Heather Leyshon Treadmill
Antique Dances Holly Noble Ternion RE:WORKED
Soom Company Yunkyung Song Goose's Dream
Soft lighting and ambient noise create a Zen setting for Heather Leyshon's Treadmill, but in spite of the soothing strumming of accompanying sitar and guitar, the three women performers are far from chilled. The first springs into action with a back flip, like an angry scorpion, and then continues on her dynamic search for fulfilment with a series of equally adept contortions. The other two lie motionless behind her. Don't be fooled, it's the calm before a storm; they are just as physically driven. Ambitious action interspersed with spoken monologue effectively communicates the pressures of living in the rat-race. However too many words clutter the intensity of the movement which is perfectly able to express these motivated women's frustration.
Holly Noble's Ternion RE:WORKED is a clone zone. We're in Wayne McGregor territory. Dressed identically in figure flattening lycra, the dancers display angularity and muscular tension in tightly crafted unison sequences. Technical wizards they are, but framed by harsh colours and jarring electronic music, their habitat is alienating. Core strength and precision of movement, impressive at first become limiting and rigid, sterile physicality without texture. While Noble might be exploring a world free of gender baggage, she manages to strip away every bit of humanity in the process.
What a joy to see Soom Company's mature dancers bring back human warmth and vitality to the stage! Through dance, text and mime, six men and woman all over the age of fifty, gracefully tell a story of dreams and disappointments. Each one of them has a unique presence but what they all share is a seductive ability to look entirely at ease and completely convincing. Comfortable in their bodies as well as with their audience they enact unpredictable Bauschian scenarios that are both hilarious and deeply touching.
Josephine Leask
Heather Leyshon's Treadmill crackled like a pan of popcorn. Daniela Romo Pozo's opening solo set the tone - commanding attention with her coolness (un-popped corn has captivating potential) and surprising us with pits and bursts of fantastical movement. Gravity, the music and the audience were her playthings. Our attention flicked between the dancers who carried the piece with a satisfying, synchronised and relentless drive. Convinced but not too earnest, their words scripted but not too contrived, they were the subject of the piece and its strength. When I found myself watching the choreography rather than the three women (such as when unison felt like a default rather than an intention) the eloquence of the piece was lost. The beauty was in their detail.
Holly Noble's Ternion RE:WORKED was like a camp, robotic game of chess. Black and white, skin tight, spotlight. Ferocious and stiff (with eyes painted like David Bowie) the dancers gave us precision and effort. The music pounded its support. The visual impact was considered yet that of the structure was not. Without self reference every shift of light or dancers erased what had come before. The movement was wonderfully intense but needed dynamic context - change could have been powerful. My belief that I knew the limit of how much dramatic tension could possibly be given to a slowly unfolding leg split, was challenged. My ‘notion of gender' was not.
Goose's Dream by Yunkyung Song was a chaotic festival of scenes. Characters appeared and disappeared with happy ease and a sprinkling of confusion. Images were continually returned to and I enjoyed the irregularity of the narrative, yet the continual shifting left no time for anything to truly move me. Emotion was labelled rather than evoked. The continuous movement did however lend itself well to comedy and one of the last scenes of a masked woman slowly revealing her stony face, was incredibly beautiful. It was just too quickly shaken off by a pantomime finale.
Eleanor Sikorski