Igor and Moreno: Idiot-Syncrasy at The Place

Igor and Moreno, Idiot-Syncrasy, The Place, October 9

Moreno Solinas and Igor Urzelai in Idiot-Syncrasy (photo: Alicia Clarke)

The packed house for this one night reprise of Idiot-Syncrasy at The Place (who originally commissioned it) and the fervour with which it was received is an indication of its revered status. Created in 2015, Idiot-Syncrasy is the triumph of an idea (changing the world) over form (jumping), and yet the form is so completely seeped in the idea that it becomes its rich evocation. It’s also hard to imagine anyone other than its choreographers, Igor Urzelai and Moreno Solinas, performing this work as quite independently of their stage presence its geography, sentiment and generosity are rooted in their biographies. Urzelai is from San Sebastian in the Basque Country and Solinas is from Sardinia, both autonomous regions with a defiant sense of cultural and political identity. At the beginning of Idiot-Syncrasy Urzelai and Solinas stand side by side in silence on Kaspersophie’s expansive white stage dressed in jeans, windjackets and sneakers, communicating a sense of self-assurance and composure as they slowly and deliberately scope the audience. And then, almost imperceptibly they begin to sing a cappella extracts of Procurade e moderare, a nineteenth century Sardinian revolutionary song — recently adopted as the Sardinian national anthem — with a text by Francesco Ignazio Mannu aimed at the ruling House of Savoy. At first we hear only the fine harmonies of the two voices, but the spirit of the song is enshrined in it and as the voices gain strength and Urzelai and Solinas add a heel-bouncing emphasis it transforms into a revolutionary march with all its pride and defiance.

This is where idea and form first meet; the bounce becomes a jump and the jump becomes the iteration of a single choreographic idiom — somewhere between a hop and a jump — with multiple variations. The rhythmic constancy of the idiom becomes an affirmation of resilience while its patterns and incidents are occasions for personal narratives and humour. When the two continue jumping as they strip off their outer layers Urzelai is meticulous in the way he piles his clothing while Solinas discards his like a rebellious child. There are seemingly inconsequential exits that presage more purposeful re-entrances with a change of coloured t-shirts, for example, or a bounding delivery of a generous shot of heart-warming Patxaran to the entire audience. Throughout Idiot-Syncrasy the personal and the political cavort and overlap as if Urzelai and Solinas are reminding us that even the most mundane social actions have cumulative consequences.

It took some decades after Mannu’s Procurade e moderare before the Savoyards left Sardinia, and there is a long section of Idiot-Syncrasy that borrows from the folk traditions of Sardinia and the Basque Country accompanied by Alberto Ruiz Soler’s deep, rumbling drone that leaves behind the more personable interventions of the two performers and focuses, through discursive patterns of jumping, skating and turning, on the effort and grind of generations in both regions to achieve and maintain their goal of political autonomy. The realm of the metaphorical allows time for the audience to feel that effort and to participate in it without any overt indications of politicization or propaganda. This is the beauty of dance as a medium because the message is embodied rather than rhetorical and in adopting a vocabulary that is so guileless Urzelai and Solinas imbue what at first appears naive with the power of an epic history of camaraderie, generosity, and conviction as the four bottles of Patxaran continue to make their autonomous rounds of the audience.

Gradually Seth Rook Williams’ lighting indicates the diminishing of the epic scale as we return once again to the personal, to the individual orbits of these two charismatic idealists and their relationship to one other. The jumping calms to turning patterns and even a phrase of ballroom, with the two drawing closer until Solinas lifts Urzelai on to his back and they begin to sing a cappella again, not nationalist hymns but a brief medley of love songs in Italian, Spanish and Euskara. Both men are exhausted but continue to turn slowly, and we can hear in their vocal traces the emotion and determination of the journey they have made and will continue to make.

LCDS Graduation performances at The Place

LCDS Graduation performances, The Place, July 7

Going for broke: Laura Lorenzi in Igor and Moreno’s Wolves will be watching (photo: Stephen Berkeley-White)

A graduate performance is a form of theatre that can easily lose its shape. Its purpose is to showcase students who have spent the last three years in the school acquiring technique, character and endurance and who are ready to leave the nest. But the choreographers chosen by the school to create vehicles for the graduating students may want to showcase their own work at the expense of highlighting particular qualities in the performers.

