La Pena Nunez Laura Pena Nunez Sunny Side Up
Iml blabla
Hurst & James Punch To The Heart
Just when you think you've seen it all, along comes a dancing fried egg to shake up your choreographic frying pan. So Laura Pena Nunez, the egg in question, deserves credit for innovation if nothing else. Sunny Side Up, an egg-based fantasy duet between Nunez and sous chef/dance partner Philipp Stummer, featured Nunez in ingenious eggy costume, most playfully put into service when she sizzled on the pan (aka the stage) and had her bubbling white corners poked and prodded. It was a surreal moment which this cross between Come Dine With Me and Got To Dance struggled to match. The outbreaks of cooked up by numbers dance that punctuated the action weren't in the same class as the visual flair so, like the proverbial Curate's Egg, Sunny Side Up was only good in parts.
There was more bizarre domestic detail in blabla, a dance sitcom trio which featured the longest simulated pee (back turned to audience) I've ever seen on stage. It was typical of the cheeky humour which trickled through a love triangle romp in which the two woman/one man Iml gave us X-rated settee romping, bonkers party dancing, slo-mo fight sequences and tongues planted firmly in cheeks. It felt like episode one of a great new TV show and I'd definitely tune in for more.
Punch To The Heart, which closed the night, could hardly have been a starker contrast. A meditation on loss, the eight-strong company assembled under the banner Hurst & James struck convincingly melancholy figures as the choreography strove to pluck the same heartstrings as Hildur Gudnadottir's plaintive soundtrack. But the misery was monotonal and needed light and shade in order to hammer its emotional points home. The grief being played out on stage seemed intangible and out of reach, too private to penetrate its self-imposed barriers.
Keith Watson
Sunnyside Up is a love-hate idyll between a female egg and a man. He helps her to grow into a soft fried egg and she helps him to fight his insecurity and hesitancy in romance. A fun, light, brave and witty piece that combines fluid and poetic moves with hip-hop, funk and pantomime. Meticulous chopping of onions precedes violent cuts of carrots in the first scene, anticipating sharp changes in rhythm and visual contrast throughout the piece. Laura Peña uses blackouts to accelerate the narrative and parody cinematic stills of horror movies. Nonetheless, Philipp Stummer's muscular assurance elegantly becomes the perfect contrast to the delicacy of an egg and his own vulnerability.
The cheerful mood of the evening seemed to continue deceptively with blabla. One male and two females sit on a sofa, Simpsons style, in front of a TV set. A parody in slow and fast forward motion on the routine of watching TV, which at first provokes timid laughter turns out to be a comment on isolation and lack of communication. Interested in the ordinary, the piece evolves to reveal the three performers dancing to disco music, urinating, changing clothes, talking and flicking through a newspaper. However, the highlight comes with their synchronised work on the floor, straight as in rigor mortis and swinging like automats doomed to a pattern.
Dark notes went even further with Punch to the heart. Hurst & James present eight performers lost in their thoughts, afflicted and visibly defeated. This is a grave piece where the characters' psychological weight almost eclipses the dancing. The opening and ending balance out the physical and emotional work by placing a troubled female standing still and looking at her alter ego; her fluid but assertive moves blend with a violin solo. Lighting makes the mood even more oppressive by limiting the dancers' space in their physical conversation of falls and catches. But why are women the needy and weakest? A missed opportunity to overcome stereotypes.
Marina Ribera