REVIEW: Kaleidoscopic Arts Platform

Fri 19 Mar
Wilditch Community Centre, Battersea
Kaleidoscopic Arts Platform
Jayne Port - Pibroch Tales
Helen Cox - double pendulum
Lucid Dance - Living With Sin
Feet off the Ground Dance - The Way They Were Then

Independent choreographers Lucia Schweigert and Konstantina Skalionta present the fourth Kaleidoscopic Arts Platform, featuring work from five emerging female artists in an evening of live dance, installation and post-show Q&A. Schweigert and Konstantina's interest in producing dance in unconventional spaces brings us to Wilditch Community Centre in Battersea. Alongside live dance performances, Elisabeth Schilling presents her exhibition STADKÖRPER; a collaborative project between a dancer and various photographers set in Berlin's architectural cityscape.

Opening the live dance, Jayne Port's Pibroch Tales sees the kilt-clad Gordon Douglas Raeburn mime his way through a series of extracts from the Kilberry book of Ceol Mor. As both presenter and performer, Douglas Raeburn acts out mundane scenes of fishing, a domestic disagreement, and an unlikely encounter between two men and a bear.

Helen Cox's double pendulum

Following the squeal of bagpipes, we are met by the sweeping arms and soft pulsing of Helen Cox's double pendulum. With vaguely Cunningham-esque clean lines and shifts of weight, double pendulum is a carefully constructed exploration of relationships. Dancers Helen Cox and Andrew Oliver orbit one another, threading their limbs through the space. The gentle swing and rebound twists the duo like two corkscrews, which then unravel, sending the pair back into orbit. A deeply satisfying work to watch, which could stand alone without explanation or notes.

Lucia Schweigert's dance film Living With Sin is brought to the stage. Challenging the affect Eve's original sin has on the experience of womanhood, dancer Kathy Richardson progresses through three stages of experience, identified by white, red and black costume. Opening in silence, Living With Sin is pensive with an intense feeling of internal struggle. Shedding her red and black costume, Richardson metaphorically sheds her sins, ending in her white slip dress returning to purity.

Lucia Schweigert's Living With Sin

Finally, the night ends with Feet off the Ground Dance's The Way They Were Then. As always, the collective hit the jackpot. Inspired by Mujeres, a collection of short stories, by left-wing Uraguayan writer Eduardo Geleano, illuminating both renowned and unknown women from around the world. The women rotate in centrifugal spins, as the live accompaniment intensifies, throwing them into their trademark fearless, full bodied and gravity defying contact improvisation. Absolutely every decision is executed with purpose and intention.

Feet off the Ground Dance's The Way They Were Then

Kaleidoscopic Arts Platform showcases exciting emerging female dance work. Regardless of whether you have an interest in contemporary dance or not, there is something to be found for everyone- especially if you're seeking art with a political agenda. Schweigert and Konstantina's decision to set these platforms in unconventional locations is just the twist that sets evenings such as these apart.

To find out more about Kaleidoscopic Arts Platforms, please head over to the website now!

Maya Pindar

REVIEW: BA2 Historical Project 2016

Fri 10 Jun
Trinity Laban
BA2 Historical Project
Merce Cunningham Trinity Laban MinEvents 5, 6, 7 & 8 
Yvonne Rainer "Diagonal" from Terrain 
Twyla Tharp The One Hundreds
Wayne McGregor Studio Wayne McGregor's FAR (excerpt)
Matthew Bourne Highland Fling (excerpt - Act 2)

Inviting five pioneering contemporary choreographers to work with Trinity Laban's undergraduate dance students, the BA2 Historical Project highlights the significant contributions made to contemporary dance in the last century by Merce Cunningham, Yvonne Rainer, Twyla Tharp, Wayne McGregor and Matthew Bourne. While the works boast some of the most renowned contemporary dance artists, the choreography also showcases the quality and distinction of Laban's second year dance students.

