© John Ross Vardimon 'Lullaby' reviews Vardimon in reviews recent Jasmin Vardimon Co reviews more Jeffery Taylor reviews Web version held on Ballet.co by kind permission of Jeffery Taylor and the Sunday Express Express Website

Bearing in mind the non-stop GBH inflicted on each other by the dancers, the action is rightly set in a hospital, two curtained bed bays providing ingeniously flexible areas for the blood letting. And as the damage is usually inflicted by the girls, Mafalda Deville, Kath Duggan and Vardimon, on the men, Leon Baugh and Luke Burrough, one interpretation of the carnage is that Vardimon has discovered a more satisfying retribution on the opposite sex than scissoring his neckties.

Where this uncontrollable need to vent her spleen comes from, unfortunately, is not explored. Mind you, we should have suspected something when the piece opened with an abusive, foul mouthed dwarf (Baugh) haranguing the audience about human nature. There were hints along the way, like the tender love duet between Baugh and Duggan when she turned out to be dead, the birthing routine without a baby or the smiling Baugh’s percussive attack on Burrough’s body with a hand held microphone.
 

Too long, too repetitive and far too subjective. If ever a talented dance maker needed the discipline of an independent artistic judgement before leaving the rehearsal room, this is it. Perhaps for Vardimon the risk was too great.