La Macana Ven
James Wilton The Shortest Day
Antique Dances Lonely Soul
La Macana's VEN started so unassumingly that the pair sitting on the auditorium steps seemed to be audience members moving closer for a better view. Even when entering the performance space, they had an unprepossessing aimlessness that betrayed no hint of the intricate, innovative duet about to follow. Three distinct movements to tracks from German avant-garde band, Einstürzende Neubauten, began with a duet of rapid, rolling lifts and long-held poses; then a bounding, bouncing, spiralling solo by Alexis Fernandez before the final segment in which he and Caterina Varela walked all over each other, concluding with Fernandez using Varela like a pair of snow shoes to leave the stage.
James Wilton's The Shortest Day was a similarly bare work of intense physicality, manifesting some kind of rage against an unseen machine or, perhaps, a struggle to survive the incessant Heavy Metal pounding of American band, Mastodon. For whatever motive, four performers danced into a sweat-soaked oblivion, ending the work, literally, on their knees. Some thematic movement motifs were routinely over-used but the central, parallel duets were thoughtfully choreographed.
These works were positively Spartan in their stark, visceral physicality; offering movement unencumbered by any artistic context beyond the music. After all this aggression, the softer balletic lines and extensions of Antique Dances, an all-female quintet, was initially a welcome change. Wearing pale shift dresses with mask-like hairbands pulled low to conceal one eye, the ensemble was blurred by low lighting effects to appear like a tribe of cross-dressing Phantoms of the Opera. The choreography - by Holly Noble and David Ogle - utilised space effectively but lacked cohesion after an effective start. Random, haphazard walking in a maze of straight lines, with right-angle turns, and a line-up of semaphore-style arm signals made me long for a quick return to the intense physical theatre of the grappling Spanish pair from La Macana.
Graham Watts
If you were feeling jaded at the end of a cold and dreary London week, you would have found yourself catapulted into more colourful terrain, in VEN, the energising opening piece in another trio of eclectic performances at The Place.
A woman beckons to a man and the pair circle each other with animalistic instinct: approaching, touching, then deflecting, eye to eye, like fighters. He juggles her like a prop: in one swift move, she is a diving Swallow, perched on his reclining chest, and then a stiff length of timber, which he balances, impossibly still, in a thigh burning squat. It is no surprise that Fernandez and Varela won first prize in Madrid's XXII Choreographic Contest. These two are as confident traversing each other's bodies as they are challenging their own, going where others would literally fear to tread. He jumps on her stomach, hands and feet, as she writhes on the floor, forming geometric shapes and submissive poses. By the end of the piece, she crawls on her hands and knees, commando-style, extending one hand after the other in progression for her partner's feet to land upon until they exit.
A shaft of moonlight opens The Shortest Day, setting an atmospheric scene. But the mood soon changes, as four dancers circle the stage, spinning wildly in and out of each other's orbit. In a strangely awkward, recurring motif, the dancers jog backwards, looking down one out stretched arm, whilst a heavy rock soundtrack dominates. A high-energy, but one-dimensional exploration of the apocalypse.
Five women in matching nude dresses, swathed in shadow, walk in circles, disconnected, but echoing each other in Lonely Soul. Wearing lace headpieces that drape, veil-like, over one eye, their faces are an expressionless mask and as the piece progresses, they move in synchronicity, evoking a dusty, antique world, where music box ballerinas march in formation to haunting trip-rock beats. The spellbinding atmosphere clung to me all the way home.
Sam Gauntlett
La Macana, Ven
James Wilton, The Shortest Day
Antique Dances, Lonely Soul, photo Alex Treylan