The Place

Toby Fitzgibbons and Matthew Robinson’s (why wait for what, for wait for when) assaults the viewer with a jumble of information. Scenes flit from one to the next, rallied along by popular music and a backdrop where looming clouds express the ever changing mood. The two men appear to tell the story of a volatile relationship. But references to feathers, clothes and a brightly lit sign of the word ‘Din’ confuse matters. Birds, angels, inner city, innocence and prostitution all come to mind. Finally, and inexplicably, a woman appears from underneath a pile of clothes, perhaps a prostitute, an angel, or ghost of a lost lover? Even now I'm uncertain. With an ambiguous title, at times this confusion left me wondering what I was even waiting for.

In BooJack, Daniel Walters explores our disaffected media saturated society. Dancers cover themselves in newspaper, stuffing it into their faces as if literally consuming them as part of their daily diet. The stage, strewn with piles of leftover paper, shows how news has become something that can simply be discarded. However, while the meaning of this work is clear, I can’t help but feel the piece could have been much more provocative. Furthermore, with such a strong focus on newspapers I am left pondering its relevance in today’s internet culture.

The B-Sides, a brand new work by The MaxwellDance Project, provided a fun, intoxicating atmosphere to finish the evening. Inspired by reggae music, the piece combines reggae dance hall movement with contemporary dance. Rolling their hips, pulsing their bodies and dropping low to the floor, dancers work the crowd with the swagger more common to hip hop performers than contemporary dancers. The reggae movement gives the piece its individuality, but, the relatively simple structuring lets the work down at times. B-Sides is at its best during playful duets and when the energy is at its height.

Lucy Jarvis

(why wait for what, for wait for when) is a hard title to understand, but it has a certain poetry. That’s apt for Toby Fitzgibbons and Matthew Robinson’s mystifying duet, which hints at a story – there’s a pile of clothes, a broken billboard sign, an image of a mill silhouetted against sunlit clouds – but works better through mood, not meaning. There’s a lonesome-cowboy feel to the piece, the men synching into loose line-dancing, or joshing with casual high-fives and shoot-from-the-hips hands. There are also melancholy moments: Fitzgibbons taking off into a disquieting solo of sidewinder twists and lizard crawls; the pair playing at falling down dead. Both are fine dancers, the choreography is well crafted and the music (Lynyrd Skynyrd, Tom Waits and others) casts a captivating spell. All it needs is more narrative coherence. Or less narrative.

Daniel Walters’ BooJack is more straightforward: it’s about newspapers. Two women read tabloids while a third emerges from a paper pile with a concertina of newsprint unspooling from her mouth. The imagery is striking, but the piece doesn’t get into gear until the women start floundering in paper flotsam. One dons a head of rumpled pages, like a monster from the deep; another is suffocated by sheets clamped over her face. The choreography could be better honed, but its mix of long flailing hair and newspaper neuroses did make me think of Rebekah Brooks. Which was creepy.

The B-Sides is sharp, smart entertainment. Riffing on the rhythms of Jamaican music, choreographer Shelley Maxwell melds contemporary dance technique with the snap and reverb of a reggae offbeat, the down-and-dirty thump of a bassline and the show-off brio of rap – like patois, in dance form. Two women shake their hips as expressively as if they were wagging tongues. There are strutty chicken-walks, smutty boob-and-butt rolls, and plenty of attitude. All six dancers are great, but special mention goes to the superlative Theo Lowe, and his pelvis.

Sanjoy Roy

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