90 Degree Rotations Amy-Louise Watson [ex]posed
Katerina Paramana Metrology
Bricolage Dance Movement F5VE
A montage of discrete episodes for five women, Amy-Louise Watson's [ex]posed is purposeful, well executed - and frustratingly bland. The choreography ticks the right boxes - moves through different levels, utilises the stage space, has dynamic contrast and mixes expressive gesture with body design - but the effect is flat. Two sections do stand out. There is an arresting trio of elastic poses which almost builds into something gripping before Watson backpedals into safer formation. And the final episode is well worth waiting for: an alienated duet of slow, warped stretches and battened-down emotion, it suddenly catches both heart and mind.
Katerina Paramana's Metrology is all about mind, a conceptualist piece that harks back to the experimental Judson Dance Theatre of the 1960s. Here's what happens. Woman A sets a timer, sort of sings, eats raspberries, sort of puts on a dress, measures the distance to Woman B, and writes a score on a card. Woman B loops a belt round her neck, ties rope round a bonsai tree, holds it aloft to a Rolling Stone song, and writes "success" on a placard. The cycle is repeated several times, with variations: Woman B holds up more stuff (bottle, boot, carrot), Woman A eats the raspberries faster, the dress-for-success becomes a frock of failure. It's like a long game of inconsequences. Such experiments might have been fresh in the 60s, but this feels like an academic exercise. Metrology was in fact created as part of a performance-as-practice PhD -and it shows.
In contrast, Bricolage Dance's F5VE deploys an armoury of traditional theatre conventions - spotlights, character types, emotive music, dress codes, the works - and it comes off a treat. With an urban, street-inflected style, choreographer Anna Buonomo paints a portrait of five alienated individuals caught in a world of shadow-chasing, hidden faces and unresolved encounters. F5VE doesn't always hit the spot, but Buonomo knows her craft, and the audience happily surrender to her skilled hands.
Sanjoy Roy
A striking, angularly-positioned female dancer initiated 90 Degree Rotations' [ex]posed. A violent eruption of spirals and hurling of bodies around the floor brought more dancers into the piece. Needless to say the kneepads were definitely needed. A unison squat, with interlocking hands in front of the face and fading lights, was captivating, as were moments of stillness and breath. As well techniqued as the dancers were, I felt they were bound by their high extensions of the leg and bendy backs, resulting in a loss of intention behind movement. An intense duet resolved the piece with calm restored and intent communicated.
Metrology forms part of Katerina Paramana's practice as research, and research it certainly was. The piece was interesting in that it questioned what we define as dance. Was this dance? Well there was no specific movement vocabulary but form and structure, repetition and development there certainly was. Thirty minutes of silences, vacant expressions, signs and numerous props made this a challenge for its audience.
Five hooded figures emerged onto a blackened out stage. One performer crawled, slid and rolled her way across the shapes of light that were cast onto the floor. Bricolage Dance Movement's F5VE presents five characters with persona-specific movement but only a few were identifiable. With undulating hips, sexy struts and a flirtatious twizzle of her hair, the Spoilt Girl dominated this character section. Unison sections seemed counter-productive within this theme of identity, but they grew in momentum. A multi-textural layering of solos and duets highlight the interaction between performers as they ripple and sway into each other.
Spoken word, live or pre-recorded, was constant across all three pieces. This gave the evening an underlying theme of dance as text; where visual and aural combine to reinforce a theme. But more often than not these themes became lost.
Lucinda Al-Zoghbi