Resolution! 2010 – Programme 20
Material Sequence/Daisy Thompson & Ian Garside/Longfellows Dance Theatre Company
Across and Beyond/Both Perhaps Present/Two Men, a Tent and a Match
The Place, Robin Howard Dance Theatre
28 January 2010
You’ve got to love the concept behind Resolution! – 102 companies presenting new work over six weeks, a true feast of what dance always seems to crave: creativity. As an audience member, however, it is not necessarily satisfying. Discovering new things is wonderful, but some pieces don’t feel new – they tiptoe carefully around styles and images that, taken literally, are now old clichés in dance. One creation thankfully brightened up the program shown on 28 January, but for some companies, the idea of performing to an audience remains slightly elusive.
Across and Beyond, starting the evening, remains an enigma – across what? Beyond what? What we see is a slow, loose piece to scratchy-atmospheric music by John Palmer. Four dancers dressed in casual clothes dance on their own, then come together, then form fleeting groups. Movements are repeated throughout the 30-minute work, but they lack definition and pace – for all we know, Across and Beyond could be slow-motion improvisation. Some images have the potential to be striking in a different setting, such as the strangely pecking, Egyptian-like hands of one girl, or the dropped torsos of the dancers looking at us upside down, but the overall structure isn’t nearly strong enough to provide variety and meaning. It is a shame, as the dancers Laura Krasnic choreographs on showed something rare – all had fascinating eyes, wonderfully focused, and their bird-like presence could perhaps have taken the piece far beyond what we saw on Thursday. (…)
