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Tom Sapsford and Cathy Marston retuned to the Clore with a double bill of new works a little more than a year after the first 'Cohabitants' programme. There are some changes in both their work, though it was more marked in Sapsford's. His earlier piece had been quirky and entertaining: tic(k) was a rather more cool, formal and controlled. It looked a carefully structured work, and flowed well, which is remarkable, given the constraints under which these works are made - the dancers give up what limited free time they have to rehearse and Sapsford indicated in a question and answer session later that it was difficult to work with more than two dancers at any time until very shortly before the opening.
Tic(k) had a cast of three women and two men, simply and identically clad. There was a attractive section early on with one women lifted and passed around the group, but most of the interactions were in twos and threes. There's a lot of use of the floor, and a film projected on the Clore's rumpled curtains intermittently gives views of sleeping bodies. Little gestures and moves are passed around the group. Thomas Whitehead and Bennet Gartside were involved in some contorted rolls across the stage, weirdly interlocked: acrobatic, but quite slow and dreamy, rather than fierce and gymnastic.
Cathy Marston's Between Shadows
Photograph by Asya Verzhbinsky
While Sapsford seemed to have moved away from narrative gestures, Cathy Marston is consciously exploring how dance can convey narrative and character. Her starting point for Between Shadows was L.P Harley's the Go-Between. I haven't read the novel or seen the film based on it though the title does call up vague evocations of Edwardian romance: so I was curious to see how clearly the story came across. It isn't a straightforward approach, more an evocation of memories, atmospheres and encounters, watched simultaneously by the young Leo (Giacomo Ciriaci) and his much older self (Kevin Richmond). A girl (Lauren Cuthbertson) is young Leo's charming friend, (charming dances, all summer sweetness) but also the object of her controlling mother's schemes to pair her off with the suitably aristocratic young man (an unsmiling Edward Watson) who is ready to push her into the appropriate respectable stiff-armed shapes from which she slithers away. Meanwhile in the background with passionate intent lurks a tousled Martin Harvey. The characters seldom leave the stage, but wait and watch on the sidelines as the main encounters take place.
Cathy Marston's Between Shadows
Photograph by Asya Verzhbinsky
Considerable care and planning have gone into the work - the music was specially commissioned from Philip Chambon, with a live viola overlaid on a recorded score. Costumes (Elizabeth McGorian) are elegant evocations of the Edwardian era, detailed, but very light and floating. Marston's cast is very well chosen. Kevin Richmond and Elizabeth McGorian, as older dancers, bring a strong stage presence, and Richmond's frustrated regret is strongly conveyed. The real surprise is Lauren Cuthberston, a recent joiner from the Royal Ballet School. Towards the close, just as the work seemed to be losing focus among the complexities, Marston provides a pas de deux for her and Harvey of startling emotional and physical intensity. Cuthbertson has both a teenage freshness and an unrestrained ardour as she flickers around Harvey, who winds her up, over and around him. Marvellous stuff, with a very recognisably Marston style to it - the intricate duet that pushes partnering skills as far as they will go has been very much a hallmark of hers. Some of the other dance vocabulary employed seemed a more conscious attempt to try out new styles.
Do get to see this if you can - it's a great shame that the BBC are not, after all filming this, and it's a great chance to see the dancers at close range. The Cutherbertson / Harvey duet was stunning.
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