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Mollie Kelly and Louisa Duckett, Thresholds photo Ian Dun |
Simon Ellis’ Touch with improvised voice by jazz singer Christine Sullivan begins with his body suspended over a thumbprint block-mould on the floor. Who/what makes contact? The thumbprint-gelled hand-torch picking out body fragments, stretching shadows, is beautiful. But if light touches, so too could sound: there is little sense of voice shaping body too. Ellis’ strength in his and others’ pieces is his quirkiness, which needs to be extended and encouraged, rather than his tendency to smoothness which is lithe but does not ring as true.
For Reflections in Y, Jillian Pearce uses some standard teaching exercises to choreograph a work on rockclimbing (but one can be too knowing an audience). Alongside its literal ideas are nice realisations in movement and musculature, playing the edge between hard labour, desire, and ecstasy as these dancer-climbers come close to simulating flight.
Robin Plenty’s An Echo Early opens with 5 bodies like brain cells computing the world. A delicate sense that hiatus divides, rhythm unifies. Echoes slip, memory opens. Two bodies sway together for a while: my brain turns. This work is very fine.
Dance Compass is a positive choreographic force, producing enjoyable and highly intelligent work, the eclectic background of its dancers no doubt feeding the diversity of its practices.
Thresholds, Dance Compass, Theatreworks, August 6 - 9
RealTime issue #27 Oct-Nov 1998 pg. 14
© Zsuzsanna Soboslay; for permission to reproduce apply to [email protected]