MinEvents, arranged by Daniel Squire, is (quite literally) a short series of events from Cunningham works including Suite for Five in Space and Time (1956), Summerspace (1958), and Changing Steps (1973). Slipping seamlessly from parallel to turn-out, the dancers execute Cunningham's long clean arm lines and quick shifts of weight with careful precision. Musicians arranged behind the dancers blow breathy notes through instruments and squeeze slowly deflating balloons, reminding us of John Cage's important musical contributions to contemporary dance. Above all else, it is the focus and discipline that is revealed in MinEvents.

Dancers Jordan McGowan and Mayowa Ogunnaike in Studio Wayne McGregor's FAR (photo credit: Lidia Crisafulli)

Charming works, Diagonal and The One Hundreds, choreographed by Yvonne Rainer and Twyla Tharp, showcase the simplicity and 'randomness' of dance improvisation. Rainer's Diagonal sees a group of dancers clad in casual trousers and trainers walking, running and jumping across the four diagonals of the bare stage. Dancers call out movement sequences by corresponding numbers and letters. Thus each performance is different, depending on the order and frequency of the sequences called out. Simple walking is coupled with comical and over-exaggerated striding. The One Hundreds, as described by Tharp is 'a hundred eleven-second segments separated by four seconds between segments, performed by two dancers in unison'. Loose-hipped and relaxed, the dancers slide between cool casualness to bold and cheeky in their short twenty second phrases. As they fall out of each segment, the dancers carry a charming rehearsal-style nonchalance. 

Studio Wayne McGregor's FAR (photo credit: Lidia Crisafulli)

Wayne McGregor's FAR is a profoundly intense exploration of the controversial Age of Enlightenment. Opening with a supple and sensual duet between Jordan McGowan and Mayowa Ogunnaike set in the dark, orange-lit stage, FAR is captivating from the outset. McGowan and Ogunnaike's limbs tangle with every fleshy embellishment. Their bodies roll in voluptuous waves as the score ebbs and flows. Suddenly the tone changes as a mass of dancers enter. Ben Frost's haunting score rumbles, with its pounding electrical percussion. We enter a bleak and shadowy landscape of visceral rolling shoulders and rippling spines. Twitching, fighting and slithering dominates the space. FAR, with its animalistic choreography and harsh tone highlights the versatility of Laban's dancers. 

Matthew Bourne's Highland Fling (photo credit: Lidia Crisafulli)

Finally, Matthew Bourne closed the night on a high with Highland Fling, a 'romantic wee ballet' based on the classic La Sylphide. The short excerpt sees James, played by charismatic dancer Cameron Williams-Everitt, falling in love with an ethereal Sylph, danced by Georgina Turner-Daerden. Dressed in a red kilt and white shirt, Williams-Everitt wanders unknowingly around the stage, stumbling over and bumping into the ghoulish sirens. The stage, dimly lit and scattered with dustbins and a large leather armchair, creates Bourne's dark backdrop of Glasgow's mean streets. James and his beautiful Sylph giggle in excitement as they rush off stage, only to return seconds later, panting and swooning. A clever combination of gorgeous balletic lines and group structures with Bourne's modern and playful twist, makes for a magical ending to the evening.

Maya Pindar

REVIEW: BalletBoyz - Life

Fri 22 April 2016
Sadler's Wells
BalletBoyz - Life
Pontus Lidberg - Rabbit
Javier de Frutos - Fiction

Returning to Sadler's Wells after Young Men, Artist Directors Michael Nunn and Willam Trevitt commission another brilliant double bill. Structured like two ends of the same argument, Rabbit and Fiction are brimming with rabbit imagery and tragicomedy.  

Swedish choreographer, Pontus Lidberg's Rabbit marries surrealism and loneliness, against the cool landscape of gently wafting lengths of cloth and tolling bells. Clad in vaguely 1940s shirts, vests and braces, dancers with furry rabbit heads invade the space, hopping, skipping and cartwheeling. The tone is tender, with sudden outbursts in  Górecki's score, which seem to initiate an exaggerated running motif that rocks back and forth. Later, a couple of rabbits linked hand to ankle, roll by like tumbleweed, as a fragile and inward solo unfolds in front of us. 

