Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival, Ramallah, April 2019
An image derived from the work of Khalid Bengharib
The idea of attending the Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival was inspired by a British Council callout to bloggers. I applied to write about a dance festival of which I had never heard that took place in what I thought to be a conflict zone in Palestine. What kind of dance might emerge under such circumstances, and what kind of spirit was behind the organization of such a festival were two questions I was keen to explore. As a precaution before applying I contacted the director, Khaled Elayyan, and learned this international festival is now in its 14th edition and is steadily building its reputation with performances from Australia, Estonia, France, Greece, Norway, Switzerland, Tunisia and the UK as well as hosting a roster of international dance producers, festival directors, and curators as speakers and guests. I was also happy to see Luca Silvestrini’s Border Tales was on the program; the idea of a festival in Palestine programming a work about borders when its own borders are controlled and being constantly eroded by an occupying state intrigued me. Art, as Gilles Deleuze breathlessly intoned, is inherently a form of resistance.
Although my British Council application to attend the festival was not successful, two weeks later Elayyan very kindly invited me to attend as a guest for the first week that would include the inaugural Palestinian Dance Forum connecting artists and guests, a symposium on the subject of the The Body in the Arab World as well as several workshops, indoor and outdoor performances. The experience proved every bit as rewarding as I had hoped.
You can only arrive in Palestine with the permission of the state of Israel, either through passport control on the Israeli side or at checkpoint on the bridge from Jordan. If you happen to be a curator of Arab dance living outside Palestine and your passport betrays an interest in countries like Syria, Lebanon or Iran such permission may be difficult to come by and if any dancer happens to be have been born in these countries and is now living in Europe, the chances of participating in the festival are nil. Nidal Abdo, a dancer and choreographer who was born in a refugee camp in Syria was only able to enter Palestine because he travels on a Ukrainian passport, but his company of dancers, Collectif Nafass — all Syrian refugees living in Europe — was denied permission to participate in the festival. Abdo had to make his ensemble work, What If Tomorrow…a solo instead.
Despite or perhaps because of the obstacles in its path, Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival’s slogan this year, ‘Where To?’, is a question the brochure defines as addressing ‘our national, social, economic, cultural and educational fate and future…in light of a harsh and difficult socio-political and economic reality.’ There is no immediate answer to the question; it will transpire only through the collective endeavours of those organizing, supporting and attending the festival.
Rooted in Sareyyet Ramallah, an NGO that has a lineage from its early days in scouting, the festival is a flowering of the indigenous development of sport and dabkeh, the traditional form of folk dance. Sareyyet Ramallah today comprises three dance companies, a dance school, rehearsal studios, a swimming pool, a basketball court and a restaurant on a discreet but thriving campus just south of the city centre. The introduction of a contemporary dance workshop into the curriculum came about in 1998 through the suggestion of Australian dancer Nicholas Rowe who spent some years in the region and subsequently wrote a book about the history of dance in Palestine, Raising Dust. Rowe’s initiative led in 2005 — right after the end of the second Intifada — to a performance of At The Checkpoint by the Sareyyet Contemporary Dance Company, which toured throughout Palestine and in France, and then to setting up the first contemporary dance festival in 2006 in the same month Hamas won the national elections. It was not a propitious time for dance — Hamas felt the festival was too western and wanted to stop it — but that year there were five companies from Belgium, France, Benin, Spain, and Ireland as well as the Sareyyet company performing At The Checkpoint. It proved a great success and after 14 years, as Elayyan grins, the public is getting used to contemporary dance, enjoying a range of works over the years by the likes of William Forsythe, Akram Khan, Sasha Waltz, Maguy Marin, Russell Maliphant, Candoco, Stopgap and Protein Dance. It’s a remarkable achievement that continues to expand with a network in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Contemporary dance is presenting Palestine and the Arab world in terms of international cultural exchange that eloquently counters the region’s noxious political climate.
RISE 2019 – festival of contemporary dance, Findhorn May 3-5
Robbie Synge and Julie Cleves in Passing Through (photo: the artists)
With the upcoming edition of RISE, curated by Karl Jay-Lewin, a little under a month away, I want to draw attention to the artists who’ll be making the trip to the wild beauty of Findhorn and have a deep dive with one particular duo; there’s a strong international presence with works from Canada (Singeries by Mandoline Hybride) and Taiwan (Bon 4 Bon by Chang Dance Theatre) alongside independent, female lead works (Screensaver Series and The Human Clock by Janine Harrington, and These Hands and Ritual Echoes by Crystal Zillwood) from England. There’s a number of collaborative pairings from Scotland/Canada (Paysages Mixtes and Dix Commandments by Katrina McPherson and Harold Rheaume) and Scotland/England (Extremely Pedestrian Chorales by Karl Jay-Lewin and Matteo Fargion), yet none from mainland Europe.
RISE is a festival of contemporary dance which this year centres upon themes of landscape, the everyday and relationships; the terms ‘festival’ and ‘contemporary dance’ have lost their vibrancy and currency in recent times as everything is a festival and everything is movement-based practice. There is a definite change in the use of language and the approach of how people are describing and curating festivals and showcases; we often hear talk of communities, activism and dance but they turn out to be little more than a hollow program of works slapped together over a period of time with little care for the audience/artist.
RISE is different — and I say this from experience — as it gives space for communities to form; it offers time for morning walks along Findhorn beach, time for the whole community to eat together, to share stories and reflections on the work seen. There’s classes for professional dancers and for little people with their big people alongside a talk by Simone Kenyon’s work being with women who walk, work and live in the Cairngorms – a work being made in response to Nan Shephard’s seminal Into The Mountain.
However there is one work which embodies all of the festival themes: Passing Through by Julie Cleves and Robbie Synge. Julie and Robbie have had a long relationship with Dance North Scotland, spending time in residence, making some of the films seen in the work and they’ll present the latest iteration of their partnership at the festival. I spent some time with them recently in Glasgow talking about the work and their relationship.
IA: There’s something radical and political about the act of sitting. It’s been used throughout history as a marker of resistance; what are your thoughts on that and how sitting has manifested in your practice.
JC: The thing about sitting is…sitting in the wheelchair the whole time, and people ignoring me, blanking me and asking whoever is with me questions; they don’t treat me like a human. Whereas when I’m on blocks I know that I’ve got power in that moment. I’m in control of how they’re noticing me.
RS: I haven’t considered the dramaturgical connotations of sitting; but it’s always struck me when we’ve done it in places where the ownership of the land or the environment is a particular way. So for example Findhorn beach. Karl’s initial support was to go and make a film on the beach and talk about it. Sitting there on the sand for the first time…politically it’s a leisure and recreational space, but when we went to Tate Modern last year (the installation with the swings — One Two Three Swing! by SUPERFLEX — was so clever because you can sit together and have this conversation; it encourages social dialogue and inclusivity. Of course for us we can’t get on those swings. But we turn up with this massive bag on the back of Julie’s chair and the security guards don’t question it, because probably…
JC: I’m not going to blow anything up!
