© lbcdlb Les Ballets C de la B 'Primero' reviews recent Les Ballets C de la B reviews more Azulynn reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months)

Primero is a house of memories - padded chairs or a wooden buffet form the set, and the undercurrent of nostalgia is channeled by a mix of scratchy records and live Klezmer music, composed and played by the sole musician on stage, Yom. Lisi Estaras drew on the diversity of C de la B to bring together a strangely compelling group of dancers, as singular and heterogeneous as colliding memories. Primero starts slowly, with a boy (Nicolas Vladyslav) seemingly discovering the space he is offered, drawing geometrical shapes in the air and knocking over objects from a distance. He is soon joined by a lanky girl (Berengere Bodin), who wears a baby blue frock as if the child in her had grown too fast, by two other boys and by Lisi Estaras herself, as earthy and strong as Bodin is spindly and eccentric.

The structure is loose throughout the piece, but as dreams are loose, finding unity in the sensitivity of the performers and in the moments which bring them all together. Lisi Estaras manages to choreograph for their very different techniques and still create a sense of unique purpose - the dancers perfectly in time with the music, but all with their small idiosyncrasies - a flick of the hand, an arm wrapped up around another dancer as the group moves. About halfway through the piece, they gather on a side and start enumerating their Friday night's habits: one jumps, the other sings, a third becomes polite. There is a feeling of absurdity about the whole piece, as aimless on some level as endless reminiscing - but it is exactly the sort of aimless that we live on so often.

The program notes tell us that the piece is about childhood and first times, that Klezmer music has a special meaning for Lisi Estaras, but beyond this Primero's fascinating melancholy is rooted in choreography tailored to each dancer's imaginative power, brought to the fore by delightful touches - Lisi Estaras's striking instep when one of the boys holds on to her legs in a grounded, sexual duet, Benny Claessens's vulnerability as he has to be rolled to join a pile of seemingly dead bodies, Bodin's constant collapsing, like a young fawn still unsure of her place in the world. Memories of all sorts flash by while Yom's soulful music works its magic, and although the second half of the piece is less focused than the beginning, the richness of the inner worlds we are confronted with remains stirring. A poetic UK debut for Lisi Estaras, under the happy tutelage of Les Ballets C de la B.