Dance3: Tanja Råman+Dbini Industries / Darren Ellis / Douglas Thorpe
(Re)traces / Sticks and Bones / A Mind As Beautiful
The Place, London
29 April 2010

Two months into the Dance3 tour, the initiative looks like exactly the sort of push young choreographers need when a full evening of their work is not yet an option. The National Dance Network brought together nine such developing artists, and triple bills of their short pieces are being shown in small-scale venues all over the country until June. The Place played host to one of the shows last week, and with digital experimentation, dance theatre and mental disorder on the menu, contemporary dance certainly showcased its diversity.

(Re)traces is digital dance – two techies sit on the sides of the stage, surrounded by wires, controlling the performance via their Macs. The sole dancer and choreographer, Tanja Råman, looks like the subject of an experiment, with two tiny lamps on her hands and one attached to her leg. She performs a dance sequence, and the accumulated traces of the moving lights appear as a form of ghostly landscape on the screen separating us from her – the traces come and go as she starts again, soon joined by a list of words: rewind, revisit, remember… The point is hardly novel, but its digital realization offers beautiful images of Råman standing still behind a screen filled with words and memories, as well as suddenly repeating entire sequences backwards, as if looking for answers. Sadly, the choreography itself seems to recede into the background and let the technology take over – Råman’s response to the blurred patterns the lights draw remains muted and her dancing linear, perhaps voluntarily, but the work could explore new territories with a more nuanced relationship between dancer and screen. As it is, (Re)traces ends with three photographs of childhood appearing on the screen, a nostalgic touch to the journey. (…)

» Read the full review in Ballet.co Magazine

Darren Ellis's Sticks and Bones © Darren Ellis