© Briana Blasko Cunningham 'Crises' reviews 'XOVER' reviews 'BIPED' reviews recent Cunningham reviews more Bruce Marriott reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months) Gallery of Photographs

It was the first piece, Crises, which from 1960 was the oldest on the bill, that snagged me. To Conlon Nancarrow's deconstructed piano rags ('Rhythm Studies for Player Piano'), the dancers, in deliciously sunny Robert Rauschenberg costumes, enter in a theatrical haze which we can all smell out front. The dancers themselves are strong and expansive - together and yet seemingly very autonomous. These are no tender fragile beings and yet they couple terrific finesse and control with their every movement. I found the music and dance came together perfectly with, at one point, the rippling piano mirrored by a beautifully weaving duet for Jennifer Goggans and Rashaun Mitchell. But the strangest movement of all popped up from Mitchell on his own as at one point he did a slitheringly sinuous upward-facing crawl across the stage - it was slow and one had the time to marvel at its repeated cleverness. Wow, what dancing and what a great score, I thought at the end - more.

From the oldest piece to the newest, XOVER, premiered a year ago and a work whose score and dancing I could not get to grips with at all. John Cage's Fontana Mix is paired with his Aria where a singer/performer stands at the side of the stage making weird nonsense noises (sounds are worth a thousand words - see/hear Note 1). The overall fractured soundtrack is fed to us from the pit and a crude surround-sound system. It's not stuff to dance to - that's the point and that's my point too I suppose. I found the sounds fascinating, not enjoyable but fascinating none-the-less and could not concentrate on the dancers at all. Instead I kept wondering why it was written, how the singer did it with a straight face and how on earth Cage scored his strange shenanigans (and it is rather fascinating, in a techie kind of way, as it happens - Note 2).

The evening closed with BIPED - a work with a monumental feeling based on Gavin Bryars' densely rich, specially commissioned, score and a towering set that boxes in the stage and allows for some clever projections. Add in the power that is the dancers and I had the same feeling of awesome majesty you get from one of the those Ansel Adams photographs of the Rockies. From 1999, the technology still looks pretty fresh and bold as live dancers interact with digital dancers and 'dot beings' that dazzle the brain. At 46 minutes it's sadly 10 minutes too long and some of the wow dissipated waiting for the end. But I'm not complaining about a night of new works (for me) full of ideas and stunning dancers.

Footnotes:
(1) John Cage, "Aria," performed by Justin Friello
(2) How Aria is scored turns out to be fascinating indeed as this page on an Italian New Music and Technologies Conservatoire site shows: www.mnt-aq.it/english/cianciusi_aria.htm