Heather Leyshon & Kip Johnson Catkin
Burst Dance Project Hermitage
Dance Physics Redemption's Tale
Heather Leyshon and Kip Johnson's duet Catkin intended to pose questions about solitude versus togetherness. The result was as willfully obscure as its title was cryptic. There were actually three cast members, but Joseph Connor's contribution - a motormouth monologue about the taste (and aftertaste) of pistachios - offered no useful insights into the piece's themes. Initially Johnson, a driven stringbean in low-slung trousers, paced and muttered neurotically. Meanwhile, upstage and away from him, Leyshon repeatedly looped her arms up, down and around her body. Their brief encounters featured some watchably angular duck-and dive contact. More of that and less behavioural self-indulgence might've provided greater illumination.
Injury necessitated choreographer Kirill Burlov replacing the original dancer in his solo Hermitage. More and larger themes operated here as we observed a patently oppressed individual wrestle with some vast, unnamed demons inside and/or outside himself. After much twisty, tortured movement - very well articulated - came a blackout. When we next saw Burlov he was stripped bare, genitalia tucked between his legs as he sat with a mysteriously beatific expression and gestured in front of two piercingly bright lights. Had this miserable, monkish man managed to find spiritual transcendence or purification?
If Hermitage was the bill's most mature work, Garry Benjamin's Redemption's Tale was the opposite. It began with a quick film montage of explosions and ended with a memorable image of a billowing mushroom cloud. In between, and introduced via a portentously futuristic voice-over narration, six young women in tie-dyed garb shifted about to a bombastic, Hollywoodish pop-rock soundtrack. Benjamin himself was ‘The Outsider' who penetrated the female tribe's territory a few times to no discernible purpose. All of this naïve, graceless and vaguely cautionary malarkey was, I suspect, meant to be pro-environment and anti-war.
Donald Hutera
Three performers are each on a path, we are told, to discover whether solitude or socialisation leads to happiness. Initially, they occupy their own little pocket of space; one, locked in an obsessive mindset, stumbles relentlessly back and forth; another debates the complexities of the pistachio - is it nut or seed?; the third rocks to and fro, her hands journeying in cyclic fashion from her hips to the back of her head. Gradually, two are drawn together, criss-crossing each other's kinesphere and marking the same pathway. The orator remains aloof, a reflection in a cracked mirror his only audience. Although both the choreography and performers are engaging, the work tells us only that some people flourish in numbers, others thrive alone. I was left asking, what else?
As Kirill Burlov wriggles and staggers across the stage, limbs fixed as if in a state of paralysis, he portrays a guise of inner turmoil. Yet, I remained somewhat unmoved as he strove to gain control of his jerking body, for although he performed with gusto, his suffering seemed overtly staged and his choreography rather ponderous. After a long fifteen minutes, the end came with Burlov sitting composed, and yes, naked, illuminated by bright light and accompanied by Bach, a series of empty hand gestures declaring his newfound sense of peace. I think I preferred him in his previous state of mania.
As a series of bombs and explosions is projected from the backdrop, a narrator boldly warns us that "Humanity is at a cross-road." What follows is a fictitious mini-epic that sees six heroic divas embark on a quest for "The Outsider" (aka Garry Benjamin) - humanity's last chance for redemption after their neglect of the earth. This is then the canvas for what seems a sadly amateur fabrication of nineties dance music and repetitive, predictable choreography. Sadly because the dancers show strength and agility, and would likely impress in a better crafted work.
Katie Fish
Heather Leyshon & Kip Johnson, Catkin
Burst Dance Project, Hermitage
Dance Physics, Redemption's Tale