This was one of two evenings where all four commissions for graduates were shown together. The concept of Shay Kuebler’s render akin to ‘explore elements of the individual with the group’ promoted the group rather than the individual. The entire cast is costumed in black (by Lydia Cawson) which binds them together visually to the point the individual disappears. Perhaps that is the point, but it’s a shame to hide the talents of someone like Jordan Adjadi whose achievement is nevertheless to shine in a work that sheds no light on the dancers. Renaud Weiser is so caught up in his letters and video in A smile petal that the dancers remain subservient to the concept. Each dancer has a letter affixed to his or her skin; in a line, the dancers spell words or their own names. It might be a good ruse as an exercise at the beginning of the three-year course, but a shame at the end to ignore the movement qualities of dancers like Théo Pendle who is used only enough to show his potential. The final work, Told and Collapsed by Kerry Nichols, is inspired by the last moments of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg before their execution in 1953. It is more menacing in its eclectic score than in the choreography which defaults to a McGregor-like physicality that provides little for the dancers to tackle emotionally. Amongst its complex patterns of duets, however, Mari Ishida is revealed dancing in a way one longs to see in a performance.

At the beginning of the evening there are two miniatures. I imagine Richard Alston’s choreography is de rigeur in a graduation performance at The Place, but it is deceptively difficult to dance well and Hymnos, to the eponymous score by Peter Maxwell Davies, falls rather flat. There is little in Alston’s work beside rigorous musicality and form so it requires a maturity and technical mastery that quickly show up weaknesses in its interpreters if either the one or the other is missing. The second miniature is Twin High Maintenance Machine by Ellen Slatkin and Yue Tong Kwan choreographed to Experiences No. 2 by John Cage with words by e.e. cummings. Slatkin and Kwan are both choreographers and performers of the work, which is a brave choice but as performers they are not challenged by the gestural nature of their duet and as this is a graduation of dancers rather than a choreographic showcase, they fall between two stools.

The one work of the evening that showcases both the dancers and the choreographers is Igor and Moreno’s Wolves Will be Watching. The name and its concept are metaphors for the stage at which the dancers find themselves: naked in experience, open to opportunities and ready to meet the challenges of what lies ahead. At the beginning it is as if the dancers emerge from a state of grace, wandering on stage under subdued lighting to find their clothes in piles against the back wall. The sensuality of the scene takes the breath away and the time the dancers take to help each other into their clothes relaxes us before the outrageously bright lights (on the white stage) and the roaming chorus of screaming. Nothing quite introduces the eight dancers as forcefully as this and they do not hold back. Neither do Igor Urzelai and Moreno Solinas in their uncompromising onslaught on the senses — not least on the sense of humour — and they are helped in this by the visual éclat of the costumes by Sophie Bellin Hansen. Interestingly some of the influences for the work include the worlds of fashion and photography (in particular Guy Bourdin, David Lachapelle and Cindy Sherman) in which a performative element and a whacky imagination are fused. Perhaps there is a natural law at work here because this particular group performing Wolves will be watching includes a lot of the naturally colourful characters in the graduating year. In the course of the work each dancer is given the space to show his or her self and each is challenged by the creative process to establish a strong theatrical presence. They all succeed and one of the delightful surprises (there are many) is Amarnah Osajivbe-Amuludun’s beautiful singing voice. For the audience the work blows apart the formality of the graduation evening and gives us space to delight in all the elements and ideas the work brings to the stage. Igor and Moreno have given a gift to the dancers and through the dancers a gift to the audience.

