© Ton Van Til Krisztina 'Fold' reviews recent Krisztina de Chatel reviews more John Mallinson reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months)

“My choreographies always explore the body in relation to its surroundings. This is why I am fascinated by built space. A choreography can take place in an artificially created space, in which a new relationship is sought between the space and the human being ... The moving body emphasises the amount of space around you. The moving body describes space. In a way, choreography ‘on stage’ is still a way of describing theatrical space.”
 

This interest in the space is highly relevant in Föld. The performance area is within a neatly constructed earthwork about three feet high and maybe 12 feet inside diameter. This is a balustrade, bulwark or wall, like a shell crater or the top of some extinct volcano. The six dancers, five men and a single woman, are contained inside and, at the beginning, silently look out as we look in. This is dance in the round in all senses: the audience surrounds the dancers, the dancers are in their round earthwork (which moulds most of their movement to the circular, to spinning or rolling), and Philip Glass's music (Another Look at Harmony, Part IV) is circular in its minimalistic repetitions.

For the first ten minutes the dancers move round their enclosure, together or in groups, with increasing energy, turning, arms flailing, scything, chopping. Suddenly one crashes into the bank, then the others. From there they roll, scrabble, kick round and round the rampart which gets diminished, spread and flattened. (The close audience gets drawn in by being showered with kicked-up earth.) And so it proceeds until the wall is broken down. In retrospect there is little to describe, at the time it is enthralling.
 

This is a piece which lends itself to all sorts of metaphorical interpretations: the struggle for survival in the natural world, or a battle against mental constraints, or the need for social interaction and cooperation, what you will, but ultimately it is about six dancers, toilers of the soil, strained to the limit by six tons of earth. That is what makes it remarkable and exhilarating and makes you want to stand and cheer.