Theo Clinkard’s This Bright Field

Theo Clinkard, This Bright Field, Brighton Dome, May 25

The dancers in Rike Zollner’s costumes in Theo Clinkard’s This Bright Field (photo: Pari Naderi)

Field: a place where a subject of scientific study or artistic representation can be observed in its natural location or context.

Theo Clinkard’s This Bright Field, which received its world première at the Brighton Festival, is an abstract work that, like Francis Bacon’s use of colour, eschews representation for the affect of sensation. In Clinkard’s case, the sensation derives from his field of choreography that comprises the presence of the (superb) dancers, movement, colour, light and sound. What he set out to address in this work is ‘existing notions about the kind of contemporary dance that is usually created for larger theatres’ and he derived part of his inspiration from Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa’s book, The Eyes of the Skin. Whereas sight may be our most important sense, Pallasmaa argues that ‘problems arise from the isolation of the eye outside its natural interaction with other sense modalities…which increasingly reduce and restrict our experience of the world into the sphere of vision.’ Adapting this notion to the stage, Clinkard has in effect unified his own choreographic field to develop a theatre of the senses from the inside out, which in turn addresses notions of theatrical design.

To illustrate both of these achievements, This Bright Field is divided into two performances (called simply Part 1 and Part 2) in two different places that retain their own individuality and integrity yet form a whole. In the first, Clinkard has created his own physical context; audiences have timed entry through the stage door at the Brighton Dome to a small square space with dark, moveable panels. Cushions have been placed for the audience around the four sides with standing room behind. All the dancers are present in this miniature environment and we see them in the foreground or through the spaces between the panels which the dancers move often, so there is only a brief sense of a view being blocked; it will soon open up to a fresh glimpse, another dancer or dancers like life-size figures in a doll’s house performing phrases of idiosyncratic dance. The sound of birdsong and voices is muted to the scale of the environment so that even if the lighting is subdued the sense of intimacy with the expression of each performer is deeply felt. Although we don’t actually taste or smell the dancers, our close proximity to them engages all our senses in a synesthetic equation that makes this 20-minute Part 1 all-embracing and fulfilling. It is when we move, after a short break, into the Concert Hall of the Brighton Dome for Part 2 that Clinkard’s notions of intimacy are challenged by the cavernous space with its appalling sight lines. The further back you sit in the auditorium, the more the choreography is limited to the sensory vehicle of the eye as if the brain is relating to what it sees through a telescope. Nevertheless, with the help of light, sound and colour and with the memory of Part 1 still fresh in our minds, all is not lost.

Guy Hoare’s lighting is doing far more than illuminating the stage; his grand scheme is to reduce the visual distance of the theatre by building a wall of light at the back of the performance area that sets a scale to the movements of the dancers and, in the first section, exaggerates them in silhouette. In the second movement, Hoare lights the naked figure of Leah Marojević as delicately as the sound we can hear of rustling foil blankets on the stage. One sensation juxtaposed with another alters our perception; Marojević rises and falls with the weightlessness of the foil as she tries to break free of gravity. When the other dancers enter Hoare sculpts their naked bodies in light so their forms are almost tangible. The final section is all crimson, a passionate wash of colour that sets off the interlocking panels of Rike Zollner’s striking costumes as the dancers gather weight and dynamics.

Sound designer James Keane was inspired by other notions in Pallasmaa’s book. The first he cites is that ‘sound often provides the temporal continuum in which visual impressions are embedded’; Keane’s rumbling white noise in the opening section has the quality of space, holding in its thick embrace the movements of the dancers in silhouette. While appreciating this sensory element for its ability to scale down the size of the auditorium to the stage action, the sheer volume of sound seems to overcompensate, though when it dissipates into the sampling of strings and into song the aural relief is palpable; the rustlings of those foil blankets around the figure of Marojević could not have been quite so magical without the storm that preceded it.

What Clinkard and his creative team have accomplished is more significant than might first appear. Bacon’s paintings are limited by little more than our imagination and Pallasmaa’s architecture can define its own internal and, to a lesser extent, its external environments. But choreography is very much dependent on and limited by the architectural environment in which it is produced. It would be a circle completed if a dance performance inspired by Pallasmaa’s architectural writing might in turn inspire an architecture in which to experience dance; This Bright Field might well be a litmus test for such exploration. It so happens that Sadler’s Wells has plans to build a dance theatre on the former Olympics site and it would be fitting if Clinkard’s experience of creating This Bright Field might lead him to consulting on its design and implementation.

This Bright Field was co-commissioned by Brighton Festival, Dance4, Greenwich Dance and Trinity Laban Partnership, The Lowry and Tramway. It will be performed in the autumn at Tramway, The Lowry and Laban as part of a commissioners’ tour.