| Flick-switches of mood, music, theme and style |
Bitter Suite |
| Diversions, Dance Company of Wales , Wales Millennium Centre , January 24, 2009 |
When Ann Sholem, artistic director of Wales’ vanguard contemporary dance company Diversions, said expect something different from their spring programme she wasn’t kidding, but whereas ‘different’ is often code for something none too great here it means a triple bill that is, by turns, challenging, unsettling and soothing. Whatever it is, it’s never dull.The night opens with Hinterland, choreographed by Diversions co-founder Roy Campbell-Moore. A lone figure (Viivi Keskinen, a deadringer for flame-haired supermodel Karen Elson) walks on stage, undulating, swaying and jerking, quickly followed by a quartet of other dancers who re-enact the rites of love; its joys, its lows, its complexities. Dressed in wafty semi-translucent costumes, against the white backdrop they look like spring buds emerging from the winter’s snow only to be robbed of that innocence when love and relationships come into the mix. The best portrayal of the push-pull of romantic love is when the dancers cover each other’s mouths as if to mimic the moment of universal experience when something is said in anger or jest that cannot be taken back. After the interval comes Form, the only piece that has been performed by the company before. The troupe stomp on in New Romantic ruffled shirts and day-glo leggings with ripped fishnets over them – yes, even the men – like sulky teenagers. They resemble Michael Jackson’s Thriller video as directed by David Lynch, alternating between swarms of bees, wildebeest stampeding and reptilian writhing. Humour is the key to this section as a portable tickertape machine is wielded by various dancers almost like a speech bubble voicing questions that are in all of our collective heads. Who hasn’t thought am I an oddball/why am I always right/will happiness ever find me? The tour de force, though, is the final, aptly-titled Lunatic. It opens with the sounds and spotlights of the war air raid with the dancers running on in pyjamas, but sleep is off the agenda as the dancers, who are invariably as mute as catwalk models, shout out at the audience, even roaming the stalls massaging our shoulders. Then proceedings turn stranger still as one of the male dancers (Riccardo Vitello) strides the stage in stockings and high heels with a French bistro chair in hand and performs a camp comedy version of Liza Minnelli’s iconic turn in Cabaret, only to be interrupted by a Madonna doppelgänger circa the Jean Paul Gaultier conical bra incarnation who wants a diva scrap for the limelight. The look is the Forties glamour Gaultier so expertly aped as the dancers whirl and loop around each other like vines, urgent but tender, tired yet full of life. As she introduced the evening’s entertainment, Sholem described it as full of contrast and that, ultimately, is its strength. It’s the flick-switches of mood, music, theme, style and visual that keeps the audience’s attention drilled. The Bitter Suite tour continues until April 29 at various venues. For further details visit www.diversionsdance.co.uk ......... photo © Roy Campbell-Moore |
Reviewed by: Jason Jones |
This review has been read 920 times There are 2 other reviews of productions with this title in our database:
|
