To Infinity...

HAVING opted out of choreography for two years, isn't there some small part of Rambert Dance Company artistic director Mark Baldwin that feels he could always improve on work that he's commissioned for the current tour to Newcastle?

"I have to say that you're probably right there, but I'm too diplomatic to say anything.

Mind you, if something is really bugging me and I'm think to myself well, that's not going to work' I go and tell them and choreographers and designers are usually open to what you have to say, not always because I have come across people who won't change it,," explains Baldwin.

He reveals that current designer Georg Meyer-Wiel trained as a taxidermist before going to the Royal College of Art and ended up studying theatre design, and working on a Rambert piece called Infinity.

"You'll see from the costumes that he's made the bones look like they're on the outside of the body. He calls that exoskeletons and rose petals rain down during the whole piece," explains Baldwin, who took charge of Rambert back in 2002.

He feels that things are best when it's a repertoire company and counts the current World View tour as reflecting the best dance that can be created from inside and outside influences.

A piece called L'eveil comes from dancer/choreographer Melanie Teall; Infinity is from Australian choreographer Garry Stewart, Swansong is a 1987 favourite from former artistic director Christopher Bruce and US choreographer Doug Varone has added the new work, Scribblings, which is a first commission for Rambert.

"L'eveil has six of our most beautiful women dressed in bathing costumes and has a raunchy side and poetic and girly aspects. Swansong is quite powerful with three men in it and long, at 40 minutes.

"Scribblings is amazing and really fast and a big company piece with about 18 dancers and they absolutely go for it. It's inspired by an American composer called John Adams' who was reading a Schonberg score while his six-year-old son was watching Roadrunner on TV and they somehow got mixed together.

You can hear the cartoon element in it and the company look like dancing lollies,"

explains Baldwin.

"Infinity includes music by a club composer in Australia so this is quite driving and rhythmic and this just builds until it flies out the door at the end. He (Stewart) imagines how our last journey might be and Infinity required our dancers to learn how to tumble and do yoga because they stand on their heads for quite a long time at one point.

Not only are they skilled dancers with their contemporary technique, but this has pushed the whole thing in a different direction and make it very athletic. But it is quite a brutal work for the dancers."

Fiji-born Baldwin arrived at Rambert as a dancer via the Royal New Zealand Ballet before running his own company from 1993 until 2001. His work, Constant Speed, was nominated for the 2006 Olivier award and, after a self-imposed sabbatical, he's busy on another work.

"It's a requiem, called Eternal Light, by Howard Goodall, who wrote all the music for Mr Bean, Blackadder and the theme for the Vicar of Dibley. But his speciality is choral music and, obviously, we will try and bring this to Newcastle next time we come and we'll use local choirs as we tour around the country. It's been written and recorded by EMI using the choir from Christchurch College, Oxford, and it's a big deal for me,"

says Baldwin who aims to open the work in Manchester in October and tour it to London in November.

"We wanted it to be a requiem for the living rather than having dead soldiers about the place which is rather too realistic at the moment. With me there's always a twist so I've added a toucan using a costume which cost £7,000 and a finale in paradise in a piece which will last about 45 minutes. So it's long in ten movements and because the music is so beautiful and half the voices are innocent and gorgeous children I had to be quite careful. "I tell people it's like making the most amazing blue dress and then ruining it by putting too many ribbons on it," he jokes.

The work is likely to use all 22 of Rambert's dancers at a time when Baldwin is also battling to move the 80-year-old company from its dilapidated Chiswick base to purpose-built studios on London's South Bank.

"Dance is the faster growing art form and we're told that the audience at Sadler's Wells (where Rambert airs most work) is growing at nine per cent a year. Probably that's because we have collaboration between, dancer, choreographer, composer designer and live orchestra it's a wonderful extravagance.

"The bad thing about dance being popular is that once Rambert used to be THE touring company without much competition, but now we've got a lot. A lot of young people are studying dance and we teach about 10,000 students a year at workshops which is quite thrilling.

"We've got planning permission for our new building on the car park behind the National Theatre, but its part of a complex involving a 43-floor tower block which has been called in (challenged by English National Heritage). Even if we don't go there, the company needs to move on and I'm pretty confident we'll move forward," he says of the planned £13m project.

"If you see me at Newcastle I'm probably going to look tired," he jests.

■ Rambert Dance Company, World View Tour 2008, Newcastle Theatre Royal, Tuesday-Saturday. Box Office: 08448-11-21- 21 www.theatreroyal.co.uk