Review: Wayne McGregor|Random Dance/Candoco Dance Company/Hofesh Shechter Company at Sadler's Wells
Reviewed: Fri 3 Feb
If the opportunity to attend British Dance Edition London 2012 had passed you by, this triple bill ( Sadler’s Wells , Thu & Fri) open to producers, programmers and paying public alike, gave the opportunity to see some of the best of UK produced dance. At Sadler’s Wells two of the theatre’s associate companies Wayne McGregor|Random Dance and Hofesh Shechter Company were joined by Candoco Dance Company to make a delicious triple decker feast.
The excerpt from McGregor’s FAR returned us to the Age of Enlightenment, starting with torch bearing women illuminating an articulate, explorative duet. The movement was typical of McGregor’s style, with bare muscular limbs flexing and extending at a rate of knots, connected by an infinite number of isolations in the body. Lucy Carter’s wall of flashing lights served as a through line, moving the dancers out of the shadows and into a more fully clothed bright future. This edited version of FAR kept the original’s integrity and was perhaps even more compelling, as it carried the theme throughout.
After the speed and intricacy of FAR , Trisha Brown’s Set and Reset/Reset , restaged for Candoco , was a relaxing, easy watching experience. The flow of the movement and Brown’s simple yet effective use of space and repetition was expertly recreated and, in parts, re-choreographed and directed by Trisha Brown Company’s Abigail Yager. Whilst the set design hinted at Robert Rauschenberg’s original hanging pictures, David Lock’s new cloths pulled the designs into the 21st Century. This restaging, set between two relatively newer works, held its own and lay down the gauntlet for more seminal works to be revisited and revised for today’s dance companies.
Hofesh Shechter’s The Art of Not Looking Back was an earful to watch. Splitting the audience and gaining both spontaneous applause and covering of ears within the first two minutes; this is Shechter’s 2009 first work for an all-female cast – and it’s not comfortable viewing. A voice over telling the audience that his mother left when he was two made an instant gaze of contempt the first response in viewing the six dancers. The movement vocabulary is in no way engendered. If this work was restaged on a male cast, more connections with his later work Political Mother would probably be drawn, yet the folky steps and hunched over postures to string quartets and the use of classical ballet vocabulary to hideously contrasting sounds (this time it was deafening screams) were all present. Even the classic rewind of the movement to end the piece was featured.
The last sentence of the voiceover was perhaps the most hard-hitting. After describing a life marred by a missing piece the image of a lone woman appeared silhouetted against the back lights to the words ‘I do not forgive you’ . Whether it’s autobiographical or merely a hot topic worth exploring, this is not a piece for the overly sensitive.
British Dance Edition 2012 offers two more opportunities for the public to sample this show case of UK progduced dance. Tonight (Sat 4 Feb) there’s a chance to see Richard Alston Dance Company and National Dance Company Wales in a double bill at the Queen Elizabeth Hall (some tickets still available) – and on Sunday afternoon Russell Maliphant shows his new work The Rodin Project in London for the first time at Sadler’s Wells (returns only).
