his music.) Rambert later performed Living Toys at the Berlin Staatsoper Unter den Linden where I had, a few years earlier, made a ballet called Labyrinth with a commissioned score by Hans Werner Henze and the costumes and sets by Anish Kapoor. So it was exciting and interesting to be back in that beautiful opera house. (The intervening ballet I had made for them I won't mention, as I spent most of the time languishing in the dressing room rather than being allowed to work with the dancers!)
Michael Clark was a Rambert dancer in the late 1970s-early 1980s, and had danced with Karole Armitage in New York after leaving Rambert. He was then still only 20. My thinking was that Michael's work in its initial stages had ever so slightly been influenced by Karole's punk aesthetic. I also had, in the back of my mind, the idea to revive Michael Clark's Swamp, which I did the next year.
PreSentient, by Wayne McGregor, had just entered the repertoire and to me it is still his most beautiful work to date. I feel so lucky that this was not the only work he made for Rambert. I also loved the music, Triple Quartet, which was in three movements, two fast driving movements framing a slow, meditative one.
I had never met the choreographer of Visions Fugitives, Hans van Manen, before. I really enjoyed our brief encounter when he came to High Wycombe to see the dress rehearsal and give the dancers last minute notes on the piece. I had heard from Christopher Bruce that he invited Hans to make this piece after being told about it by Walter Nobbe, the designer of Sergeant Early's Dream.
Interestingly, I attended the 2003 Dance East Symposium for Artistic Directors, the first of its kind. One of the conclusions of this was that, as a group, we felt all the companies were doing a similar repertoire. I resolved to see if I could differentiate Rambert in what had become an increasingly crowded market. I also asked, around this time, if Rafael Bonachela would become the Company's Resident Choreographer. Sue Wyatt, the Chief Executive at the time, made it possible, and so we had the first ‘graduate' choreographer of my Artistic Directorship. Choreographic development is something I have always been interested in.
The first work with Rafael Bonachela was 21. "Rambert dancer and choreographer Rafael Bonachela has collaborated with Kylie Minogue and her creative team to produce a work that explores pure physical expression and the meaning of celebrity and adoration." [Extract from the programme] Rafael Bonachela is now the Artistic Director of Sydney Dance Company.
Elsa Canasta was the most popular work of the season, but I felt we had a good balance between what I like to call ‘high art' and something for those who had never seen dance before.
2002
I had carefully prepared myself to interview for the role of Artistic Director at Rambert and took the advice of some esteemed friends - the City Editor of the Daily Mail, a Professor of Accounting at Reading University and an ex-producer and director from the BBC. They were all experienced and generous characters with a great love of the arts. It was a long and nerve-wracking process involving several interviews, during which time I was awarded a South Bank Show Award (I always felt that the nod from Melvyn Bragg did my case no harm). When I eventually received news of my appointment I was over the moon and thrilled to be given the opportunity to commission new work whilst developing audiences and nurturing role models from within the Company.
For my first season as Artistic Director I wanted to present a triple bill that was challenging, invigorating and widely appealing. Living Toys by Karole Armitage was very contemporary, perhaps a little challenging, and set to a score by the genius British composer Thomas Adès; in Elsa Canasta, Javier De Frutos created a piece that was fun, yet sensual and romantic; PreSentient by Wayne McGregor was performed to Steve Reich's Triple Quartet and was perfect because it showed off the unique skill of the Rambert dancers, trained in both classical ballet and contemporary technique.
The genesis of Elsa Canasta was slightly unusual because the music came before the choreographic choice (this was in fact a pattern I had experienced as a freelance choreographer and was an interesting alternative to Rambert's existing commissioning pattern). I knew we wanted to use a ballet penned by Cole Porter in the 1930s called Within the Quota, and so Paul Hoskins (Music Director) tracked it down to a museum in Sweden. We added three additional songs by Cole Porter which were sung by Melanie Marshall. Javier, like me, had made commissions for the Royal New Zealand Ballet, which is where I had seen him rehearse Milagros, set to a remarkable pianola recording of The Rite of Spring. I was very impressed and knew I wanted him to create something for Rambert with his highly individual and theatrical style.
More years to follow each month.