The National Dance Company Wales Triple Bill review
CAROLINE Finn’s opening piece, Folk, was a rather painful effort to prove something instead of an honest response to music.
The nine dancers were a pleasure to watch but that was where any genuine enjoyment stopped. Finn appears more intent on designing her own dance language than interpreting music of emotion.
This produces a cold mathematical approach that I for one found chilling last Thursday at The Place. Set designer Joe Fletcher’s impressive, and massive, tree roots ponderously hanging from the roof promised something big was underway.
But we were to be very disappointed. Finn’s clinical search for newness harked back to the bad old days when anything was thrown on stage as long as it was anti-classical.
Most disappointing of all, Fletcher’s all too inviting tree was barely touched. This left the frustrated feeling that Finn had no more idea what to do with the neglected roots than she had with the dancers.
After the interval a solitary lady swathed in black robes, like an anti-Mary Magdalene, was slowly revealed as the lights went down at the start of Mario Bermudez Gil’s Atalay.
She ominously banged the stage and slowly disappeared with her. But, thank goodness, 20 minutes of fun followed, completely banishing memories of the previous artifice.
Nikita Goleuo, Ed Myhill, Julia Reider and Mathew Prichard dance beautifully and eagerly, filling the studio theatre with life and enthusiasm. We could identify with the dancers, too.
They were real, likeable, people eager to share their enjoyment with us. Mario Bermudez Gil has a bright future and I look forward to his next new efforts.
Five boys and eight girls smoothly glided around a dimly lit stage wearing conical skirts, as though they are on wheels, to launch Marcos Morau’s Tundra.
I can remember that particular trick as being extremely difficult and uncomfortable, moving your feet and legs at top speed while appearing to make no effort at all to move.
Suddenly the lights went up and, stripped of their skirts they were a chorus line in garish onesies.
They spent the rest of their half hour of activity linked together and perfectly synchronised then they transferred movement of all sorts along the line and back again.
But one word kept repeating in my head: why?
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THE NATIONAL DANCE COMPANY WALES TRIPLE BILL
The Place, London WC1 (Run ended; theplace.org.uk)