The Finnish choreographer Jorma Elo is resident choreographer at Boston Ballet. Popular and prolific, he has made work for numerous companies, especially in the US, and recently Scottish Ballet director Ashley Page commissioned him to create a new piece for the Glasgow-based company. The result is Kings 2 Ends. Taking fast and structurally complex pieces of music Steve Reich's Double Sextet and Mozart's Violin Concerto No 1 the Finnish choreographer floods the stage with dancers performing neoclassical steps enhanced with quixotic details. We see classical flourishes, jazzy noodles and a flash of R&B diva-strut, and we bathe in the aura of zeitgeisty cool.
At least that's the idea, and designer Yumiko Takeshima has dressed the dancers in minimalist leotards and ironic little tiaras to drive home the postmodern message. But somehow, and despite first-rate individual performances, the effect of the piece is to remind us of how much better we've seen the same thing accomplished elsewhere. Elo's choreography to Reich is slick and contrived classroom steps dressed with a frantic semaphore of hand and arm motifs and when you think of the wit and style that choreographers such as Twyla Tharp have brought to this composer's work, it looks thin. Nor do things improve with the Mozart, to which a series of twitchy solos, elaborate duets and ponderously unfunny chicken-walks have been tacked. It takes chutzpah to choreograph to Mozart, and Mark Morris and Jirí Kylián have carried it off to varying degrees, but Elo seems to hear all of the notes and none of the music.