'Resolution!:' reviews 'Confessions – the autopsy of a performance' reviews 'POLARIZE' reviews 'Viivana' reviews Nada Gambier reviews Brazen Dance Theatre reviews Satu Tuomisto reviews more Graham Watts reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months)

In her ‘Confessions’, Belgian dancer, Nada Gambier set out to dissect the concept of performance: literally, since her work was sub-titled, ‘the autopsy of a performance’. In doing so, she succeeded in giving the impression that she had no idea what she was doing, which – to be fair - was one of her other stated aims. It’s an interesting concept to perform a work that analyses itself whilst the performer’s avowed intention is not to know what she is doing. Her art included coming onto stage naked, for no apparent reason, and then to loll about bored whilst the house lights remained up; she dressed in order to dance a manic solo to ‘Die another Day’, the sort of all hands and hair gyration that clears a space on any disco dance floor on every Friday night; and then undressed again (though mercifully not quite all the way) to analyse what she had done.

The event involved a lot of edible stuff: she daintily consumed a banana whilst giving the audience the raised middle-digit mime for “go away”; there was a violent moment of predictable self-abuse with a ketchup bottle; and a final denouement which involved slicing and eating some raw onion, before devouring a very large, red chilli and several spoonfuls of mustard, all washed down with some water poured into her eye. At one point, near the end, she asks “is this sane?” and immediately answers: “I doubt it”.

There is no doubt that this was a brave performance with Gambier baring all, both physically and metaphysically, for her art and her isolated moments of both confident and nervous humour sometimes broke the monotony but, in the end, irrespective of whether she achieved her intentions, this was a bizarre, pointless and generally unpleasant work: to carry out an autopsy of a performance there needs to have been one in the first place.

*****

Brazen Dance Theatre is centred upon the creative talent of Caroline Bridges, who made ‘POLARIZE’ and danced it along with Caroline Lofthouse. Their duet supposedly represents the tension between two sides of a young woman’s personality. The 15-minute work itself had two very distinct sections: the first was dominated by the costumes (vast recycled plastic/paper tutu-like structures by Claudia Borgna), in which the women appeared to be encased in gigantic pom-poms; these were discarded after a few minutes and the duet proceeded into a highly physical series of lifts and falls, suggesting a female variety of the Ballet Boyz performing Maliphant.

The two parts were difficult to reconcile and neither seemed to fit the work’s declared rationale. Although the energy of the dancers could not be faulted, the choreography became too predictable and its execution also began to flag. None of this was helped by lighting that made it difficult to see the dancers at times, apparently guided by the same sequential approach as a fibre optic lamp, just arbitrarily changing muted colours every so often.

*****

The Finnish entry merited slightly more than “null points”, deserving at least something for style and concept, although not much for substance. ‘Viivana’ (meaning “speedy”), by London-based choreographer, Satu Tuomisto, had an interesting set comprising a large trapeze and rows of elastic tape fixed across the stage, separating audience from performers.

Most of the movement concerned speed in one form or another, whether the repetitive quasi- athletics race to complete certain dance movements as quickly as possible; matching the potential velocity and height of the trapeze with each of the four dancers’ desire for risk; the momentum of the elastic tape snapping back when cut; or the story of the ‘rabbit and the turtle’ (the same basic plot as our fable of the ‘tortoise and the hare’).

Metaphors exhausted, the choreographer carried on into superfluous territory with fast, body-shaking dance to conclude a piece which, like the evening as a whole, was much more of a marathon than a sprint.