Resolution is The Place’s annual festival of new choreography and performance works by emerging artists. This review was originally commissioned by The Place as part of Resolution Review, where established dance writers are paired with a cohort of new writers interested in writing about dance to cover each night of the festival. The original review on this page (and its companion review) can be found here:
Resolution Review, Friday February 7
Time slows down in Jiwon Oh’s intimate dialogue with her grandmother, Jeonghee Jang, showing the ‘transmission of memory…revealing what is passed on, forgotten, and transformed’ The focus is very much internal, shared between the two of them, as if Jiwon Oh had asked her grandmother to show her the games she used to play so that she could emulate them in her own body. Calling the work Jeonghee in homage to her grandmother, Jiwon Oh has created a timeless work whose movement and spirit are based on a game with a long piece of rope — as we arrive the two are splicing the rope as if they have been at work for much of the evening. The rule is to dance in the spaces made by the pattern of the rope on the ground, never on the rope itself. Jeonghee Jang plays this game with perfect rhythmic recall while Jiwon Oh extrapolates the movements in youthful exuberance. In watching her we see the youthful grandmother before our eyes. Utterly captivating.
Tekoha, by Vivian Guyrá, is like a danced manifesto, moulded by the social and political message that gives it birth. Guyrá ‘is a Latin American indigenous choreographer who utilises movement to raise awareness about ethnic and environmental issues.’ Tekoha focuses on the identity and cultural heritage of the quilombolas — descendants of African slaves brought to Brazil — through a dance in which accents are heavily grounded, relating land to culture, the physical to the spiritual. It has elements of ritual dance and contemporary technique but the former always governs the latter. Synchronous group movement alternates with intensely sinewy articulated solos. Tekoha is mysterious and deeply emotional.
In Blank Dress, Amy Mauvan is at first so cocooned within her swathes of tulle that the image of an ostrich without its neck comes to mind. The image has nothing to do with Mauvan’s own idea of inhabiting a wedding dress that interrogates its wearer, but Blank Dress has that quality of never quite stating its intention. Even the words of the opening recorded text are hard to grasp, leaving the development of the work wandering aimlessly. With the dramatic unfolding of Mauvan’s almost bare torso from the tulle, the dress finally finds its place but the wearer has no answers to its questioning.
Aisha Naamani, No Idea What I’m Doing Annie Kelleher, Where We Are Now Gabrielle & Luke, Not Even A Pin Drop
Resolution is The Place’s annual festival of new choreography and performance works by emerging artists. This review was originally commissioned by The Place as part of Resolution Review, where established dance writers are paired with a cohort of new writers interested in writing about dance to cover each night of the festival. The original review on this page (and its companion review) can be found here:
Resolution Review January 22, 2025
The pleasure of watching dance is to be able to focus on the body’s expressive qualities, and choreography frames those qualities in a theatrical setting. The consistency of a work is when the dance qualities match the choreographic frame. On this ninth evening of Resolution2025 there is one work, Aisha Naamani’s No Idea What I’m Doing, where the consistency is palpable between Naamani’s dancing presence and the way she presents it.
The title suggests Naamani doesn’t take herself too seriously, but her performance leaves us in no doubt that she is in full command of her art form. She develops her idea of ‘an ode to the dawning realities of adulthood’ with an extensive arsenal of theatrical expression that keeps us wholly engaged in every detail.
The first work of the evening, Where We Are Now, choreographed by Annie Kelleher in collaboration with Jonathan Aubrey-Bentley, is framed in some kind of disaster scenario related to the climate emergency. When we first see them, Kelleher and Aubrey-Bentley are slowly shuffling towards us, leaning heavily on each other, mouths dry and eyes half closed like shell-shocked victims. Their gestures are not quite convincing, but when Kelleher breaks away to strut her gratuitous contemporary technique, the flight from disaster is unmasked and left in tatters. There is an episode of removing the tatters of their clothing in an epic struggle and a final exchange of epigrammatic barbs that sends up any seriousness. If the beginning was developed thoroughly and spliced to the surreal ending, Where We Are Now might be clearer.
Not Even a Pin Drop by Gabrielle de Souza and Luke Cartwright is ‘a narrative work based on Gabrielle’s experience of sudden deafness in one ear’, but without this program note the frame disappears. Tanisha Addicott as de Souza’s alter ego has gestures that suggest sudden deafness but the translation of her emotional states — ‘fear, hope, isolation, gratitude and disorientation’ — blends seamlessly with what appears to be a suite of neo-classical dances. Fortunately the five dancers — Addicott, Rosanna Lindsey, Maggie Kelly, Elizabeth Jeanna Ortega and Ellen Wilkinson — are a pleasure to watch, especially Rosanna Lindsey. Not Even a Pin Drop comes unframed.
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