Dominion Dance Company Repress
dANTE or dIE Side Effects
adc Girl Talk
The urgent intensity conveyed by the knotty trio in the opening of Repress, aided by portentous pulsing music and horror movie lighting is gripping. However it is fleeting. Following on from the edgy entre is a monotonous, monochrome and laboured investigation of a triangular relationship. Visually the piece lies somewhere between a Lowry painting and a sinister psychological thriller, but without the blood and drama. Some of Adam Rutherford's physical language is convincing but the dancers look awkward and sometimes even freaked out. Inability to connect because of one's own demons is the thematic material of Repress but Dominion Dance Company's impotence in conveying this to us is scary.
Daphna Attias's original and quirky Side Effects, revels in pills, illnesses and personal histories. Through a collage of movement, text and singing four idiosyncratic people plot acne, vaccinations, cysts, operations, STD's on a time-line of lived experiences from birth to maturity. Some of the stories are more lucidly persuasive than others such as Laure Bachelot's visceral memories of Casualty captured through a repetitive falling sequence or Gareth Mole's ‘waltzed' depiction of infuriatingly itchy teenage spots, but each character nevertheless engages. Attias's research into pharmaceuticals is impressive and it's useful to learn what to take for public lice or toothache through such theatrically colourful means.
Cajoling, giggling and showing off to each other in a touching reciprocation of girly high spirits, the three young women in adc's Girl Talk are generous and easy in their bodies compared to the chilly uncomfortable trio of Repress. Choreographer Chrissie Adesina sticks to a simple formula: a range of moods shared by a group of close female friends danced out in phrases of intricate, emotionally textured and up-lifting action. And it works. Empathy within the group is enviable while the sheer joy in physicality gushes from the dancers. Ria Uttridge, particularly charismatic in her interpretation of the choreography is intoxicating to watch.
Josephine Leask
Pain: felt in dark introspection, join-the-dot-acne, or as just one element in a tapestry of experiences we all share - was an unwitting theme in tonight's Resolution!
In Repress, a woman and two men work in trio, duets and solos, articulating mechanical clockwork phrases, as if cogs and pistons, all parts of a bigger machine, yet locked in the agony of isolation. But after an interesting start, this bleak work became sloppy and, ironically, was performed out of time, with two of the three dancers lacking the grace that comes from the discipline of a strong technique.
More humour was found exploring commonplace ailments in Side Effects, opening with a striking elderly woman, in rainbow socks, slyly throwing back painkillers from a plastic cup. Four strong performers present verbal slices of their medical history: an attack of teenage acne, childhood asthma (and Fraggle Rock) and catching pubic lice from a first love. A sudden slide into slow dancing, between the elegant mature lady and a young man in an unbecoming woollen hat, is both touching and funny, and a sequence where all four kneel, heads thrown back and mouths agape, perfectly illustrates a visit to the dentist.
Girl Talk was more about the sharing of pain - and fear and laughter - in a piece that explored the power of female empathy. Three women form playful jazzy shapes as conversation, always catching one another's smiling eyes and responding to each other's shuffles. When one breaks out in isolation to express some deeper feelings, the others watch on in curiosity, before mimicking her manoeuvres, then cradling her in concern. The piece moves full circle, from the frisky fun at the beginning, through some darker parts in the middle, where the women literally become a weight on each other's backs, and returns to a celebratory mood as the piece closes with African inspired boogie, to the delightfully uplifting soundtrack of Baka Beyond.
Sam Gauntlett