"You don't have to get it"
Review of Dance Edits, on 9th February at Dance City, Newcastle
I’ve always preferred small-scale, independent contemporary dance to some of the finely polished shows you might find in London’s West End. These big productions can be beautiful and entertaining, but the somehow-too-perfect performance of an actor on their 100th show, who knows every step back to front, doesn’t move me. There is something engaging about seeing performers grappling with their choreography, rough and raw, and pouring everything into each movement.
Dance Edits is Dance City’s sharing platform for regional and national dance artists to present early-stage work to audiences, often for the first time. Their Spring platform featured 4 artists; Andrew Lennox Scott, Lila Naruse, Lucía Piquero, and Ashling McCann, and was an excellent opportunity to experience this excitement of work-in-progress.
I interviewed each artist and they all expressed the gratitude and value placed on Dance Edits as a platform for work that is fresh, and still in the stages of discovery, play, and innocent exploration.
“There aren’t many platforms that allow you to present a work in progress, or really just trust you to make something without having seen any of it before. Just to say, ‘here is a space for you to do what you have to do’, it’s a significant offering,” says Lucía Piquero.
Andrew Lennox Scott – In-between all of this
Instagram - @pandrewscott
Minimalistic lighting and a tangled web of navy yarn criss-crossing the studio, wound around ballet barres and stretching over light fittings. This dense landscape is occupied by an already-moving body, crawling with animalistic dexterity under and through the web. Filing along the edges of the studio, the excited whisperings of the audience quickly subsided into a hushed focus as we took our places, standing against the mirrored walls.
The dance began before we entered, Andrew already drifting amongst the threads, eyes closed and breath coming in short gasps. What can he possibly do within this tangle of yarn? Surely he’ll get stuck, or trip, or simply have nowhere to go? Sinking to the floor, he extends both legs straight in the air and allows them to fall down upon the web, which does not restrict him as I expected, but instantly stretches beneath the weight of his legs, the echoes of this action reverberating across the entire structure. Looking around the room I see every pair of eyes hungrily awaiting Andrew’s next move, alight at the possibilities.
What begins as a tender exploration of this web of thoughts, possibilities, limits, memories, quickly spirals to higher and higher levels of risk. Incredibly agile, flinging and flying across the studio, he bounces from one side to the other with surprising lightness, all the while tangling, stretching, and untangling his web with childlike wonder. He is never frustrated to discover himself with yarn knotted around his toes or sweeping across his neck, and often his bounding results in real falls; he simply ponders each situation, and with softness and fluidity is released.
“I was in love with the feel of the yarn, the sensitivity of the yarn, and then I started to think about myself and how I’m very tender, and humans are very fragile people, and how the yarn represented that,” says performer Andrew Scott.
The metal barres to which the yarn is attached are weighed down but still shift and pull with his continuous bounding, falling, swinging. There are many sharp intakes of breath as he throws himself directly over the waist-high barrier, but he catches himself gently on his hands and slides like liquid to the floor (we all breathe out again, relieved). He switches off lights, opens a window, and simply observes the outside world, silhouetted by the streetlamp’s warm glare, welcoming the traffic noise and the wind into the space as easily as he welcomed us. Immediately I imagine his web extending out beyond the studio, the whole world a tangled web of many complex and interconnected inner lives.
“The piece evolves even if it isn’t being done. It’s still growing, and each performance is a landmark that’s just preparing me for the next one, and the next one… Each time I do it, I learn something about myself.”
Lila Naruse – Feral
Instagram - lilanaruse
An exploration in two parts using aerial rope (a smooth rope, hanging vertically from the ceiling) and Naruse’s signature dynamic, ground-based movement. Straight off a 5* national tour with renowned circus-theatre company Ockham’s Razor, Lila has clearly combined her contemporary dance background with ambitious circus training, and takes to the air like a fish to water.
Lila begins her rope explorations from the floor, approaching it almost as a duet partner. She pulls, leans, spins, and explores all possible ways of interacting with the coiled tail, which responds by supporting and accentuating her movements, whipping about like a snake. She proceeds to translate these explorations to the air, ascending the rope and pulling off a series of twists, spins, drops and swings in quick succession. We hardly have time to absorb each impressive movement before we are given the next, but this piece is not just a series of tricks, it is rich with texture: a rippling spine, each reach of the arms or extension of the legs is beautifully articulated.
Leaving the rope behind, the second section of the work is brief (it is of course still a work in progress), but is a daring explosion of acrobatic flow. Limbs swipe and spiral through the air, creating a tornado of movement, requiring incredible control and dexterity but somehow also wild and untamed.
