Is it art?

Here, as if they hadn’t been, as if they are not
Bock & Vincenzi
Laban, Tuesday 30 May, 2006

Bock and Vincenzi are serious artists. This show is the result of a seven-year project Invisible Dances and is the epilogue or Act III to a series of artistic creations exploring, as they explain in their own words, “our relationship to absence, to the memory of the body and our perception of space and time”.

Before we went in I was warned by a colleague that the piece was “intense” and “hardcore”. He was right. It was also, to be fair, “baffling” and “tedious”. Still, this is a heavyweight piece of dance theatre, beautifully produced and performed with utter conviction. That said, it isn’t an easy watch. It’s certainly not a entertaining hour and a half in the traditional sense. Pondering the many repetitions and variations, the interspersing spells of nothingness, the monotonous droning soundscape intermittently shattered by heart-leaping spasms of white noise, one is forced to wonder whether enduring the experience as an observer is in fact the point. Denied the ready accessibility of the usual sounds, sights and context, the audience endures this performance in a state of sensory disorientation and unease. For example, we are unable to hear the music the twelve performers are moving to (they wear personal stereos whose tapes are switched regularly); we cannot see the images that hypnotise a trio of stiffly juddering balaclava-clad swimmers. A statuesque lady wrapped in a bath sheet speaks about experiences in the auditorium that aren’t really happening and a man tied to a stick in just his pants walks or jogs on the spot, occasionally giggling for reasons to which we are not privy.

The company comprises a mix of blind and sighted people yet it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between them as, in turn, they throw themselves obliviously into frenzied, frenetic bouts of movement, eyes shut. One extreme case pulls her jumper over her head to hammer the point home. The risk assessment people are also on hand, supervising each unseeing performer to avoid ungraceful casualties. But it’s only a matter of time. The closest we come tonight is one performer walking blindly across the stage and narrowly missing a hand-crotch collision with an inexplicable man in red body paint wearing naught but a bunch of showgirl feathers and a posing pouch.

The piece raises and performs serious questions about perception and representation. There is evidently a wealth of research and commitment behind this epic project which has worked through innovative, pioneering ideas and rigorously transformed them into dramatic and thought-provoking dance theatre. It’s also highly reminiscent of a recent episode of Doctor Who, where humans were mind-washed through fancy earpieces and the possessed walked the Earth with the same juddering, jerky, robots-learning-to-walk-like movement as the aforementioned swimmers. Whether this makes Bock & Vincenzi absurd or sublime, I really couldn’t say.

Here, as if they hadn’t been, as if they are not is performed for the last time on Wednesday 31st May at Laban.

For more information on Bock & Vincenzi see http://www.artsadmin.co.uk/artists/bv/index.html

For a review that has the honesty to call this performance “the most pretentious show… we’ve ever endured” see here.

Take: no-one. Really. Except people you’ve always longed to baffle. 

In bloom and muddy pond

Rambert Dance Company
bloom / Pond Way / Constant Speed
Sadlers Wells, Tuesday 23 May 2006

Entering Sadlers Wells auditorium you’re not usually greeted by a big ginger kitten telling you it loves you but it certainly makes a pleasant change and got me in a genial mood for the premiere of Aletta Collins’ “bloom”. It was great to see a Rambert ensemble piece that allowed the dancers to express their personalities and spread some genuine fun and warmth through the Wells. Collins’ piece explores “the idea of creating that perfect romantic moment”. Set to a lively gypsy inspired soundtrack the 16 dancers develop individual dance motifs, dash around and split off into polymorphous pairings or seductively sway en masse, all the while dodging or courting a bouquet of flowers, suspended by a rope, negotiating a door and largely ignoring an oversized ginger cat loitering upstage right. Intermittently serenaded by a strolling, lounge suited band (with original music courtesy of London Musici’s Robert Millet) the loose narrative centres on one coy pair who repeatedly fail to come together; resolving in a charmingly humorous ending. “bloom” is a refreshing tonic for Rambert’s repertoire and a colourful, entertaining, light hearted morsel for their audience’s consumption and, accordingly, was rapturously received.

Rambert’s premiere of “Pond Way” in Brighton earlier this year received promising reviews for both production and performance yet I sat through this unmoved, wondering why they’d bothered to put it into rep. Tonight’s performance couldn’t have offered a more striking contrast to the opening piece. The Company seemed off colour. Ill lit in yellow their baggy white pyjamas unflattering against a dour background of Lichtenstein dots they didn’t appear to have the heart for it. Eno’s soundscape was initially atmospheric yet the dancers seemed out of sync and unusually wobbly executing Cunningham’s exacting and subtle choreography. Apart from some identifiably froggy moments, there was disappointingly little lyrical, contemplative or suggestive of nature in this uninspiring pond.