RS: She’s a bit disabled. It’s a bit awkward to ask her. So I get my backpack searched and we rolled down the bank and decided to get down among the swings, and once you’re down there there’s no quick or easy way out.
IA: It’s about 15-20 minutes to get back up?
RS: Yeah. We were clocking out the corner of our eyes all these security guards going ‘Is this OK?’
JC: And we were literally right in the middle with the swings all around us.
R: We also discreetly placed a camera on top, which is a big no-no there. That felt like an act of resistance, but it’s a bit like ‘Fuck you with your swings which are inaccessible and are bullshit around access and your inclusive joyful social experiment’. Similarly we did it on land near Tower Bridge which is owned by Kuwait Oil…in that area there are people with sunglasses from Men In Black watching you…
IA: You’re making a choice about where you make the films.
R: There’s a kind of cinematography even if it’s quite amateur. It’s Tower Bridge. It’s a recognisable landmark to people. We tried to choose as many recognisable things as we can. We thought about going to Parliament Square. It’s amazing when you dig in to the access and find out what’s permitted. There are all these 10-metre squared sections where you’re allowed to protest. It’s owned by a certain estate. I thought about going into Westminster…going along to a protest and us getting down there and just dancing. I think you’d find that exciting.
IA: There’s activist possibilities to it?
JC: I think it’s pushing the boundaries really. Just to see what would happen. That’s what gives me the excitement really, to see how far we could go. It’s like Robbie’s saying, there’s the leisure spaces and then there’s the one where you say let’s see how many people we can piss off. Or how are they going to kick us out.
IA: In some of the films when you’re in the woods or the beach, you get the sense there’s nobody else around and that has a totally different feeling; we are being let in to your world. But then there’s the opposite. You being very visible in spaces like Tower Bridge or Calton Hill; you’re toying with that duality of look but don’t look.
RS: I think we both respect that it might be interesting, amusing or provocative, this question of people’s responses and the strange responses it provokes. I don’t want to laugh at people for their responses because it’s an unusual thing to see…us with these boards taking two hours to go along a little loop. People do check in and I totally respect that. But when it’s in the middle of Tate Modern and they’re singing the praise of some accessible, social artwork…if you’ve got a problem with us sitting on the floor, come and make our film better by standing in the shot and talking to us about it. Going to the beach is different. It’s a personal conquest.
JC: And it feels different; inside me it feels different. In Tate Modern I really didn’t like it there. We walked around for ages trying to look for a spot and we were like, are you sure this is OK? It really didn’t feel welcoming at all. But the beach or Calton Hill is a lot more welcoming and I can feel it inside; I’m a lot more relaxed. I like how it takes me from one to another.
IA: You use the words ‘solutions’ and ‘design’ and you’ve iterated from yoga blocks to wood blocks to gravel things. Can you talk about how your being together might be solving a problem?
RS: I guess it started with a very biomechanical process in the studio…about how two bodies work together to move. We worked out very quickly that if there isn’t contact, weight and pressure between us then we are quite static. In order to set up the challenge of can we move from A to B across the studio floor — which is the challenge we give ourselves — we tried to find ways of doing that. After a while being in the studio we thought it would be nice to do something else like walking around the town together. By that stage we’d already got to the floor in the studio. That was the thing that got us going, embodied solutions to problems rather than the machine. Could we do it together? Save money, save time. And where could we sit? We don’t need to just sit in the studio, we could sit…
JC: …anywhere. It’s been quite a slow process but it started very simply…with us getting to know each other’s bodies. My skeleton is nothing like yours, and it’s nothing like anybody else’s in this room. So it’s finding out about that, finding out how best to empower and enable me. And also do the same with Robbie. It’s a two-way street. Then it’s taking that from there and that’s how we’ve got bigger and bigger; as we’ve got bigger we’ve thought we need advice, support and funding.
IA: Have you engaged any designers? Or have you done it yourselves?
R: So far it’s only been us…just because it’s that thing of money and when you’re in this sector it’s a familiar thing touring a piece but it’s quite unfamiliar engaging with designers. We had a great residency at Siobhan Davies studios, and met a lot of people from architectural backgrounds and academic institutions. We had a follow up at Metal and now we need to contact these people and see where it’s going. I think it will be productive. But in terms of the next stage, there isn’t anything in the pipeline. We’re always thinking about how we might improve on the blocks.
JC: You need to think small and then prioritise it. We had some great responses from people at Siobhan Davies; it was just an idea we had about these blocks and then you go in and you’ve got someone who is a really posh architect who is like ‘Actually that’s a bloody good idea, but if we make it like this it’ll be a lot better or a lot lighter’…or whatever. It’s really exciting to know it can develop into something else.
RS: If it could all fold up into a little backpack or if it was made of carbon fibre or was a lot lighter and took up less space… It’s about avoiding motors, electronics and keeping it primitive.
IA: Choreography as design. There was an article on how choreographers have impacted on city planning. Dancers are people who are using their bodies as their tools every day.
RS: The idea of embodied solutions rather than an engineer thinking ‘I’ll put a motor in it’ which is a very disembodied experience…
JC: …Or a piece of equipment like the hoist. That’s the last thing I want. I want something I can move with…I want to move on my own rather than be being part of a piece of equipment.
RS: What we’re doing isn’t a solution for everyone. It’s an art project and we really hold onto that. We’re not going to create a product that is going to sell millions and we’ll be retiring in the Bahamas.
IA: You could create Julie and Robbie : Embodied Solutions with a bit of venture capital…You’ve done a lot of work and thinking on it.
RS: I think it’s a very social thing. The benefits aren’t the result of the action of getting up stairs. It’s the interaction between people which is communicative and cooperative; in the way you would see in a kid’s playground…it might take two people to pull a rope and turn a thing…it’s that sort of potential you wonder about in the back of your mind. Is this a thing in our digital age? With everyone in their tunnels…is that a thing we could do?
JC: I think it’s important that the blocks are a great thing, but we shouldn’t just roll with it and forget the other stuff we’re doing. That’s what’s so good with us…it’s only a part of what we’re doing.
IA: I was looking back and the first thing I could find of you two is a video from 2009.
RS: Oh god!
IA: It was of you two. 10 years ago. How has your relationship changed over time. A decade of collaboration is a great longitudinal study. That’s what’s at the heart of this. Julie and Robbie.
RS: It’s open ended. So it probably won’t have an ending. It’ll keep going as long as we can put up with each other. We’ve discussed the quickness and pace of that early work…we both slow up a bit and our interests have evolved now. We’ve just hung out more and you get to know people better; I think as we’ve gone on we get more aware about other people’s perceptions and the broader discourse around disability and privilege. Our relationship hasn’t really shifted much, I think we were always good pals, but we’ve talked a lot more about ourselves in relation to other people and the obstacles that can throw up. Obstacles, funding and narratives other people want to hear.
IA: Are you like Ant and Dec; is it Robbie on the right Julie on the left.
