One thing is guaranteed about a Deborah Colker show – the audience will have a good time.
The Brazilian powerhouse has her fans and detractors in the dance world. But all are agreed that for sheer entertainment her fast moving performances are sure-fire crowd pleasers.
Take Rota which had her dancers performing in a huge wheel, all that was missing was the giant hamster. Or Ovo, an entire production created for Cirque du Soleil – the first by a woman - which combined her flair for circus, athleticism, novelty and enough dance to qualify for the genre.
Then, of course, we have her involvement in Carnival in her home city of Rio de Janeiro, music promo videos and fashion shows. Quite a list.
Now we can share in the excitement that surrounds Colker as the edgy new work Cruel powers into Wales Millennium Centre on May 11, 12, hot on the heels of dance with a different Latin feel, Ballet Nacional de Cuba.
In Cruel – as with much of Colker’s work - the eye is always drawn between the movement of the 18 dancers and the prop-happy set. Here we have a set of oversized furniture, including an enormous globe shaped chandelier suspended above the huge Wales Millennium Centre stage.
The audience in Wales for contemporary dance in all its many forms steadily grows, thanks to the programming from Wales Millennium Centre and the missionary zeal of our National Dance Company Wales currently flying the flag for not only Wales but the whole UK in the prestigious STEPS dance festival in Switzerland.
No longer do us small band of dance writers have to challenge the misconception that dance is difficult, unfathomable, artsy – and with Colker it does not come more, well, easy. This is audience-friendly dance as spectacle with plenty of props, daredevilry and physicality.
There is one section, for example, were dancers are on a low, long fast spinning table complete with knives as in circus tricks, then we have spinning large mirrored panels which the artists dance around, on and through
That general happiness to mix and match extends to the music and with Cruel expect an unholy but entertaining alliance of scores by Dvo_ák, Chopin and Vivaldi with Ennio Morricone, drum and bass and other contemporary music styles.
You may come away wondering whether you just watched circus or dance or maybe both. You will certainly come away entertained.
Cruel, Deborah Colker, Wales Millennium Centre, May 11, 12.
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