If watching
beautiful dancers with toned bodies that oozed training and professionalism
is what you enjoy, Relations by the Portuguese group Quorum
is the show to see at the M1 Fringe Festival. Choreographers/dancers/directors,
Iolanda Rodrigues and Daniel Cardoso performed in two pieces, and it
was simply great to watch the dancers even if the plots became rather
clichéd. In fringe festivals, and in small contemporary dance
companies in general, it is rare to see this quality of dancing spread
evenly across six performers and no matter what themes they tackled,
the detailed precision of their movement was compelling. The movement
swung between tight, quirky phrases and then went into extended sections
with legs reaching effortlessly into 180 degree arabesques, long lunges
and slides. The programme description of the two dance pieces tells
us that the choreography is about the discovery of new worlds and cultures
and that it is inspired by Portuguese colonial expansion in the 15th
and 16th centuries. This is a big idea to work with, and overall, the
choreography was fairly mundane with a mix of standard movements, and
did not meet my expectations.
The first piece began (as, I am afraid, so have several other dance
works I have seen over the past few years) with "nude" (beige-underwear-clad)
dancers in embryonic positions. One by one they stretch their fledgling
limbs in the spotlight. These isolated segments subsequently morph into
a mass as the dancers reach out to discover each other and their world.
From here they discover relationships and there is a very funny segment
where a female dancer laughs uncontrollably as she is being seduced
by a male. The first section takes place on a light-coloured dance floor
and the second moves on to the darker side of the stage denoting exploration
of new worlds. Silver exercise balls that are rolled about and played
with in this section denote "new worlds" and there were some
interesting movement possibilities with these that could have been developed
further - like the part when a dancer was caught between two of the
balls and was bounced between them by two of the dancers. The dance
ended abruptly for an interval, leaving the audience unclear if the
second half would be a continuation of this theme or something entirely
different.
The audience moved back into a completely transformed theatre that
was light and bright. The second piece of the evening was more creative
and lots of fun for both the dancers and the audience. The performers
emerged from behind large sheets of paper that they progressively painted
throughout the dance - they also painted themselves and each other,
making it reminiscent of children playing with colour and enjoying splashing
it all over themselves as well. In this piece there was a marvellous
section where the dancers climbed all over the audience and the seating
finding their way via dance movements, legs extensions and precarious
balancing. It was artistically done and very exciting for the audience
to see the dancers up close. There were many fun moments in this work
and innovative use of the five dancers, the set, side lighting that
was rolled about on wheels, and the space. The theme of multiculturalism
was given a light creative touch and made a good contrast to the heavier
tone of the first dance. |
"If watching beautiful dancers with toned bodies that oozed training
and professionalism is what you enjoy, Relations was the show to see
at the M1 Fringe Festival"
Credits
Choreographers:
Iolanda Rodrigues and Daniel Cardoso
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From: The Editor (matthewlyon@myway.com / Wednesday, January 30, 2008 at 22:01:57)
Got anything to say about the review or the production? Click the button above to let us know.
From: Ng Yi-Sheng (ng.yisheng@gmail.com / Friday, February 1, 2008 at 23:36:37)
I agree with Steph - just for the sake of posterity, here's the first impressions bit I uploaded.
A pair of beautiful and dynamic pieces from a young Portugese dance company, each one exploring the concept of exploration from very different perspectives. Choreographer Iolanda Rodrigues's take is stark and deliberate, following the slow contorsions of the dancers' bodies as they move from the nudity of isolation to the violent confusion of clash and contact, invading and colliding with one other (with some odd magic thrown in through the use of Swiss exercise balls, flung across the stage). Daniel Cardoso's piece instead suggests the passion of intercontinental interactions, with a quintet of dancers painting the set and themselves and each other, shifting from balletic to tribal vocabularies, coupling with mischievously erotic vigour, even climbing into the tiers of the audience, banding together in startling tableaux of delightfully absurd tongue-waggling. Sure, there's a wee bit of messiness (pulling on clothes, self-indulgently waving paintbrushes), and the strange Latin habit of closing pieces with unforeseeable abruptness. But "Relations" as a whole is excellent: a thorough digestion of classical dance into contemporary spectacle, delicious to behold.
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