| Double Bill Deep and Allusive |
National Dance Company Wales |
| National Dance Company Wales- The Green House/ Profundis , Aberystwyth Arts Centre , March 3, 2017 |
Caroline Finn's first piece for National Dance Company Wales “Folk” was critically acclaimed in 2016. Her “Animatorium” was seen at the Green Man festival. “The Green House” which forms the forty-five minute long second act of this new tour is rich in allusion. Every choreographer has their own style and mark. The method here has been to give the company a rich array of sources to respond to. David Lynch is in there along with Samuel Beckett. Francesca Woodman, whose photographs of masterly distinctiveness were to be seen at Bodelwyddan Castle recently, hovers over the piece. Her work characteristically used slanted light from an outside window onto a body, always her own, that emanated isolation and self-exposure. It is the nature of metaphor that it be both, and simultaneously, concrete and suggestive. “The Green House” has a double inside-outside division. The set, elaborate for a touring dance show, has a pair of swing doors and large sash windows. Supplicants stand forlornly the far side of the window wishing and being denied entry. But the set is also a set itself. Its wall extends into untreated woodwork. Its artificiality is shown by a dancer taking a ladder and poking her head over the top. An illuminated sign declares that the dance is itself a performance for television. The unseen makers indicate the time for applause. The music suggests an era. It would be the nineteen-fifties, a high watermark of social conformity. This performance-within-performance is a strange and unsettling domain. The man who squats on the mantle-piece is repeatedly picked up and removed from the room. Certainly when the “On Air” sign is switched off the dancers move from stiltedness and separateness to a collective untethered expression. Perhaps Caroline Finn is casting a critical look on our own times. Social media asks that humdrum quotidian life be rendered as a stream of drama and accomplishment. Joy here is certainly manifest when the necessity for public performance is taken away. As for the title the set has three blue ducks. Otherwise this house is green, very green. In the context of House as television studio a microphone descends on a long cable and unusually two dancers get to sing “You are my sunshine.” “Profundis”, choreographed by Roy Assaf, also uses words. They are short, the company members declaring crisply what the piece is or is not about. In this part of the three-stage schema it shares echoes with Volcano's “147 Questions..” from a couple of years ago. “Profundis” opens with a lone dancer stretched out on the floor to a song by Om Kalthoum- for her stature in Egypt think David Bowie and double once or twice. Assaf has also used music from Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto. But the anchor for the piece, surprisingly, is the spoken word. “It's a funny thing, this meaning business” says Leonard Bernstein. He plays some Chopin and declares it has no meaning other to be itself. Bernstein is not the first. “You ask me what life is?” wrote Chekhov “It’s like asking what a carrot is. A carrot is a carrot and nothing more is known.” Bernstein and Chekhov are both right but they are also wrong. Their meaning is contained, but also expressed, by form. It is the area where artificial intelligence, with its synthetic emotionality and dearth of primary experience, struggles mightily. Meaning is form- and function- and the attributes of form in art are realised in the application of craft. Thus, Assaf creates a structure where the ending loops back to the start- Vince Gilligan did this repeatedly in “Breaking Bad”. “Profundis” like music is threaded with motifs that recur. A group of men raise their arms in a Fascist salute. A lion prowls with feline grace. An elephant crosses the stage with heavy movement. A penguin skitters from one wing to another. The company engages in argument and their bodies shake. Wrists waggle to a boogie woogie rhythm. A dancer moves while lying on the floor, a single leg raised vertical from the knee. He is obviously a submarine with periscope. Meaning is itself, in dance in particular, but it is also the pleasure of recognition of shared imagination. The company is too large to list in full. The dancers have come to Wales from Spain, France, Italy and Belgium. Joe Fletcher is set and lighting designer for “the Green House”. His design for “Swansea Three Night Blitz” was a 2016 award nominee. Gabriella Slade is costume designer. She was part of the award-winning “Kommilitonen!” last year. Roy Assaf's creative team are Charlie Knight, sound, Omer Sheizaf, lighting, and Angharad Matthews, costume. |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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