JC: Oh my, that is scary!
RS: I wonder if there is a consistency there…it would be funny if there was.
IA: What’s your response, Julie?
JC: I think at the beginning it’s like any kind of dance relationship or friendship. You want everything done tomorrow or yesterday. You know we had these great ideas of what we wanted to do in the studio. Ups and Downs and Whoopsie Daisies was great and it was about when you’re a teenager and ‘I’ve got to do everything.’ Then as we’ve gone on we’ve learned a lot about each other, we’ve relaxed with one another and I think that’s shown in our work. There’s a lot of shit stuff that Robbie’s seen — when we’ve been out travelling — the way people treat me. A lot of people don’t see that. That’s going to affect the work and how we talk to each other about it. I’ll come up with stories as well: yesterday so-and-so said this to me. I think as time has passed we’ve got a lot more honest with one another. Now I feel a lot more like a Grandma. I feel pleased with what we’re doing and I still want to challenge myself more. But I’m really happy where I am.
RS: Being a family guy now, and having a child, certain things aren’t quite as exotic and exciting any more. They’re just a bit tiring. But also being comfortable with what we’re doing and just letting it tick over…being conscious there’s opportunities out there and our work has become more about the story, the broader relationship and the implications rather than what you can do in 40 minutes.
IA: It would be interesting to do a retrospective of the 10 years. This presentation feels like a concentration of that. How could you represent that 10-yearness?
RS: One of our strands is having a website. A digital encounter. Partly because it’s difficult to travel and have those live encounters…but we want to get it out there and a timeline that we can add to every time we hang out and do one of these things. An accumulation that you could scroll through, stop at and look into it further.
JC: As Robbie is saying about family, my body’s ten years older. It’s s not what it was and there’s times when I’m feeling weaker or whatever. We have to think around that and ask ‘Do we use film more?’ It’s getting your head around that because we’re both changing, our bodies are changing and we need to talk about that…how can we express what we’re expressing now in ten years time.
IA: How would you define your relationship? Julie first this time.
JC: No!
RS: Yes!
[pause]
JC: I would say…he’s my brother. He’s annoying, frustrating…sometimes he thinks he’s right when he isn’t but I smile anyway. But he’s very very talented. Sometimes I think he doesn’t realise that. I think I’m lucky to have met him in a way. Now if you say anything horrible about me…
RS: You know when you’ve got a scab on your…no…when we met it was quite an important time for me. I’d massively changed direction in what I was doing. I’d sort of studied biological sciences and worked in that and did all sorts of things. I was teaching English for a while, stuff happened, and I was sort of lost. I did Laban for a year — not even a year, 9 months — and I got an audition for Candoco somehow. I don’t really understand how and I remember my technique teacher at the time — I’m going on a bit of a roundabout way here — was quite condescending about my auditioning for Candoco. But then obviously I didn’t get in, but met Julie and it was quite an exciting adventure, to challenge dance and what we were doing. I was quite bored of what we were doing at college. This was the first creative project that I felt co-ownership of. It wasn’t that we were really good friends…it was a really good gift to have that way into a friendship, and a unique friendship that’s bound together in this investigation. Physically of course we’re very close, and I think that opens doors, if we have that kind of relationship then you’re able to share more. It’s just got stronger and stronger, and more and more exciting. When you have really good friends, that becomes apparent really soon, it doesn’t take long.
IA: Could you talk a bit about labour? The energy and the investment in the physical.
RS: For me that’s something society wants to reduce. They don’t want you going out to your woodpile, chopping it and carrying it to stay warm. But what else can that bring you? What can labour bring you in a physical, tactile experience and engagement in the world with its materials? I get a kick out of our adventures. In life in general I often do things the difficult way…which is a constant kind of cursing myself but it always feels great when you’ve done it. I love that it’s just the two of us, and Julie’s PA maybe with a camera ‘Karen. Karen can you push stop?’
JC: She’s gone off to Hollywood now, she has.
RS: I suppose it’s a bit of a social statement that we clearly engage in an amount of labour that is maybe primitive to some people. It’s technology. These blocks are a primitive technology. But what can you get from encouraging labour rather than discouraging it, which is where my head first goes.
JC: I don’t know what you mean by labour. Do you mean the energy I put into the work or…?
IA: So if Robbie is describing himself as a blue arsed fly in order to set up the shot, if it takes four hours to set it up, that is an investment of time. What is that time like for you?
JC: It’s totally different for me. If we’re setting something up physically I’m unable to do anything. So I’m sat and he’s running around doing everything. Sometimes that can make me a bit upset because I see him running around and I want to get up and help him. But I think it’s to do with my energy and I have to prioritise it as well. For my sake and Robbie’s. I’ve learned that I need to listen to my body more and I’ve started doing that now. That’s a really good thing. I still like to take risks…you know that log over there, I want to get on it. I still want to.
RS: It occurs to me that I’m quite often busy around Julie attending to things, orbiting in a sense in and out and there’s a couple of things to say about that. What is going on in Julie’s body, and the effort involved isn’t always as apparent because there’s a different type of effort involved. People might not want to see the narrative of this privileged young man being physical around a disabled older woman…well tough luck, because that’s the way it has to be if we’re going to do this. If that’s not the desired easy narrative in current times; take time to talk to us rather than assuming. There are questions of consent, initiation and decision making.
IA: Is Robbie doing this to Julie…
RS: There are moments of initiation. Sometimes when we’re doing the movements Julie will initiate something and we’re very careful with that. But you can take it to such an extreme you drive yourself nuts trying to cater to what everyone thinks. In the performance we just did, when I made that comment, ‘Look at that man doing something to that disabled woman’, it got a laugh because I think some people would be thinking that and it’s important to acknowledge that. If we can demonstrate our awareness of these things, it’s nice to be a bit provocative as well. It’s really good to talk about it to a third person, to be interviewed; it’s a good creative tool.
IA: What are the things people are curious about?
JS: I always say to people ‘Ask anything. No I mean anything.’ But people won’t.
IA: It’s like ‘Oh, is he touching your bum when he’s pulling you up…’
JC: Yeah, and ‘Is it OK that he does that to you?’ But they don’t. They still don’t…but I’d love it if they did.
This is the first of a series of articles and reviews from the Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival to which I was very kindly invited by its director, Khaled Elayyan and his team.
Following the appearance of Protein Dance in LOL at Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival in 2012, the company’s artistic director, Luca Silvestrini, returned to the region as part of his research for a new work on the subject of refugees and identity. As he writes in the program note, ‘I’ve travelled across England, Slovenia, Denmark, Spain, Germany, Palestine and India and learned that there’s a common, complex and unresolved space between people. This emotional, sometimes physical, sometimes socially awkward space is strongly influenced by a restless collision of cultures, traditions, religious views and political interests. I see this space in between as a border, the outer part of all of us; a fragile partition that defines who we are and perpetuates a yearning to belong.’
