list.co.uk/festival Reviews | FESTIVAL DANCE
THE WARRIORS: A LOVE STORY Dance-filled elegy to a love found in the most harrowing of times ●●●●● THE SAKE Multimedia circus take on Japan’s national drink ●●●●●
MISSING Sorrowful tribute to Ireland’s lost souls ●●●●●
Dance company ARCOS has created an elegy to multimedia artist and composer Eliot Gray Fisher’s grandparents, who met and fell in love under the most extraordinary and harrowing circumstances. Using video projections, storytelling and passages of elegant dance – honouring the fact that Fisher’s grandmother was a dancer – the coming together of American Glenn and German Ursula over the simple gift of an orange is borne out. A trunk of belongings found after his
grandmother’s death forms the basis of this work. Background projections take us from caveman-style paintings to footage of Fisher’s family, to interludes of news charting current drone attacks, while dance is neatly woven around the love story. It’s clearly a hugely personal tale for Fisher, who has written a heartfelt score for the show and who reads passages from his grandfather’s memoirs with gravity and love. In branching out the individual story into a wider commentary on war, it feels as if there could be a little more clarity. But it’s hard to fault Fisher’s integrity in telling his story exactly as he feels and sees it. (Lucy Ribchester) ■ Zoo Southside, 662 6892, until 24 Aug, 8.30pm, £12 (£10).
A weird one, this, but not without a certain off-kilter appeal. Produced by the ‘entertainment brand’ DEN, this wacky-tacky cross between quasi-ceremonial cultural celebration and flashy multimedia circus spectacle is all in honour of Japan’s national drink.
Our host, nicknamed Toji, is a reasonably droll stand-up who delivers most of his jokey English text while seated. There’s a smattering of pretty back projection, mainly relating to the impact of the four seasons on the maturation process of rice. The latter is embodied by a human kernel (female) who initially occupies a nifty rotating harness. This lithe and symbolic figure is, by turns, polished, steamed and fermented.
Among the show’s other participants are a
couple of acrobats and an illusionist (all so-so), as well as a percussionist whose effective beats are supplemented by two towering electric guitar players in colour co-ordinated wigs and rock-star garb. The net effect is both ambitious and junky. Still, we can’t say we minded it – and although we’ve yet to act upon it, The Sake did arouse a desire to renew our acquaintance with that titular liquor. (Donald Hutera) ■ New Town Theatre, 220 0143, until 24 Aug, 8.30pm, £12 (£10).
‘Eight thousand people go missing in Ireland every year,’ we are told part way into Irish company CoisCéim’s sorrowful production. Missing is part tribute to those who disappear and part exploration of grief for those left behind, taking us on a weaving path into the world of the vanished.
Before the piece begins, chairs are scattered carelessly across the floor, a forest of spiny legs that will be righted into a kind of shifting order as the dance progresses. Sometimes they are framed in orderly fashion, creepily reminiscent of waiting rooms; sometimes they are clustered haphazardly, at one point seeming almost to claim the body of dancer Emma O’Kane. The stories of the missing are told to us in
statistics, jobs and names. But none of that quite matches the poignancy of the descriptions of the clothing the people were wearing and the locations they were last seen at; a final snapshot of a life now in limbo.
Dance may seem like an odd medium to
communicate the ideas, but its motion and its grace remind us of what is no longer there. (Lucy Ribchester) ■ Dance Base, 225 5525, until 24 Aug (not 18), 6pm, £10 (£8).
BLACK GRACE Galvanising introduction to one of New Zealand’s finest ●●●●●
Black Grace was founded nearly two decades ago as an all-male company. Neil Ieremia has in the interim been developing a bold, distinctive signature which filters cultural traditions through a contemporary western dance sensibility. For the company’s UK debut, he’s chosen seven pieces which he introduces himself. I’ve heard some complaints about the bittiness of this approach, but the format didn’t bother me. Not when the compositional patterns are as strong as they are here, and the dancing so exemplary and full-throttle. Black Grace is a mixed group now, with three compact, tightly wound women holding their own amid a handful of taut-figured men. Ieremia keeps them moving in an exhilaratingly alert, lightning-struck style. The use of body percussion, a speciality of his people, is more than mere novelty; it could be a declaration of flesh, bone and spirit.
Executed with fierce precision, it crops up early in the
programme among striking samples of older repertoire. Ieremia later begins moving beyond outright references to his native culture. Totem channels the rocketingly visceral energy of Jimi Hendrix’s classic track ‘Voodoo Child’ with galvanising results. Ieremia’s dancers are exciting to watch even if the choreographic overdrive became wearying before this hour with Black Grace was over. A piece set to Bach didn’t do much for me; it felt pushed without good reason. For a dance about fundamental gender differences he adopts a more lighthearted, comic attitude, evident in the use of balloons both as a symbol for breasts and a metaphor for male desire. The bottom line is we'd jump at a chance to see this company again. (Donald Hutera) ■ Assembly Roxy, 623 3030, until 22 Aug, 7.20pm, £14–£15 (£13–£14).
14–25 Aug 2014 THE LIST FESTIVAL 63