NEW DANCE New Moves: Men's
Solo
Glasgow: CCA and various venues, until Sat 25 Mar Hum
Dance at the start of the century. what's it all about then? The [ , opening weekend of the annual V dance fest embraced its twin themes: the new world, represented by a selection of what’s happening in Australia, and a world if not old, then perhaps familiar. represented by the male soloist.
If the opening shots from the Southern hemisphere - Trial by Video by Australia's Company in Space - embraced new technology. then the return salvo on behalf of the Men‘s Solo series relied on muscle, sinew and a mere handful , of deft but limited props. This element of the festival begs the ‘ question of whether in an age of . 4 big production values, competing forms of entertainment and ’ shortening attention spans, a single ‘ dancer out there alone can communicate sufficiently to hold the audience.
Benjamin Lamarche's performance of Icarus - the award-winning result of his long-term collaboration with choreographer Claude Brumachon — was 45 minutes of brute force. Running through the catalogue of emotions but frequently returning to the page marked pain, this was virtuoso stuff: the legend of Icarus filtered through Alan Parker’s movie Birdy. Using the parallel bars, a chair and a bamboo cane, Lamarche's stern performance - he still couldn‘t crack a smile during the encore - embraced miserablism to an exquisite degree.
A smart piece of programming then, that Mark Tomkins's series of four Homages seemed immediately to undermine the unquestioned masculinity of the first performance. If Lamarche and Brumachon were pushing to the physical limits, Tomkins was asking in a quizzical tone what the hell this dance lark was all about anyway.
Looking like a wonderful cross between Derek Jarman and Shaggy from Scooby Doo, Tomkins dealt with real
(H. ’4“.
Patrick goes Thistle: One of new moves Aussie stars. Robert Patrick
emotions lightly clothed in caricature and sequins. From his entrance, head first on the floor as a raddled and self-deluding Nijinsky, to a fan dance that tested the audience as it veered scarin right on the outer reaches of the campometer, the humour and pathos didn't disguise the skilled precision and the basic question asked.
Who does dance belong to? The trained performer addicted to his own entrances or the disco queen, indulgent, foolish and all too real? Tomkins's theme was love; his own idealised hopeless love of icons like Josephine Baker and the real thing for a departed friend. As Tomkins recounted the story of his first encounter with the latter, the simple painful act of standing on one leg seemed to outshine Lamarche's athleticism. Absurd, hilarious, embarrassing and all too human, this solo man can still talk to even the most jaded of dance world audiences. (Moira Jeffrey)
honour of the tenth anniversary of the founding of Greig’s Edinburgh-based company X Factor, Unspoken is a frequently mesmerising stream of duos and solos saucin Spiced mid-way through by a drag turn. The opening section is a grabber, crystallised in Hughes’ gripping lift of Greig from behind, as if he could break his neck. For his part, Greig temporarily hangs there, slack as a ragdoll.
Each man has solo passages. Positioned beneath a white-hot spot, Greig slices in and out of shadow and light. The muscular Hughes emerges gradually from behind Miranda Melville’s murky, transparent backdrops. Later he draws us in with dancing of feral, disturbed sexiness. No
NEW DANCE
Unspoken
Stirlin : MacRobert Arts Centre, Fri 24 Mar, t en touring aim k a:
Alan Greig's new dance, created with David Hughes, is clotted on its edges with words (a text devised by Greig and Derek McLuckie). A disembodied male voice intones notions of dual
We don't want to talk about it
identity, of the human capacrty for hiding anger and keeping secrets. It also alludes to a disappearance and a drowning.
In the opening duet, the men's bodies and faces speak eloquently of guarded intimacy and near-spectral shadowing. Their intense, controlled physical language is all the speech this collaboration really needs. Made in
wonder he was said to have made such a compelling swan in the original run of Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake. The performances in this 50-minute piece seem both evasive and exposed, producing a subtle but sustained tension. Quee MacArthur's score is notably pensive, but there's a not unwelcome dash of comedy in Hughes‘ routine as a darling, tartaned Spiritualist named Betty. (Donald Hutera)
THEATRE
NEW PLAY
Candide 2000 Edinburgh: Royal Lyceum, 6-7 Apr fir * it
There‘s no such thing as a Suspect Culture show that's less than fascinating. But for all the good ideas, witty dialogue and stylish staging in this Tramway commission, which kicked off a British tour in Glasgow's Old Fruitmarket, it's hard to get terribly excited about it.
it's as if writer David Greig and director Graham Eatough have taken the old saying about the devil being in the detail and turned it on its head. The detail is fine. It's the bigger picture that’s hard to get to grips with.
This has a lot to do with the source material, although to say that Candide 2000 is a free adaptation of Voltaire's satirical novel is a gross understatement. The company has taken the form of the original 18th century tale, a heavily ironic fantasy about a man who insists on seeing the best in everything, including the most outrageous acts of injustice, and transferred it to a modern-day shopping mail. The hapless hero is now a fast-food sales operative (Colin McCredie) whose life becomes a series of miserable let-downs after a chance encounter with a charismatic free spirit (Lucy McLellan) on the run from the security guards.
The targets are the anonymity of chain store shOpping, the callousness of free-market capitalism, and the empty-headedness of a society that peddles feel-good platitudes in place of first—hand experience. Greig has plenty of wry observations to make; the shopping centre, like the airports, hotel lobbies and wine bars of previous shows, being prime Suspect Culture territory, but the demand for satire sits uncomfortably with the impulse for drama.
It’s one of those shows in which you smirk far more than you laugh, largely because the demand to tell the story takes priority over anything the story might reveal. Nick Powell's ever-present music is well conceived and the professional actors have a winning air of bewilderment, though the contingent of teenage actors appears more decorative than purposeful. (Mark Fisher)
Colin McCredie and Lucy McLellan have a winning air of bewilderment
16—30 Mar 2000 THE LIST 81