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I was instantly attracted to the look of Joe Garcia’s ‘Taken’ with its intelligent use of lighting, costume and space. So often, lighting is the poor relation of Resolution performances, overlooked and unappreciated, but here the lighting (by Christian Young) was integral to the work, interacting visually with the simple costumes, adorned with fluorescent strips. ‘Taken’ is an abstract piece that starts by conveying a strong image of two dancers possessed by an inner machine, through a sequence of short, sharp solos of 20/30 seconds’ duration for each of the two dancers (Garcia and Tamzen Moulding). Garcia’s robotic dancing was highly developed, creating interesting and unusual movement effects, but these rapid sections gave way to much less appealing improvised sections which struggled to maintain interest. Nevertheless, there was enough to indicate that Garcia has a distinctive choreographic flair and is capable of pulling together all the elements of a successful dancework: in addition to the excellent lighting, he put together a synergistic computer soundscape that worked very well.

Magdalen Gorringe has trained in the South Asian dance form of bharata natyam since her childhood in India. In 2004, she completed the one-year certificate in contemporary dance at The Place before returning to Delhi for a period of rigorous bharata natyam training with Leela Samson. The integration of these two very intense periods of highly contrasted training is evident in her new work, ‘Litany’, based on the Yeats poem, ‘The Second Coming’.

Bharata natyam blends primitive movement that is rooted in the everyday life of rural India with the balletic influences of turn out and plié: fast arm and feet actions are performed from a central core of balance and flexibility, controlled by strong abdominal and lower back muscles. The dancer begins the piece reading ‘The Second Coming’, whilst a recorded woman’s voice (one assumes, her own) speaks the words. This contemplation segues into the bharata natyam movement where the loud, barefooted stamping and fast turns give the impression of a gradual build-up in the intensity of the dancer’s conviction: a burgeoning fanaticism which is aided by her intelligent use of space. Eventually, the intensity subsides to be replaced with a gentler, meditative approach culminating with the dancer retrieving her book and leaving the stage. The piece was enjoyable and the integration of contemporary dance and bharata natyam provided food for thought, perhaps too much in a sense, since the barrage of intriguing images in the fanatical, central section had become a blur by the end.

The most disappointing piece of the evening was himherandit.productions’ ‘Reduced to three’ by Andreas Constantinou, whose work integrates video installation, speech and movement. ‘Reduced to three’ is a scaled-down version of his earlier work, ‘Panoptican’, which was created on ten performers and seen most recently at the Laban Centre in November. ‘Reduced to three’ has its entire rationale based on what happens when a work for ten performers is suddenly reduced to three: a self-indulgent concept with little meaning unless the audience has seen the original.

It starts promisingly with three performers lying, motionless in interlinked crucifixes, joined by ribbons running from one outstretched hand to the next. The three female dancers have their heads covered with close-fitting bandages and severe make-up that accentuates the expressiveness of their eyes. Several sequences of interesting synchronized movement, emphasizing arched backs and strong geometric shapes against the floor, are performed in front of a screen showing the distressing image of a moth trapped inside a glass, intensifying its weary efforts to escape. Suddenly, the piece bursts into a seemingly unconnected and banal monologue about shopping which, in turn, gives way to the marking out of a square on the left hand side of the stage, in which the dancers become “trapped” (perhaps reflecting the fate of the poor moth). After a lot of running around, the 20-minute piece ends with the dancers’ manic smiles and piercing eyes looking up at the audience from deep back bends. This apparent mania carries on into a hammed-up curtain call.

Having not seen ‘Panoptican’, I have no idea how the concept of ‘Reduced to three’ played out in relation to its parent work. On its own, it had an ongoing visual interest, particularly in terms of the remarkable look of the three performers and their shapes and patterns, but outside of some early appeal, the movement became dull, repetitive and boring.