This notion of an ‘unresolved space between people’ has gained in relevance since Border Tales was first created in 2013; its implications have taken on a heightened relevance with the Brexit issue alone. Watching the performance recently in Ramallah adds a level of poignancy because of the continuing illegal expulsion of Palestinians from their former homes by ‘settlers’ of an occupying, predatory state, forcing them to live as refugees in their own country (what an odd irony that EU citizens seeking to remain in the UK are required by the Home Office to register for ‘settled’ status). Choosing to program such a work in Ramallah is evidence of the uncompromising view of the festival organizers that the dance body is not only personal but political.
Silvestrini’s cast — Temitope Ajose-Cutting, Eryck Brahmania, Andrew Gardiner, Anthar Kharana, Stephen Moynihan, Yuyu Rau and Kenny Wing Tao Ho — is a microcosm of society in the UK’s current post-colonial makeup. Andy (Gardner) throws a neighbourhood party to which they are all invited; his pivotal role in provoking their tales of social and cultural assimilation through his cheerfully blithe ignorance of their mores — and his willingness to ascribe to them stereotypical qualities — demonstrates the devastating vulnerability of multiculturalism (see also Lloyd Newson’s treatment of this topic in DV8’s Can We Talk About This?). There is, however, no calculated offence in Andy’s buffoonery; like the traditional clown, he holds up a mirror for us to check our own tendencies.
By using the cast’s self-deprecatory awareness within his satirical framework Silvestrini disabuses us of some of the more ingenuous barriers to mutual respect and understanding. Within this framework he allows his cast to clarify their own feelings and values in both text and dance and particularly in the latter — to Kharana’s uplifting musical accompaniment — we begin to see a communal self-expression emerge within a multi-cultural group. And while the perspective of Border Tales is distinctly British, the depiction of a ‘restless collision of cultures’ can be recognized in any society where immigration, whether forced or welcomed, is an acknowledged strand of government policy. One reason Silvestrini has revisited Border Tales is what he sees as today’s ‘more divisive and intolerant co-existence’ that underpins much of the current Brexit debate. Andy devises a simple skipping pattern for his guests to the refrain ‘in and out, in and out’ to which he adds with a gleeful laugh, ‘Leave, remain, leave, remain, open the gates, close the gates…’ His mood of benevolent gaiety is nevertheless tested when Wing asks for his advice on how to become ‘more English’. Andy has no advice to offer so Wing begins to copy him, at which point Andy pushes him back with the incensed injunction: ‘Don’t take my job away!’
When all the guests have left at the end of the party, a confused and overwhelmed Andy sits down next to the cheerfully buoyant ‘welcome’ balloon to ponder, like the audience, what has just happened. How you react to his pathos depends on where you stand on the causative history of British colonial policy. Border Tales can be seen as a damning critique of British mentality, a sympathetic appreciation of immigrant struggles and a superimposed series of finely honed, well-paced tales that attempts to resolve ‘the space between people’. But when, as a UK citizen, I read about how the British government set up the establishment of Israel under the terms of the Balfour declaration in 1917 only to turn away from the continuous dismantling of its spirit; how it left the Indian empire to its fate in 1947; how it has recently treated the Windrush generation of immigrants and how it is in the throes of trashing its relationship with Europe, Andy’s role offers a salutary reflection on what constitutes our ‘borders’.
Bristol International Digital Arts Festival, Bristol, March 9
Ultimate Dancer in YAYAYA AYAYAY (photo: Abigail Denniston)
Submerge, the producers of Bristol International Digital Arts Festival, have curated a timely programme that ‘questions what it means to belong, what happens when objects, people and communities fracture; and how you bring them back together.’ Taking place in multiple spaces around Bristol for the first ten days of March, I sample works from Duncan Speakman, Ultimate Dancer + Robbie Thomson and Guillaume Marmin with a commonality of how the body is centred when surrounded by digital anchors.
Duncan Speakman’s It Must Have Been Dark by Then is one of the early works framed under the Ambient Literature banner, a two-year, AHRC-funded collaboration between UWE Bristol, Bath Spa University and the University of Birmingham that was established to investigate the locational and technological future of the book. Speakman’s work self-describes as ‘a book and audio experience that uses a mixture of evocative music, narration and field recording to bring you stories of changing environments, from the swamplands of Louisiana, to empty Latvian villages and the edge of the Tunisian Sahara.’
Moving my body through the city of Bristol, I encounter cartography as choreography bringing fresh perspectives and alternative awareness to architecture, obstacles and people as I navigate in and around them. All the constituent parts of dance are present; there is music, there is a body (or bodies), there are movement instructions and there is (lots of) space. By any other means this is a dance work. As I listen to the audio histories and read the accompanying book I am making decisions about where to go, what to see and placing my own markers across the city; it’s an embodied experience, it hangs around, it leaves its trace in and on you.
Following the three stories of the three maps in three parts of the world, I encounter physical boundaries, global narratives of change and porous edges. Where do we go? Why do we go? Ambient Literature could be a description of a type of score; it’s non-invasive, like an anti-sat nav. Rather than prescribing your route, it rewards you irrespective of your coordinates or navigational hunger. The idea of split attention is in play as you have an aural narrative consistently feeding your ears and a visual safety narrative that makes sure you do not to die by vehicle as you choreograph your way through the city. Although your body is engaging in an outward journey it also attempts to play an internal, introspective channel. It gives you 70 minutes to wander physically and intellectually in a terrain that might be familiar or unfamiliar.
It Must Have Been Dark by Then could be the digital offspring of Wrights & Sites’ A Mis-Guide To Anywhere from 2006 and Rider Spoke by Blast Theory from 2007. You set beacons across the city (to which you will return afterwards), but it is slightly clumsy as you have a GPS device in one hand and an A5 book in the other to read chapter by chapter while you’re given instructions. You are never left alone quite long enough to get lost in another world; there’s a gentle interruption every three or four minutes and I’m left wondering what would happen if you were to take it and stretch it out to 140 minutes instead of 70, let yourself wander and get lost in the city and its narratives. But it’s an enjoyable time in the drizzle of Brizzle and how many dance works actively submerge the body whilst covering a political position and leaving an emotional residue?
Ultimate Dancer + Robbie Thomson’s YAYAYA AYAYAY self-describes as a way to ‘Challenge your perceptions and immerse yourself in a sensory performance that teases your imagination. YAYAYA AYAYAY is an ultra-terrestrial temporary dance…In 2015, Ultimate Dancer went into a darkness retreat for five days — a purpose-built room isolated from all light and sound. Ceremonial darkness as a shamanic tool is a classical method for accessing vibrant unconscious and super-conscious states.’
After we make our glacially slow and fumbling way into the darkened theatre I still manage to scrape my shins even though there are white-gloved ushers to guide us. Not a speck of unnatural light permeates the stage or auditorium but luckily our seats are marked by tiny squares of white tape. Our entrance into the auditorium bleeds into the opening fifteen minutes of audio-only performance; it is a rare position to be left alone with our thoughts among a hundred strangers in the darkness (but aware of other audience members who are having conversations about Yaya Toure and Dining in the Dark).
