Dan Canham & Theo Clinkard: Double Bill

Dan Canham: 30 Cecil Street and Theo Clinkard: Ordinary Courage, Pavilion Dance, February 21

Watching Pavilion Dance’s inspired double bill of Dan Canham’s 30 Cecil Street and Theo Clinkard’s Ordinary Courage I had the stimulating if somewhat unnerving experience of sitting with a playwright (Nell Leyshon) and a theatre director (Jessica Swale). Where dance merges with theatre, these are the kinds of eyes and ears and intelligence — attuned to what makes theatre alive and sensitive to any dramatic inconsistency or to anything remotely artificial — that choreographers need to work with if their creations are to effectively merge the two disciplines. Canham’s 30 Cecil Street triumphs because all its elements hang together within an intelligently delineated frame which leaves abundant room for his sometimes haunting, sometimes comic and always heartfelt response to the life once lived in the theatre whose walls he traces in white tape on the stage floor like an architectural drawing. Clinkard’s Ordinary Courage, however, divides along the fault lines of dance and theatre. The six performers each have a solo that is very much the property and personality of the individual dancers, but the framework of the piece, even though it is much tighter than when I first saw it, does not hold together. It is for the most part a loose assembly of loosely disguised rehearsal exercises that are decidedly un-dramatic, which leaves the individual solos unsupported by a context. When I first saw Ordinary Courage at Laban, I felt the overall tone was muted, and even though I was happy this time to return to each solo like returning to a favourite painting in a gallery, the integrity of the work still fails to coalesce. It is Clinkard’s first work, and one in which he himself performs. As he ruefully admits in the Q&A afterwards, it was only after he saw a filmed version of the work that he saw for the first time what he had created. He has made changes that have improved the work, but I don’t imagine he will repeat the dual role for his next creation.

There is also an illuminating difference in the initial inspiration for the two works. With Canham it is direct and physical: he had come across the near-derelict Theatre Royal in Limerick after finishing a tour with DV8, looking to replenish his inspiration. He was immediately attracted to the place and began to explore his feelings about it in movement in the street at night or in the early morning when nobody else was around. He then filmed some of his choreography in the building itself before creating the stage version. The soundtrack, played on a reel-to-reel tape deck, is a collage of interviews with people associated with the theatre, snatches of music, bingo calling, glass harmonica, music hall and opera that had once been heard there. John McCormack singing Down by the Sally Gardens is particularly poignant. Canham’s movement seems to originate as much from the dank walls and drunken conversations as from the foot shuffling music hall routines and there is a section where his hands tune in to the invisible waves of past performances that crackle into being on the tape and disappear again as he moves around the stage. Although it is only Canham we see, it is the theatre that is the subject of the piece, the heart of the piece and out of respect he removes himself from the stage at the end (by the steps and the door he has marked), leaving us to hear the resigned tones of a conversation about the end of the theatre.

The inspiration for Ordinary Courage is more spiritual and indirect. As he explains himself, Clinkard felt he was ready to choreograph but was searching for a theme. While teaching in Chile, he saw an illustration of a heart with the words Without Fear inscribed inside and took this at his theme for the new work. The theme is recognizable — specifically the courage to face loss — but the message is internalized, inward looking. Clinkard had lost a friend, the choreographer Tanja Liedtke, and his mother Robin (to both of whom Ordinary Courage is dedicated), which may explain his almost private response. Canham draws us in — indeed he wants to draw us in — but Clinkard seems more focused on the crafting of the dance, as if our eyes never quite meet. The lighting (by Zerlina Hughes), based on photographic soft boxes suspended from the lighting bars, also tends to flatten the dance, though there are moments when the colours and textures of the costumes benefit beautifully. The central series of six solos is linked to keyboard partitas and sonatas by Bach and Scarlatti — played live by Clíodna Shanahan — which sit elegantly within an elemental sound design by Alan Stones that conjures up a rising squall at the beginning that gradually overpowers a Bach partita and against which the group tries in vain to advance. Helka Kaski’s beautifully nuanced dance of helplessness and Charlie Morrissey’s wild despair succeed best in capturing a state of grief in movement; I enjoy watching Clinkard’s solo for its intimacy and lyricism, though I wonder to what extent his expression of loss is coloured  by the inherited vocabulary of previous work. Maho Ihara’s sensitivity is a joy to watch, her mime — a mother’s memories of nurturing a child — a delight, and her singing to calm the enigmatic bear an inspired addition. Margarita Zafrilla Olayo’s solo is an attempt to break free of the ‘family’, to grieve alone, while Adam Blanch’s solo, which he heralds by leaving the stage and returning in black shoes, is danced with bravado, but feels more technically formal and less integrated into the theme than the others. We are also expecting it, as he is by now the only one not to have danced a solo (the element of surprise is quite low in Ordinary Courage).

This is Clinkard’s first ensemble work, and he will be relieved to have given it birth. But if he wants to hone his dramatic skills on the next piece, I know just the people to give him feedback.