There is a clear development of ideas between the two sections, recognizable shapes and pathways from the air are reimagined on the ground, but now with more certainty. I hope that in future developments of the work Lila reaches this level of abandonment in the air, and equally finds the same tender quality of her airborne movement whilst on the ground.
Lucía Piquero –
www.luciapiquero.com
The first scene is all angular, linear movements, set to a soundtrack of desolate wind sounds, whispered recitation of Spanish poet Lorca, and gentle plucking of a guitar. Lucía seems somehow to be searching for something, folding and unfolding, extending and crumpling; constructing the body in space with careful precision. Much of the movement is on the floor, with interesting placements of the knees and elbows creating a sense of resistance to the ground, rather than surrendering to gravity.
The start of the second scene is punctuated by a sharp change to a diagonal corridor of light, Lucía striding upstage and entering a totally new movement quality. Standing, repeating a gestural motion of the hands above the head: ritual, power, dynamic womanhood? Lucía invites the audience to watch and experience ‘without the need to focus on narrative’, but as a species of storytellers, we cannot help but read meaning into even the most abstract movements. When the lighting shifts again, front lit this time to create an army of shadows on the back wall, Lucía’s movement grows in urgency with swinging, thrashing limbs. Frustration, confusion, and eventually, surrender as the stage goes dark.
Lucía has approached this choreography as an act of research; exploring what it means to be a performer and choreographer in one, how emotion may or may not be presented through movement, as well as reconnecting to her performative practice for the first time since becoming a mother - with such a skilled performance it doesn’t seem as though she has had any time off at all.
Proposing that ‘movement is emotion’, the work invites us to interpret our own connection with it rather than being inherently emotive in itself, but the striking lighting design and detailed soundscape add a great deal to the overall experience.
“It doesn’t have to be about anything , you don’t have to get it, you just need to experience it. This is the idea, just watch it and see what you get out of it, and whatever you get out of it is right!”
Ashling McCann and Rob Griffiths – A Sonic Tonic
The final work of the evening promised to be another playful solo exploration, and although unfortunately illness stood in the way of a performance, I managed a sneaky glimpse of the work in rehearsal the day before, and caught up with Ashling about the ideas behind it.
Having just completed a residency at the Old School Gallery in Alnmouth, Ashling has been exploring the idea that all sound requires a movement to create it – whether that’s a tapping foot, a snapping finger, or the vibration of vocal chords. Using contact microphones attached to various surfaces found in different spaces, (“My favourite collaborators are radiators”) and the assistance of Rob and some clever technology, Ashling’s movements become deep booms, resonant ahhs, and sweeping shhhhs.
The point of the work isn’t just to create sound, but also to invite the audience to consider their own movement. By exploring the technology and the sonic qualities of the performance space, Ashling is “Not making it such a private club thing, where I do this and you watch, and you can’t have any fun… I’m interested in developing it to incorporate normal movement in everyday life, how people move through space anyway and playing with that. Although I’m demonstrating and I have some ideas, I’m keen to make sure it’s an invitation to people… to think about how we move in the space in a different way.” There will hopefully be an opportunity to see the work performed at Dance City later this year, and maybe try some of it for yourself – follow @shlinga_makes_sounds on Instagram for updates.
This desire to bring the audience into the work is apparently shared by Andrew Lennox Scott, who in his second performance of the evening brings ‘In Between all of This’ to the large foyer space of Dance City. Overlooked by audience on the building’s many levels, balconies, and stairs, Andrew resets his yarn web now in a much smaller area, but with potential to expand much further upwards. Seeing the yarn unravel and systematically sweep across the horizontal space, the arrival of his overlooking audience sparks a cheeky light in Andrew’s eyes.
He starts small, tossing the yarn ball to a nearby audience member to wrap around a barre and return. Before long, he is playing a game of catch over 2 levels of the building, launching the yarn into the air, the audience erupting into cheers as it is caught on the third attempt. The giddy joy of the crowd rises as Dance City’s producer Alex Anslow runs to unlock the office door, to enable the yarn to be looped through a window and thrown back down to Andrew below, who has already swooped and slid under his web to expand beyond his confines in the other direction too. He takes to running up and down stairs, spreading utter delight in the game which we have all collectively become players in. Contrasting his earlier, more internal performance, his focus is entirely outwards now, and we are all eager to aid in his entanglement as he finishes with a grin and an invitation to eat, drink, and chat in the Seven Bridges café.
The evening overall definitely felt experimental, but the works were all incredibly rich. It is a privilege to see work like this whilst it is still so full of possibility and playfulness. If the future of dance in the North East is in these artists’ hands, then we should all be very excited about what is to come.