YAYAYA AYAYAY is a date with deprivation, an active heightening of senses with the removal of the audience body. It is so well constructed that when hundreds of tiny white stones erupt out of the air and land on the floor, I stare at them…and keep staring at them. They are the only data points for my eyes and they look like they’re moving, an army of micro maggots pulsing to white noise. Where am I? Am I gazing up or down at a constellation of stars from a galaxy? My orientation is skewed.
When we see the body and performative choreography of Ultimate Dancer it feels insignificant in comparison; seeing them twitch, swarm or grind across the floor doesn’t match the power of the previous effects. Other works by Ultimate Dancer (Louise Ahl) — For now we see through a mirror darkly and Holy Smoke — suggest there are few artists able to match her intensity and unswerving drive in the pursuit of such a radical practice. It may not always be enjoyable, likeable or even palatable but there is a rigour and commitment to the shamanic and eerie choreographic practice that marks the Ultimate Dancer as an original choreographic voice in the UK night sky.
Licht, Mehr Licht is an installation by Guillaume Marmin constructed as a dark corridor 4 metres wide by 12 metres long that is empty except for dozens of pin-thin paired lights. They create lines of light at floor, shin, waist, head and overhead levels within a mild haze in which the audience can walk, sit, stand still or wait. Imagine a roofless shipping container with ghostly lines of light flickering and pulsing to a pre-programmed light sequence across a 12-minute score. It’s an insta-friendly spectacle and with a limited capacity there’s a 20-minute queue to get into the gallery. With children dashing about trying to eat light beams this digital playground pulses with sound and reminds me of a glitch-riddled, Blade-Runner-stained version of Waltzing Waters but without the water.
Resolution 2019: works by Heather Lam, Rouzet and Martinez, and Mara Vivas, February 12
Publicity images from Heather Lam, Rouzet and Martinez, and Mara Vivas
One can almost sense the curatorial hand putting these three works together on an apparent theme of insubstantiality. Hazel Lam ‘aims to highlight the power in gentleness’; Laura Rouzet and Alejandro Martinez set out to explore ‘genderless movement’ and Mara Vivas translates time into space. This is not so much a program of action but one of reflection where dance evolves from the physical to the metaphysical. In reality it is only Vivas who follows through by refusing to compromise.
It’s the set of Heather Lam’s Lighthouse that initiates us to the nature of the evening, a suspended forest of translucent soft pvc tubes arranged like the tentacles of underwater sculptures. Just upstage the seated figure of Lam sways in the tide to the chatter of the arriving audience until the lighting of Bert Van Dijck and Margot Jensens submerges us in this marine environment. Lam indulges in some innocent foreplay discovering the translucent tubes in which — a little disingenuously — she sets up some doubt as to the strength and reliability of the material. Only then does she give it her full weight and confidence as she climbs up, rolls down, and uses its pliability to create aerial shapes that offer a quiet meditation on the ability of the suspended body to express its equilibrium. Max Morris sets his score to the same register, creating with Lam what she sets out to achieve. And yet there is an underlying irony in the work that flaws its conception: Lam’s dependence for her ‘power of gentleness’ on a material that in the form of waste is suffocating our oceans and the balance of its ecosystem; there is a clash of ideas that are too mutually opposed to be overlooked.
While the premise of Rouzet and Martinez swirls around its title, Ondule, only the opening matches its physicality. The couple is seen in a genderless mass eerily joined at the head in a costumed fringe so the two bodies behave as one. But the desire to extrapolate the idea into separate solos of popping, voguing and dancehall immediately exposes the gender patterns inherent in their respective movement; keeping their heads wrapped in material can’t hide what’s going on below. Rouzet’s costumes, set and projections are elaborate and Martinez is responsible for the lighting: they’re working hard and meticulously but the idea of genderless movement has escaped their scrutiny.
Mara Vivas’ time/less is a courageous meditation on loss that carves absence out of the stage volume by translating time into space. The opening is sublime, with two women (Lynn Dichon and Tara Silverthorn) in Matthias Strahm’s burnt ochre dresses like classical sculptures in an asymmetrical relationship to one another, unable to move under the weight of grief. Where does movement come from, how does it manifest in the body and why? These are questions the two women seem to ponder for some time in silence; there are no shortcuts and Vivas is not interested in choreographic platitudes. The miracle is that we can’t decode a point of departure any more than we can see a fever passing; there is no intention, only an emotion that uncannily becomes motion. Silverthorn follows an invisible sinuous path in silent steps and as the dance develops the two women invoke each other and perhaps comfort each other in the sharing of the grief that has become the space between them. Silence becomes physical too, and just where we need some air Vivas introduces Filipe Sousa’s soundscape like a breath of light. If there is a weakness in time/less it’s that the solemnity that underpins its formality is sometimes undermined by the process of improvisation that helped create the work. The materials are all there and the landscape is carefully delineated but the fine line between the freedom to act out of inspiration and the constraints of formal expression are demanding — but not implacable — partners.
Resolution 2019: Works by Vendetta Vain, Elliot Minogue-Stone and Ben & Fred, January 29
Isabella Arboleda Tovar and Pauline Thuriot in Sighs, Cries and Lies (photo: Joon-Kim Young)
This year The Place has partnered with, among others, Jackson’s Lane, to cross-fertilize choreography with circus arts at Resolution. It’s a welcome initiative that hopefully develops the gene pool of both choreographic and circus expression rather than simply expanding the catchment area for Resolution’s artists.
Vee Smith, who performs under the name of Vendetta Vain, trained at the National Centre for Circus Arts and Butterface is her first circus solo work. She is not the first to perform naked on a trapeze (though perhaps the first to do so at Resolution), but she approaches her performance with as little coyness and pudeur as apology. The title of her work is a derogatory noun for ‘an attractive woman with an undesirable face’, which is clearly understood to mean an attractive female body with an undesirable face. Vain makes this point quite evident by hiding her face, for most of the performance, under a muslin concoction tied loosely at the neck to which she attaches false eyelashes and a rude approximation of lips. But while our focus in Butterface is on the body and what Vain does with it, it is on our minds that Vain has focused her argument; the two don’t always acknowledge each other in the formation of her ‘message’.
There are two sets of projected texts, one that is designed to ease Vain into the performance as she enters behind two large feathers, and the other conveys the sexual animosity and stereotyping of the female circus artist as she performs on the trapeze. Because our eyes are watching her rather than the texts on the back wall, there is an argument that Butterface would benefit from Vain speaking the second set of texts while performing. It would give the taping together of her legs, for example, an edge of satirical wit over the comic absurdity of her actions. Vain’s choice of songs (Flawless, Paper Bag and She) show a natural sense of self-deprecatory humour and her subversive intelligence will not suffer fools. It’s a potent mixture.