If these graduate performances represent what the dancers have to show for their three years, they are, with a few exceptions, disappointing. I can’t help feeling the dancers have a lot more to give, that their potential is hardly mined. This phenomenon might well play into the hands of such heavy-hitting choreographers as Akram Khan, Hofesh Schechter and Lloyd Newson whose recent much publicized argument is that the standard of training in the major UK schools is not up to (international) par. Wouldn’t the challenge for this heavily subsidized trio be to devote some of their time to working with the future graduates of these major dance institutions to open their eyes (and bodies) to what might be demanded of them? In an artistic discipline that relies more on example than on rhetoric it would certainly stretch the graduates in the right direction.

Lola Maury, Two to Tune

Lola Maury, Two to Tune, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, June 24

James Morgan and Laureline Richard in Two to Tune (photo: Richard Davenport)

“The value of the theatre consists not in proclaiming rules for human behaviour, but in its ability to awaken, through this mirroring of life, personal responsibility and freedom of action.” Rudolf Laban (The Mastery of Movement)

Choreography is already a participatory art, both in its process and in its performance, so when Lola Maury — Visiting Alumni Artist at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama choreographing for their Brink Festival — adds participatory game concepts into the choreographic mix of Two to Tune, it is the game that gives the work its unique character. Rather than a linear narrative the work consists of a succession of gestural images, improvisational in quality, that form a physical dialogue between the two players, James Morgan and Laureline Richard. It is a game in which mutual understanding and acceptance rather than winning are the goals, which gives the ludic nature of the work both a physical and a spiritual aspect. In this I am reminded of Charlie Chaplin’s description of a dancer as a cross between a nun and a boxer, though Richard in particular has the lean muscularity of a long distance runner. Costume designer Clare McGarrigle concurs, giving the players shorts and singlets that speak of both sport and of stylish comfort.

Two to Tune is a small-scale work with abundant energy and a pared-down aesthetic that needs the intimacy of a pared-down theatre for us to read the expressions and catch the details. With the limited rig in the Webber Douglas Studio lighting designer Agostina Califano has sculpted a perfectly scaled underground tryst where Morgan and Richard spar. The game is divided into seamless acts, starting with a prelude in stillness as the two stand side by side looking out at the audience with a gesture of hand over heart as if listening to an invisible umpire reading them the rules. The score by Alberto Ruiz shrouds the freeze-frame actions that follow in neutral sound but as the game develops he incorporates the voices of Igor Urzelai, Moreno Solinas and Eleanor Sikorski into a choir that sounds as if it was — convincingly for the setting — recorded under a bridge at night. It provides a vault of sound in which attention can focus on the interaction of the two players and their gestural references to wrestling, swordplay, boxing, dueling and perhaps to arcane arts. The way Richard articulates her gestures gives them the appearance of a spell that Morgan deftly parries, but the way she comments on her gestures with her expressive face gives her the upper hand, whether curling her lip in distaste or transforming a biking gesture into a narrative of tough individuality. Morgan is more neutral in his use of facial gestures but his endurance keeps Richard on her toes as she finds ways to wear him down, reducing him at one point to a pummeled, willowy adversary to her boxing.

The nature of the game is unclear until the very end; we are left to deduce the rules and the goal from the actions of the players. In this way, Two to Tune relates as much to the tuning of Morgan and Richard as to the tuning of the audience into the nature of their contest. They appear to be stalking each other in a game of strategy, less on the level of a board game (though they make carefully considered moves and react to the moves of the other) as on the physical gestural game of scissor/paper/rock but there is also an ominous, intangible subtext that the brooding score captures. Gestures develop in intensity and complexity, sometimes resting in mid expression then continuing as if in the process of declaiming a speech or waving an arm in defiance. Between Morgan and Richard there is also a sensual, sometimes tender, element to the game, an unspoken attraction and repulsion as they strive to enter the each other’s comfort zone. The speed and space of their moves increases until they are running to the rolling, pounding drumming in the score; they come close to colliding but one of the rules of the game appears to be they cannot touch even in close proximity at high speed. It makes for an exciting dynamic as they constantly test each other, learn about each other and tune in to each other. The way the game resolves, quite suddenly, as they come together in partnership is quite magical, suggesting everything that has happened in the prior 35 minutes has been working towards this moment: the accord of two instruments. It is also a resolution for the audience: we share in the harmony and are reminded of the origins of gesture and dance.