Spring Loaded – Final Week – Preview on Londonist

I’ll be there for the closing night. Can’t wait to see Green Apples for the first time. And hanging out at the Place is always a pleasure.

Mark Bruce Company

Sea of Bones review on londondance.com.

Sea of Bones

I’ve just written a review of Mark Bruce Company’s performance of “Sea of Bones” at The Place from last Friday. It took me 5 days to be able to think about it coherently because I loved it so much that I went out and got gloriously drunk after the show and could get no critical distance whatsoever. It’s been a while since I went out for a fag at the interval beaming like a loon. Course, it’s not perfect, but I just love his work. I really do and the dancers were exceptional.

Am considering going to Bracknell in October for another dose. Will post link to the review on londondance.com when it’s up.  Read Judith Mackrell’s excellent review here. She got all the mythy stuff that went over my head.

Londonist does Spring Loaded

Here. 

Place Prize previews (II)

Mark Bruce Bad History
Mark Bruce knows how to translate contemporary guitar music into movement. Laila Diallo performs a juddering, shaking, pulsating abandon that embodies the thrashing guitars and dirty funk beat of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, while her twisted-looking blue-faced partner, Greig Cooke, appears to orchestrate the opening section, almost playing the guitars while exerting a weird masterful dominance over her. Later he appears inexplicably deranged and Fagin-esque in frock coat and walking stick as, in a lull, she tries, gently to connect with him. The centre of this piece is Laila’s solo. Trapped in a circle of spotlights like a caged animal she languorously winds her hips, gracefully poses and generally moves in a devastatingly sexy and nonchalant way as the deranged soundtrack suggests, “fuck the man”.

Louise Katerega A State of Becoming
This ensemble piece for eight performers is about diversity, difference and tolerance; becoming one family – yet balances its message with ingenious and involving theatrical dance. The cast itself is diverse including performers with disabilities, a range of ages, cultures and different dance influences. The quaintly lit set suggests a children’s fable and multiple stories about the dancers’ relationships to each other unfold. The piece is strongest when the cast come together, the sum of its parts adding up to arresting tableaux with each performer modulating the movement to their own style.

Ben Wright Thought Latching to Thought and Pulling
The title of this piece is very naturally reflected in the shape and progression of the movement of the four male dancers. Uniformly dressed in dark trousers and flimsy, nude muslin t-shirts they express subtle quirks of individuality yet are caught in a dance that sees them sequencing and varying lyrical movement in waves as if ideas are passing between them, catching on and changing. It’s darkly lit, with one section employing a succession of light snapshots to show freeze framed poses as if in a slideshow. This is a serene piece of work accompanied by a flute soundtrack by turns urgently breathy like pan pipes and purely, melodically beautiful.

Fleur Darkin Disgo
Darkin’s dysfunctional dance theatre disco is populated by five disparate and distinctively dressed individuals who gradually come together in a freakshow sort of dancefloor mania. The quirks of a weekend nightclub are magnified on this stage in front of the huge neon “DANCING” sign at the rear. Partners come together and fall out, themes are picked up, copied and spread. A badly dressed boy dances madly on his own. All in all, a whole new interpretation of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love”.

Henrietta Hale Man or Fish
A sub-aquatic soundscape resounds whilst two men in white vest and shorts stand there, side by side. Then they appear under large hanging lightbulbs with glowing filaments in a box demarcated by lights. Prison or fishtank? I’m not really sure. They start doing passable imitations of fish, mouth opening and shutting with makeshift handfins. Moving on to another box on the stage and they start interacting as people again, exchanging scraps of verbal but not making much sense. Might as well be fish really. This was amusing, with committed, amusing fish performances. Baffling, but watchable.