We can't escape the niggling feeling that Lidberg's rather nordic choice of imagery in Rabbit is far more significant. As in Watership Down, The Animals of Farthing Wood and Of Mice and Men, Lidberg's rabbits seem to connote persecution and death. Coupled with the images of men draped over the shoulders of rabbits, like parachutes caught in treetops, there are poignant undertones of anguish as the bells toll over Lidberg's stage.

From Lidberg's surreal realm, we move to Fiction, by Venezuelan choreographer Javier de Frutos. Wanting to create a work about the death of a choreographer, de Frutos imagined his own (rather inventive) death, since it 'seems impolite to kill anyone but himself'. Fiction sees a stark change in its stripped set design and the welcome use of comedy.

The dancers move with confused expressions to critic Ismene Brown's words, unfurling a canon of rippling arms and torsos beneath a large ballet barre. A throbbing mass of bodies follows shell-shocked dancer Marc Galvez, as he struggles to come to terms with the fictitious death of his choreographer. De Frutos creates gorgeous kaleidoscopic formations around the ballet barre, as the men slice the air with blade-like arms. He takes full advantage of the BalletBoyz's precision, and risk-taking athleticism.

The curtain comes down on de Frutos' work with Galvez spinning, arms open to Donna Summer's anthem Last Dance. De Frutos is at once dead, resurrected and alive. 

Maya Pindar

Life is at Sadler's Wells until Sunday 24 April.

REVIEW: Zoi Dimitriou's The Chapter House Returns to Laban Theatre

Athens-born Zoi Dimitriou brings The Chapter House back to Laban for a fresh perspective on choreographic processes, meaning and digital media. Combining pieces from previous works, Dimitriou's The Chapter House is nostalgic while still boldly unique.

Before the work has even begun, we know minimalism will be key. The stage is strung with washing lines, piles of linen and paper are neatly stacked and a music stand sits expectantly downstage.

Mark Coniglio, inventor of Isadora Software (real-time interactive software) creates the digital structure of the work. Coniglio films Dimitriou's spoken word and snappy poses, before transferring the images to a laptop onstage. He shifts quickly as she dips in and out of floor work, and speaks in a strange foreign tongue in front of the music stand. He pushes the camera invasively close to her and then suddenly darts backwards, capturing Dimitriou from different angles.

Her phrase of snappy poses is later repeated and developed, this time the movements are sinuous and gooey against the backdrop of Caccini's Ave Maria. We can see Dimitriou layering repetition and mirroring- a clear open window into her choreographic process. But none of this makes sense yet. 

The Chapter House may not be for the easily distracted, but for those of us who do feel lost finding meaning in the choreography, Dimitriou's dynamic range is simply something else. Her lines are clean and crisp, and then suddenly she curls her spine into creature-like undulations and contortions. If nothing else, we are happy just watching her move.

In deafening silence, Conigilio pegs sheets onto suspended washing lines, forming five makeshift screens. Onto these, pulsing images of Dimitriou's repeated poses, curling spines and sinuous floor work are projected. Deafening silence turns to rumbling electronic whirring and pounding mechanical sounds, interrupted by a recording of Dimitriou's voice. She explains, disjointedly, the five 'chapters' of the work- mythos, agape, love, ptosis, and crisis, while broken sentences are projected onto a moving washing line of pegged paper. 

All at once, Coniglio's invasive filming, the strange spoken word, and repeated motifs make perfect sense. The unknown language is simply Dimitriou's playful experimentation with sounds and words. And Coniglio's nostalgic images appear like flashing memories, muddled by an unfaithful mind. In an age that consumes and obsesses with technology, The Chapter House breathes life into minimalism and digital media. Dimitriou creates a multifaceted and highly detailed work that opens up new avenues in British post-modern dance. 

If you can accept the challenge of The Chapter House, Dimitriou is well worth watching.

Maya Pindar