Elliot Minogue-Stone is a graduate of the incommensurable Orley Quick and the Hairy Heroines, inviting us in Sighs, Cries and Lies to ‘delve into platitudes, taboos, tangibility, big questions and odd sensations’ with the same lack of disambiguation he once brought to discussing big dogs and screwdriver heads. He takes an important step from performer to choreographer by creating Sighs, Cries and Lies on Isabella Arboleda Tovar and Pauline Thuriot who translate his sense of the absurd into another key. At first it’s a very low key, as the two bounce on to the stage in red shorts, white tops and trainers, arms enigmatically raised in front of their faces. But as Tovar begins to deck the stage in a wealth of props from a bright red shopping basket, the key begins to modulate. Sighs, Cries and Lies is not a work that can be defined by its external shape but by the paths that run through its apparent chaos, a physical grammar of associations and collisions that offer a fractured landscape of vulnerability. You make of it what you will; its meaning coalesces around a free association of props, popular songs, wit and repartee that Tovar and Thuriot weave into an emotional pattern that ultimately holds them — and us — together.
Ben & Fred’s The Juggling of Science brings together two jugglers, Frederike Gerstner and Ben Nicholson, in a light-hearted introduction to quantum physics. The recorded voice of Professor Circumference introduces his two understudies with the tone of Listen with Mother but the principles in ‘possibly the most fun science lecture you could hope to see’ are staged rather than heard. Gerstner is a scientist in a white lab coat at her desk waiting for Dr. Dextrose (Nicholson), to arrive. With their wit and an ability to illustrate complex scientific notions like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the construction of an atom, dark matter and neutrinos through juggling, Gerstner and Nicholson have created a gem of crossover stimulation. The problem is that the crossover bypasses almost completely the choreographic nature of Resolution’s program. In his collaborations with Seeta Patel and Alexander Whitley, Sean Gandini has shown how the disciplines of juggling and dance can learn from and stimulate each other, but The Juggling of Science frames itself resolutely and unapologetically within science; it’s not a question of the excellence of the work but of the programming choices of this ‘festival of new choreography’.
Impermanence Presents…at Bristol Old Vic, January 2019
Jane Mason in Night Flying (photo: Benjamin J Borley)
Impermanence Presents… is the result of a meeting between Tom Morris and Impermanence Dance; a season of curated works (five in a row from the 15-19 January followed by one each in February, March and April) presented in the newly refurbished Weston Studio by Impermanence Dance. The season is completed (on April 25) with Impermanence’s latest iteration of BAAL on the main stage; Bristol may have a new addition for small scale and experimental dance presentation adding value to the programming at Wardrobe Theatre and Trinity Arts.
Consider for a moment Pink Suits, Figs in Wigs, Jane Mason, Laila Diallo, Crystal Zillwood, and Tom Thom: what they have in common is quiet, intimate technique combined with virtuosic movements laced with shocking, live art pop and big cabaret bombast. If you whisk these artists, their voices and sensibilities in a performance cauldron you would come out with something very close to an Impermanence show; the presentation of these artists demonstrates both a dissection and curation of Impermanence’s own DNA. I will focus on the two full-length works I saw in the first week; Night Flying by Jane Mason with David Williams and Solo For Two by Jean Abreu.
Jane Mason and The Choreography of Things™ is an anchor to which Mason returns after employing this performance mode in her previous works Singer(string, tape, stage weights, sewing machine), Life Forces (slides, cardboard tubes, projectors) and now Night Flying. Jane Mason and The Choreography of Things™ is one of two operating modes: Jane doing and Jane dancing. It is a rare skill to be able to sustain attention while demonstrating an alternative function of everyday objects, but she succeeds in unfolding a mirrored Jacob’s Ladder, scattering galaxies of fine-grained sand or revealing a reflective blanket/satellite. She imbues these objects with a sense of importance and handles them with a care and delicacy that reflects her as a choreographer and performer.
As we enter the studio we see all the composite parts (wigs, fan, guitar) laid out on the floor, to be revealed over the succeeding 70 minutes. We know what is coming but that doesn’t make it any less satisfying as the objects slowly make their way onto the stage through the bodies of the two performers. Night Flying self-defines as: ‘Drawing on ideas related to deep time, the night sky and landscapes of being, Jane Mason and her long-time collaborator David Williams explore a constellation of associations related to memory, change, wonder, scale and materiality’s imagination.’ It’s a choreography for the small hours, a choreography for the darkest part of the night, for the 4:07am in you when the streets and cities and landscapes are stilling, when the world has evacuated the day, when you are yet to meet the sunrise.
The idea of choreography as a constellation or way of mapping the work is in play; there are clearly defined episodes when Mason and Williams orate themselves and their own histories, amplify their physicality when bedecked in cheap wigs, playing guitar or revelling in imitated bodies. While the ‘glue’ between these episodes isn’t always immediately clear, they exist together rather like planets in a bigger galaxy.
The presence of Williams as performer and as co-creator alters the tone in comparison to Mason’s previous works but he slips into her orbit and complements the intensity and energy. Williams is a chameleon with significant solo moments as an end of the pier comedian/local radio DJ/bingo caller with exquisite rapid-fire, deadpan, witty wordplay; a gentle, sand-blowing floor sculptor or as lead dancer in his accurate skewering of the false curtain call modesty of European modern dance theatre with repeated bows, thumbs up and the humble chest touch. Together they fit.
As Mason describes the tale of her grandfather as author of an aviation manual on how to fly in low visibility, there is a neat parallel in how people may respond to the work. There are times when some may be unclear on what is going on and why certain things are happening but Mason and Williams are our deep space guides, inviting us and acknowledging us with a rich and considered visual terrain matched with an elegant deployment of language. Night Flying offers us a portal into significance and insignificance; it’s crafted with intimacy and delivered with poise. It’s everything and nothing. We are together and we are alone.
Jean Abreu’s Solo For Two is a 60-minute trio featuring Abreu (as choreographer and performer), Rita Carpinteiro and a robot: ‘Two dancers, two sides of the same coin, caught in a struggle to find their place in the world. A little robot called Macheba both interacts and observes the dancers, mirroring and absorbing our human identities.’ Guy Cools is on dramaturg duty and Michele Panegrossi is the creative technologist behind Macheba, which seems to be less a robot than a remote-controlled vehicle with a few basic modifications: a pivoting birdie that could turn on/off and nod, a palm sized projector intermittently casting green/grey visual noise and a sizeable bluetooth speaker giving directional sound capabilities. While recognizing that the creation of sophisticated robotics is an expensive process, Macheba is nevertheless distinctly underwhelming as a device and in the way it is used choreographically.
