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There is a certain ‘Britishness’ about not being over emotional, the “stiff upper lip”. That might be why, on Friday 13th, and the day before St. Valentine’s day, there is a general sniffiness murmuring around the auditorium preceding Combination Dance Company’s opening performance. A “Delicate dance and emotive song carry a tale of love and passion…” the romantic programme notes read. However, scepticism is stealthily worn away through a rousing integration of a live choral score and release-based movement that stretches and weaves its way about the stage. A sleek sequence finds the dancers and the choir ebbing and flowing together, thrusting the dancers into swaying duets, where arms glide from the flick of a spinal impetus, and legs are outstretched in high extensions, only to contract and find the energy return and swell into the torso once more.

A sudden introduction of a real-time projection seems excessive and muddles the focus and direction. Already, there is a large choir, and two duets seeking attention on the stage. The close-up projection of two dancers’ hands in an impassioned entwining means the gaze is so dazzled by the diversity of events that it becomes a challenge to follow the progression.

However, some elegant choreography within an inspiring amalgamation of vocal spoken and sung accompaniment from Pegasus Choir, makes the piece a discerning exploration of integration art.

Melita Spahic Dance: ‘Duet #1’
Choreographed by Melita Spahic and Rowan Thorpe

Through a tense 28 minutes, Malita Spahic and Rowan Thorpe jilt and squeeze their way through Duet #1. Bathed in an unforgiving white light, the dancers take turns to move through a examination of ‘displacement’ and ‘expectation’. Spahic and Thorpe’s voices echo in conversation, mostly incoherently, in an intense and irritating, yet smart and provocative soundtrack. Thorpe adjusts his body in uneasy jerks and shudders, causing pockets of bewildered laughter with his superb expression of confusion as, when he manages to grasp one incessantly flapping hand and still it with the other, his head immediately adopts the rapid flutter.

The joyously absurdist streak in the piece is equalled by the ferocity of emotional commitment by the dancers. They are devoid of the supercilious, forced, black expression seen on so many contemporary dancers. They are honestly engaging and submitting to the moment. And it’s through this dedicated fervency that the desire for them to touch is almost too much, clinging to our seats, we watch them narrowly pass one another, shoulder to shoulder, merely to resume their respective and polar movement sequences. Spahic trudging through a treacle atmosphere on all fours, Thorpe dodging invisible punches and exploding into camp poses with exceptional energy, as if they never noticed they were so close.

Duet #1 is an astute and challenging combination of taut choreography and anxious hope, and as the longest piece of the evening, it is a tiring cyclical dance representing a passionate misunderstanding and a goal that is never reached.

Beyond Repair Dance: ‘Temperate Pulse’
Choreographed by Jane Coulston

A cool blue light drenches the stage as the final piece of the evening begins. The dancers pace past one another with stern-faced, direct motion. When a sequence begins, precise, consistent and pulsing, the movement exhibits strong Cunningham-esque exactitude of shape and articulation in space. The over-controlled nature of a pair of unison duets is eerie and absorbing, and as two female dancers tuck-jump in perfect time, a malevolent will to see human inconstancy and error takes over the audience, but they do not falter, and they tease us with their accuracy.

There is a sense of odd disappointment, though, that choreographer, Jane Coulston made such severe and artificial wardrobe choices. The dancers rigidly lacquered hair and harsh electric blue eye make-up forces their expressions to appear pinched, and flapping black tabards seem an unnecessary irritation, getting in the way of the dancing body.

Coulston’s determined fixation on keeping the movement dominated by the upper torso, arms and head, with the occasional intense leg extension, means the movement does become mildly repetitive and the unchanging tense dynamic aggravates this. With more variety of choreography and heterogeneity of tone, the piece has the potential to be compelling. Without this, however, it ends with a feeling of incompletion.