Unfortunately, “Constant Speed” failed to pick up the pace. I really wanted to like this when it premiered a year ago but on second viewing there’s still something that stops it from being the buoyant, jostling, science/dance crossover it should be and again it felt like the Company was lacking ‘oomph’ or magic ensemble glue. The opening sections featuring the homogeneous white swimming-hatted female dancers were untidy, meaning that the nice quirks of choreography Mark Baldwin grew out of the concept of Brownian motion were all but lost. The piece kept threatening to get better, and the later multicoloured stages were more tightly delivered, but it seemed that the Company barely made it to the end at the same time as London Musici. There were lovely moments; the big full colour spectrum waltzes worked well and Angela Towler’s wonky shoulder stands with upside down splits are a favourite (her, there, in the pic), as are Ana Lujan Sanchez’s meanderings around the discoball. On the whole though, these anthropomorphised dancing particles didn’t wow in the way they should. However, the majority of the audience must have disagreed with me as applause was certainly not muted. Rambert are greatly loved at Sadlers Wells. Hopefully, therefore, they will step up their game as the week progresses without losing any of the first night joy of “bloom”.

Take: Anyone. Despite my criticism, Rambert are brilliant and beautiful to watch.

Rocking the Place

Probe
Have we met somewhere before?

Soledad, Rafael Bonachela
Cut ups, Lea Anderson
Fever to Tell, Mark Bruce

The Place, Friday 5 May, 2006

Theo Clinkard & Antonia Grove present “Have we met somewhere before?” as an hour long performance comprising three duets linked and framed by their own onstage backstage dancerly activity. Entering the auditorium to an indierock soundtrack they unselfconsciously prepare their props, warm up and dress. It’s a nice touch, breaking down barriers between audience and artist, adding intimacy and continuity to the show. It also lends a fourth perspective on their central concern, human relationships. The three duets are disparate, yet at the end of the performance it feels like you’ve been on a wild ride of a journey with one couple in their many incarnations. As a set, topped and tailed by the performers, these duets are accumulatively compelling.

Bonachela’s “Soledad” (solitude) opens with a short film of a lone matador setting the tone for Clinkard and Grove to tease and provoke each other in a dark atmosphere of brooding melodrama. This relationship is sensual and explosive; the intimate caresses of lovers are subverted into physical rejection or turned to selflove. Desire and repulsion, gentleness and violence vie for dominance in this dynamic and sexy duet. Bonachela has opted for choreography that owes more to emotion and bodily expression than pure style, although it’s unrelentingly technically demanding and impressive. Thankfully, he remembered his sense of humour. Clinkard and Grove carry the piece off with flinging aplomb; equals and individuals pushing the boundaries of their conflicting desires in a demonstrably human, amusing and yet dejectedly deadpan manner.

“Cut Ups” kicks off with some cute gimmicks; the dancers making amusing shadow play with cut out newspaper and their hands on the back wall, but the gimmickry soon gives way to something vastly more strange, and refreshing. You have to wonder how long it took the dancers to shake off their training and adapt their bodies to Lea Anderson’s kooky, jerky choreographic vision (and, to get through the piece without giggling I suspect). The series of dances sees Grove and Clinkard shoulder to shoulder, like shiny suited wind up dolls, reinventing the jive with exaggerated facial expressions to a string of whacked out contemporary, post punk tracks. The first section receives laughter and delighted applause from the audience. The ensuing variations, emphasising the bright forcedness of expression, bouncy stiffness and working within a proscribed and awkward dance vocabulary, soon appear rather more serious and discomfiting. Highly original, this quirky and surprising piece subtly probes questions about the absurdities, constrictions and expectations conflicting at the heart of human relationships.

The tone is set for “Fever to Tell” by its film prologue of a grainy, vaguely dangerous night time drive through the countryside. This gives way to a sumptuous rock ‘n’ roll experience, due largely to the smouldering presence of Antonia Grove in her thigh skimming green dress with wild red hair, pulling on a roll up while the Yeah Yeah Yeahs growl away cataclysmically. Mark Bruce’s rock sensibility makes this a raunchy and abandoned piece of choreography, perfect for Grove possessed by the spirit of Courtney Love, blessed with grace and cut through with a tender heart. Grove, at one point, following a downbeat section writhing with Clinkard, impossibly smoking and looking glorious, gets up and starts to sing. Sings beautifully, unaccompanied and vulnerably about love. A pox on the man who let his mobile phone ring just at this point. Fever to Tell has atmosphere in spades, but feels patchy and with Grove totally eclipsing Clinkard perhaps it wouldn’t stand up alone. However, as the tumultuous climax to this involving progression of works, it works.

This is a stunning, sexy and accessible evening of dance.

Take: first dates, partners, best mates, those you want to impress – this is the bollocks.