Abreu and Carpinteiro are admirable performers executing their movements with fine levels of punch and nuance, but what they are delivering is a choreographic vocabulary and narrative that is familiar, unnecessary and stale; how the work self describes and its translation into my audience reality is poles apart. Broken into around eight sections there are duets (where Carpinteiro displays fine physical execution by climbing all over, in and around Abreu whilst not touching the floor (echoing James Cousins’ There We Have Been seven years ago), solos (full of stuttering beginnings) and a particular passage that left me in a minor rage:
Contemporary Dance enters (stage left). Contemporary Dance continues to role, slap and sweat itself on the floor moving earnestly to an inconsequential soundtrack. Eight minutes pass. Contemporary Dance is enjoying the solo. The ceiling of the newly refurbished Weston Studio has some architectural merit but having attended three nights this week I can confirm the angle and lack of lower back support in row B leaves a considerable ache and discomfort in my body each night (I shall not be returning to the Weston Studio to see any more dance whilst this seating is in place). Contemporary Dance continues. We are still in a haze-filled semi-darkness. The robot has not moved.
Both Night Flying and Solo For Two are made by artists who have been choreographing their own work for more than 10 years and performing for nearly double that; I’m left asking questions around the currency of ideas, audience connectivity and how artists continue to develop and exercise their practice.
I recognise there is some comfort in familiarity (this is how the majority of film franchises, ballet and Company Wayne McGregor work) by following the tried and tested methods, ideas and executions, but Solo For Two left me with a conceptual hollowness, smelling the funding bid tick boxes (hello robot) and a weary emotional dissatisfaction. It is littered with the tired clichés that some artists/venues/curators working across dance are attempting to dismantle, ensuring audiences are not frustrated but embraced.
A triple bill started the week featuring a solo from Bristol-based Laila Diallo — who choreographically christened the studio — recycling material from two previous works in a 25-minute short offering, a mix of pedestrian movement, a marking of the time/space with lx tape and a delicious recurring choreographic balancing astride a chair revealing mixed with a broken ballet technique; as a keeper of time and movement Diallo is a study of concentrated movement.
I won’t mention the indulgent waste that was Ways of the Blue by Bandi Meszerics; the only redeeming feature being a knitted cyan balaclava tentacle beard that he wore for six minutes, but I do want to mention Tom Thom. Bookending the night in their double block colour boiler suits, slow-ankle-tapping and totem-pole-shuffling in the foyer on our arrival, Tom Thom continue at the interval until their stage time as the final part of the night. With their super worn soft leather footwear (even the soles had been worn away through the 1000s of repetitions) we are treated to a 15-minute remix of slow dance approaches to Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Relax that never quite lets us get to crescendo. They are a classic performance art-pop cabaret duo with an act that makes audiences visibly recoil and cover their eyes in reaction to the way in which their shuffle/hug/dance manifests. An act of physical virtuosity.
Resolution 2019: works by Cisarikova, Green and Harris-Walters, January 25
All the works on this evening’s Resolution program begin with cogent ideas that have strong emotional integrity. Michaela Cisarikova’s I Love Myself, Do You? examines the duality of identity and self-worth, Sara Green transforms her own experiences of major spinal surgery in Burnt Out and Dani Harris-Walters traces a journey in search of fatherhood in Happy Father’s Day. Both Cisarikova and Green use striking imagery at the start of their respective works while Harris-Walters uses his presence alone to reveal his biologically-inspired choreographic exploration. While each beginning holds promise, in a Darwinian sense Harris-Walters is the only one to keep that promise throughout, ensuring its survival somewhere in our choreographic imagination.
What happens to a work that begins well but trails off in interest? Where does the interest go and why? Ideas in choreographic terms are argued primarily through the body and visual imagery, working with music as an emotional and rhythmic support. Each of this evening’s works places the body in a central role; Cisarikova suggests ‘the old Cherokee fable of two wolves fighting within you’ by the initial entangled embrace between herself and Jenn Vogtle; Green divides her persona into four performers each shaking off their oversized jackets as a metaphor of disintegration, while Harris-Walters takes us through his own body’s encounter with the process of procreation. It could be argued that Harris-Walters has an advantage by using text; without it the physical component would not add up to much of an argument, but it is the way he gleefully pairs text with gestures and unassuming hip hop sequences that engages the imagination of the audience. Borrowing from his own material, this process of engagement is like a mating ritual that depends on the maintenance of stimulus for its successful outcome.
I Love Myself, Do You? opens on a billowing swathe of greenish gold parachute silk suspended diagonally from an upper corner covering much of the stage. In the middle of the silk is a hole through which Vogtle is supposed to rise in the dark on the shoulders of someone hidden underneath but a premature lighting cue finds her on her way up a little unsteadily and the magic is lost; it is on such small details that the fate of visual imagery depends. More importantly, for its overpowering spatial influence, the silk seems to have a relatively small impact on the work’s concept; Cisarikova joins Vogtle in the centre opening for a duet, seen from the waist up, that has a sculptural quality of both a physical and a psychological battle, but when the silk is later withdrawn its significance is called into question. Simeon Miller’s lighting makes clever use of silhouette projections inside the silk that present alternative identities, but when Anna Guzak slides out from under the silk, her role in the duality of good and evil seems superfluous. Ross Allchurch’s score accompanies the work but is not sufficiently anchored to keep it together.
In Burnt OutSara Green, with assistant choreographer Sara Kaspersen, sets out to translate experiences and memories of surgery through the filters of illustration (Simon Gardner) and music (Burnt Outby Jamie Jay and Carlos Posada of Low Island). The opening sequence, with costumes (and perhaps makeup) by Auriol Williamson and strong (unattributed) lighting, holds the space together in a tight theatrical form that has emotional clout, but as the four performers (Olly Bell, Steff D’Arcy, Orion Hart and Murielle Werthauer) disperse the space dissolves into a long improvised freeform section like a series of filmic takes all joined together and superimposed. Perhaps Gardner’s creative input may have helped us decode this section, but watching performers in various permutations trying to scale the back wall on the open stage has limited allure. Green has already worked with Low Island on their music videos but their relationship is quite different here, more complex and less well defined.
The beginning of Happy Father’s Day is almost accidental, rather like the meeting of a sperm and an egg around which the work revolves. But Harris-Walters hooks us unerringly into his monologue with allusions and an imaginative acronym of Seven-Up while identifying himself not only with the gang leader, Tess Tyrone, but as the biological hero of the story. Once the penny has dropped, he is fully in charge of the stage, and whatever he does uncannily insinuates or illustrates his path. The image that remains is the final one, where after a caterpillar-like spiral trajectory towards the centre of the stage his head slides into the spotlight of conception. Mission accomplished.
Resolution19: Lizzie Klotz, E14 Dance Company and Matsena Performance Theatre, The Place, January 19
From left to right, Lizzie Klotz, E14 Dance Company and Anthony Matsena
The quality and effectiveness of the evening’s Resolution 2019 program at The Place, like many such evenings at this annual event, are defined by each choreographer’s response to the imposed time limit of (roughly) 20 minutes. It’s a notional limit that can be interpreted as a full work (the choreographic equivalent of a short story), an extract of a longer work that may or may not have been created or an essay in choreographic ideas that has the potential for elaboration. There seems to be one of each this evening.
