© place Place Prize 2008 reviews all Place Prize reviews Place website: http://www.theplace.org.uk Aletta Collins reviews Adam Linder reviews Simon Ellis reviews Anna Williams reviews Dam Van Huynh reviews more Graham Watts reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months)

In my sport (fencing) we often say that the best bouts are in the matches leading up to the Final, where the nervous tension to get through to the last round of competition is at its height; by contrast the Finals are often dull affairs, with some finalists having expended their best effort to get there and pleased with that result. So it seems to be the case with The Place Prize since this first night of the Final series was strangely subdued with the raw edge lacking from some of the works that had enjoyed significant impact in the semi-finals. Given that many of the past Place Prize finalists have enjoyed profile and success, whether they have won, or not, it could be that some are just happy to be in the Final; perhaps dancers are tired and pacing themselves for ten nights of work; or is it that the general absence of friends and family from this press and VIP night deadened the usual raucous atmosphere?

Whatever the reason, Aletta Collins’ ‘Lap Dancer’ just didn’t have the same spark as the performance which wowed the audience into giving it the only collective four star rating in the semi-finals. Rachel Krische’s solo performance appeared to be relatively flawless in her command of the many quickfire repetitions of the visual symbols that brought her laptop’s commands to life, but somehow she seemed to lack the urgency and energy of the earlier effort. Its place in the running order – first, rather than third and sandwiched between the drinks of two intervals – may have also had some effect in dulling its impact.

Rachel Krische in Aletta Collins’ Lap Dancer
© Benedict Johnson

I enjoyed Adam Linder’s ‘Foie Gras’ no more than I had at first viewing. There is no mistaking Linder’s performance quality and the extent of the close control he has of his body in extreme movement but the content lacks cohesion. It’s not at all subtle, I assume on purpose, but this gives it a crude and confusing effect. When Linder exaggerates an effeminate catwalk he looks simply like a brutal parody of Sacha Baron Cohen’s alter-ego, Bruno, the gay, Austrian fashionista. Perhaps that’s the intention but why? And what is the relationship between him and Lorena Randi’s character. It isn’t a complete or satisfying work and I particularly disliked the way it simply peters out. It received the lowest audience rating and – to be blunt – I find it hard to see what the judges saw in it to merit a place in this final.

Simon Ellis in Gertrud
© Benedict Johnson

By contrast, this performance of ‘Gertrud’ by Simon Ellis, confirmed to me that it is a worthy finalist: a mature, complete and fascinating work that plays with ideas of time, mortality and memory through an imagined conversation between a choreographer who has been dead for nearly 50 years and her dancer. The spoken text is brilliant, both in its composition and delivery (by Shona Dunlop-Mactavish) and I found it to be equally compelling at the second viewing. It is a work about dance, with – I think – a subliminal theme about dance as a proxy for life, rather than a dance work, but it is undoubtedly a piece of physical theatre that deserves its place in this Final.

The interval was followed by the two pure dance works: Anna Williams’‘Clearing’ and Dam Van Huynh’s ‘Collision’. As with the opening work, I was disappointed in the latter, since it seemed to lose the visceral power that it enjoyed in the semi-finals and so it suffered on a second viewing, although it was the overwhelming winner of the audience vote on the night (perhaps unsurprisingly since it is the best performed pure dance work in the Final). Anna Williams’ piece grew on me more than it had the first time and it enjoys engaging performances from Petra Söör and Hannah Shepherd, both relative newcomers at this level.

Dam Van Huynh’s Collision
© Benedict Johnson

All in all, I can’t help but observe that this is a less satisfying and less rounded group of works than the Finalists of two years ago, the best three or four of which, I think would win the Prize in competition with this collection (and will, I’m sure, prove to be longer lasting).

Audience Results

Audience members voted for their favourite work; the following is the percentage vote across the whole audience. My own ratings of each work out of five are in parentheses.

(1) ‘Lap Dancer’ – Aletta Collins: 18.2% (3)
(2) ‘Foie Gras’ – Adam Linder: 11.2% (2)
(3) ‘Gertrud’ – Simon Ellis: 16.8% (4)
(4) ‘Clearing’ – Anna Williams: 18.2% (3)
(5) ‘Collision’ – Dam Van Huynh: 35.7% (3)