list.co.uk/festival Reviews | FESTIVAL DANCE
DIRTY DECADENCE Overheated dance-drama about filthy rich young adults ●●●●● BRAZOUKA Glitz and glamour on the dancefloor ●●●●●
EOWYN EMERALD AND DANCERS Contemporary dance that never values style over substance ●●●●●
The cast of director-choreographer Benjamin Seward’s modern ballet manages to suggest some of the hormonal drive of posh young things who abuse their privileged status by indulging in any and every whim. Mainly that means booze and sex – a few of the sketchy characters they embody being confused, or certainly conflicted, in the latter department. Set to a generic-sounding recorded score
of remixed classical music, it all adds up to a sordid, ultimately teeth-gnashing and, in truth, not especially edifying little melodrama of flirtation and fornication, mockery and scorn, rejection and revenge. Still, the six members of the University of Exeter’s company Theatre With Teeth give it the old college try.
Much to their credit, none wear the emotionless mask dancers often adopt. But then how could they? You’d have to be committed and expressive for such overheated material to work at all. There are occasional neat passages but clunky bits, too, as these dancing actors negotiate the tension between awkwardness and grace. (Donald Hutera) ■ C nova, 0845 260 1234, until 22 Aug, noon, £7.50–£9.50 (£5.50–£7.50).
Of the two big Brazilian dance shows in this year’s Fringe, this is definitely the glitzier, more Hollywood option between the two. It’s a hair-straightened, tightly choreographed, Katy Perry and Pharrell- soundtracked stage show; a Strictly Come Brazil for those who love a high-kicking leg covered in sequinned Lycra. What a pleasure to come upon this gifted company from Portland, Oregon. Eowyn Emerald Barrett has crafted an unpretentious and pretty seamless 50-minute collage of dances with considerable care, her choreographic signature athletically refined without feeling slavish to technique.
Brazouka definitely loses some soul, sadly, by Maybe it’s because she and fellow performers
opting for a fixed-grin, Disney-fied musical-theatre style, and the favela sob story is milked for all its worth. Sanitised storytelling issues aside, the dancing, and the dancers, cannot be argued with. After energetic ensemble takes on the lambada,
the ‘lambazouk’, the samba and the human snake, Arlene Phillips’ choreography leaves no stops left to be pulled out. Phillips knows her market – they want the deepest lunges, the highest kicks and the maximum dizzying hips gyrating at once. Producer Pamela Stephenson opens the show with a voiceover, explaining that ‘panting, salivating and gyrating are actively encouraged’, and as lithe bodies are flung over shoulders and through legs, it’s hard not to watch with your mouth hanging open. (Claire Sawers) ■ Assembly Hall, 623 3030, until 25 Aug (not 11, 18), 5.30pm, £18–£19 (£15–£16).
Jonathan Krebs, Josh Murry and Holly Shaw tend to put their virtuosity at the service of a given work’s underlying emotional content. They dance with enormous surety of purpose. Whether playful or serious, the dances themselves are often marked by an intriguing ambiguity and invariably accompanied by astutely chosen music. A quietly charged, admirably intricate duet is centred on the passing on of a jacket and hat. There’s a telling trio that might well be about the personal cost of war, but is never for a moment obvious about its theme. The show climaxes with a quartet composed of glancing and then soaring component parts that plays out like a romance with dance and life itself. By the end, you’re left wanting more, but only in the best sense. (Donald Hutera) ■ Greenside @ Royal Terrace, 557 2124, until 16 Aug (not 10), 1.50pm, £8 (£6).
IWITNESS AND SPECIAL EDITION Triple bill meditation on human behaviour ●●●●●
Notions of human behaviour ebb and flow through this triple-bill from VTDance and Scottish Ballet Dance Artists, with the latter’s Special Edition split into two parts.
First up is iWitness, an intriguing solo from Vincent E Thomas that mixes passages of expressive movement with interludes of chat. Thomas plays around with the American Pledge of Allegiance, asking us to jot down things we would pledge, and requests a show of hands as he offers categories for us to box ourselves into. It’s not crystal clear what questions these verbal sections pose (or answer), and visually they are no match for Thomas’ dancing, which burns with intensity to a score of changing musical styles; classical, soul and, in one haunting passage, an aching cello solo.
Sensuality takes centre stage in Hope Muir’s Broken Ice, a
meditation on Tennessee Williams’ Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen, shot through with the turmoil and fragility that defines the playwright’s work. Sophie Laplane and Nicholas Shoesmith curl and fold into pensive phrases, alternately standing behind each other, inches away yet unable to touch. In a final embrace, we wonder if it's all just been a mournful dream?
The last piece, Sink In takes us somewhere altogether more elemental; a spectral trio danced to Brian Prentice’s remix of Monteverdi’s L'incoronazione di Poppea. The startling opening image sees Laplane’s and Shoesmith’s bare backs with arms aloft clawing the sky, a motif that later develops with beautiful asymmetry, as male and female mirror one another. When duets and tussles break out with Martin Lindinger, the liquidity of the quick dodges and feints is hypnotic. After swimming around this underworld, stepping back into reality feels disappointingly civilised. (Lucy Ribchester) ■ Dance Base, 225 5525, until 17 Aug (not 11), 3pm, £10 (£8).
7–14 Aug 2014 THE LIST FESTIVAL 63