Mafe Toledo They said I (don't) belong here
Maia Lloyd Dance Skip Select Rewind
Motus Project Temporarily Perceived as Standing Apart
Not a man in sight! Three female choreographers presented three trios of women in what turned out to be the most nebulous of evenings.
Maria Fernanda Toledo searches the audience with her two companions. They look bemused on their wanderings like tourists in a big city. While they seem to share some common purpose, it's not clear what it is. Hesitant glances and intense physical conversations are punctuated with throw-away loose limbed dancing. Much of the movement language is based around the principles of fall and recovery which is satisfying to watch and adds some emotional clarity. Chairs are used to demarcate sites in which they enact various modes of behaviour: voyeurism, seduction and struggle. But like the piece as a whole, the rendition of each lacks focus and purpose
I spend most of my time in Skip Select Rewind trying to understand the connection between the film and the live danced duet that is juxtaposed with it. When, towards the end, the woman filmed wandering home, spaced out, through London streets listening to her i-pod enters live on stage to join the others, I feel little more enlightened. The two dancers greet her like eager puppies, following her every dazed and confused action. Some strong, earnest dancing and a fair amount of intrigue keeps this work afloat, just.
The red socks worn by the women of Motus Project are the most defining feature in this creation. Dressed in dreary beige, the women form slow-motion poses which while becoming a little more dramatic and sculptural are less than eye-catching. Thank goodness when the red be-socked feet take over and force their owners to move with a bit more grit! Sticking together like limpets, the women in their claustrophobic triangular relationship respond to the painful, schizophrenic soundscore with jumps and judders. We know it's all over when the socks are removed and dumped in their very own pool of light.
Josephine Leask
Witnessing tonight's mostly abstract performances from the front row I felt like Alice before the looking-glass world: often befuddled, sometimes amused and seldom able to relate to the whimsical creatures of this topsy-turvy realm.
First up were Mafê Toledo with They said I (don't) belong here, a piece about how perspective is determined by location. Distance was a predominant theme - the three dancers paced across the stage, and with each lap the area covered contracted until their movements resembled disfigured pirouettes. Though fall and recovery was deployed ad nauseam, there were some interesting group dynamics as arms that were offered in support sprung into menacing vices. A special mention should go to the red-headed March Hare of the performance who delighted the audience through her expressive back wiggles and contorted game of peek-a-boo with a black chair.
Skip Select Rewind by Maia Lloyd Dance took place in the caterpillar's trippy lair, gradually sending us to sleep... Two girls performed loose aerobic movements as another projected on a screen above listened to her headphones while walking down grey suburban streets. Surprise, surprise she eventually appeared in the flesh. Ironically for a piece that explored ‘the physicality of memory' its choreography was highly forgettable.
Like the Cheshire Cat Motus Project's Temporarily Perceived as Standing Apart was not all there at times. Beginning with three flat piles of pale clothes and ending with three red sock-balls, in-between was a compelling performance by a temperamental trio who consciously accessorised the putty-coloured garments with the scarlet ankle-socks. Bold in a linear formation, the dancers pretended their girlish socks were marching boots, drumming a powerful rhythm with their feet. In the next section, hunched over and on tiptoe they were as timorous as they had been fearless - perhaps trying not to wake the sleeper heard in the soundtrack. Demurely intriguing, this was the highlight of an otherwise insipid evening.
Katerina Pantelides