Lizzie Klotz’s Fawn is a carefully structured work that fits neatly into its 20 minutes; it’s an exploration of fawning ‘as an instinctive response to fear, threat and failure.’ By nature fawning has meaning only in relation to a person who is the object of the fawning, but Klotz paradoxically explores the emotional phenomenon in a solo for herself; Fawn thus draws a parallel between the act of pleasing oneself on stage and the performer’s desire to please the audience. The catalyst for Fawn is a ribald catcall in the street directed at Klotz’s ass that she recalls in high-pitched excitement at the beginning of the show and in an initial repeated sequence across the back of the stage she appears to relish featuring her admired physical aspect prominently. Fawn is structured in musical form, with an introduction of muscle-tone preening on a red carpet, the opening sequence facing away from the audience followed by a playful central theme, with feather headdress, stick-it note pad and microphone, of parsing the word fawn into its many meanings. Klotz then compliments individual members of the audience on how amazing they are and recapitulates her initial sequence. This time she faces front, whereby the gestures of self-satisfaction become a form of reverence. It is not exactly fawning, but the desire to please is evident and the applause at the end is a mark of its affect. As with To Suit at Resolution exactly three years ago, Klotz has created a miniature that is both succinct and subtle with a generous element of sass that sheds light on the vagaries of our emotional dependency.
It’s perhaps just as well we are directed to the bar before E14’s Danube for the contrast between the first two works is extreme; Danube is on a trajectory from somewhere bleak towards somewhere unimaginably dark. Choreographer Katie Boag has devised individual variations for six dancers (Nora Fancsalszky, Gintare Geltyte, Ashley Goosey, Agata Olszewska, Rikkai Scott and Loren Whyte) around a central theme of vicious separation and segregation, but instead of moving out from the theme the variations are drawn inexorably into it like a black hole, intensifying the visceral sense of suffocation. By fusing her work with Oskus Urug by the Tuvan composer and throat singer Radik Tyulyush, we are taken a few tones lower into an ever-descending underworld. While Tylyush’s sound is traditional, Ashley Goosey’s and Jack Hobbs’ original score is hauntingly contemporary to the point of synthesized gunshots that recall the event to which the work’s title refers: ‘The Shoes on Danube Bank’, a chilling memorial to the Jewish community of Budapest during World War II. The heart of Boag’s work, however, spreads from this specific horror to the very heart of darkness in a concentration of brutal imagery that lasts much longer than its 23 minutes.
Matsena Performance Theatre’s duet, Lies To Be Truth, with choreographer Anthony Matsena and Cher Nicolette Ho, is a theatrical form of esoteric ritual in which the intense physical relationship between the man and woman is strikingly unfamiliar. If there is a degree of entrapment, Ho proves more than a match to the web Matsena appears to weave around her; in terms of sheer physical power, she gives as much as she gets. Matsena’s idiosyncratic gestural vocabulary is inwardly focused, his voluble, expressive hands performing an almost spiritual narrative to his body’s arcane machinations, but the tension builds between the two people until the need for a resolution becomes as urgent as the desire for water when parched. When it comes, however, it is disappointing in its saccharine romanticism as if all that had gone before was a fiction. It certainly didn’t feel that way; both the material and the committed spirit of performance require a less artificial ending — or indeed a further development of ideas — than that imposed by the notional time limit.
Le Patin Libre, Threshold, Alexandra Palace Ice Rink, October 21
Taylor Dilley in Le Patin Libre’s Threshold (photo: Romain Guilbault)
Seeing Le Patin Libre’s Vertical Influenceson the ice at Alexandra Palace as part of Dance Umbrella in 2014 was a revelation, and a pleasure to see the company again on the ice at Somerset House in 2016, part reprise and part an essay of ideas for a new work. That new work, Seuil (Threshold), which premiered at Montreal’s season of international dance, Danse Danse, in April, returned to Alexandra Palace to fill the final slots in this year’s Dance Umbrella. Now in its 40th year, Dance Umbrella has a vision that looks at the outer reaches of the dance universe where the choreographic process may refer as much to ideas and cultural history as to the moving body. The stimulation of its programming questions the nature of dance by refusing to frame it, or in some cases by shredding it à la Banksy within the frame.
Le Patin Libre’s visual references — the ice rink, the skates and the freezing environment — anchor it within a framework of amateur pastime or of Olympic competition but its choreographic interest lies somewhere in between. The scale of Vertical Influences derived from the sheer speed and arc of it gliding motifs and its flock patterns; in Threshold the patterns are still there but have gained additional hints of abstract narrative in which the threshold of the group dynamic is challenged. Falling out and falling — the accident — have become linked motifs and the partnering takes advantage of locking skates and elements of contact improvisation. At the same time the creative inputs of music (Jasmin Boivin) and lighting (Lucy Carter with Sean Gleason) remain familiar.
One aspect of the performance that has changed is the audience perspective. For the first half of Vertical Influences the audience was seated high on one side of the rink lending the trails of speed and form a heroic stature. In the second half the audience was invited to sit on one end of the rink to watch from a different angle and the choreography was scaled, both broadly and intimately, to enhance the experience. For Threshold Le Patin Libre has eschewed heroic scale for a single, ground-level perspective for both halves of the program; the audience is divided at one end of the ice or the other. In an arena this size, the distance between the ends creates a problem of visual register: if a narrative element or one of Hamel’s virtuosic accents works for one end it is unlikely to read with the same clarity for the other. And although the choreography is not mirrored, there is an element of duplication so the performance is delivered proportionately to the two ends of the rink.
Operating at the mid point of the ice is an obvious compromise, and one of the motifs that works beautifully is the gliding formation from side to side across the ice of interweaving bodies, like lines of a poem. It is the kind of motif that is unique to skating but its gliding displacement patterns could equally have their inspiration in George Balanchine’s Serenade and they have a similar emotional mystery.
Nobody needs to tell Le Patin Libre — Alexandre Hamel, Pascale Jodoin, Samory Ba, Taylor Dilley and Jasmin Boivin — how to skate, but two outside influences have left their mark on Threshold, particularly on the second half. Choreographer Anne Plamondon has worked on individual vocabulary, notably a solo for Ba that extrudes his natural elegance into more classical forms, and dramaturg Ruth Little (whose Dance Umbrella Motive Force lecture is online) has carved out of the swirl of lines and speed a kind of form, be it an elegy on loss or individuality, a cinematic plot or an essay in dynamic structure and rhythm in which skating patterns form the grammar.
For a company that has already pushed the contextual boundaries of skating, the question for Threshold is which way it is facing, in or out. The new work is a step forward, but still very much along the lines of Vertical Influences, suggesting Le Patin Libre may be susceptible to holding on too safely to its initial inspiration. In the spirit of Dance Umbrella, the company might consider for its next move not so much a dramaturgical ordering of internal events within their form, but an external choreographic change in concept that, while harnessing their vital energy, speed, and dynamic balance takes them further outside their frame.
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here:
Cookie Policy
