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Review: Dance Roads
Cardiff's Cai Thomas is full of promise and fresh ideas and exhibits true potential as an emerging choreographer
The notion of contemporary dance, comes under a myriad of guises and often with a trail of cringey clichés.
Avoiding these unspoken myths is now part and parcel of the art form – and even satirising on the connotations enveloping the dance technique has been epitomised in recent works such as Vincent Dances Theatre's If We Go On.
For new works, spotting fresh turns on the discipline is the hope of the critic – and falling sadly into old routines the risk of the emerging choreographer.
In Saturday's expose of new works in the programme from Welsh Independent Dance, showcased at Chapter Arts Centre, it was Cardiff's creative thinking which shone out against international offerings.
Dance Roads, we are told, is a network of organisations from different countries dedicated to supporting innovative choreography. But meaningless stares into the baffled audience and using tired themes to cover up for sloppy technique makes the first half of the show anything but innovative.
Running Sculpture has some elegant lines and playful duets – but for the most part the limp-handed floppy movements accompanied by monotonous synth sounds were repetitive and rough around the edges.
Battre Le Fer is an entertaining and bizarre struggle between two women – with tough precision emulating a stiff regime and memorable moments such as the two women in granny pants and heels with their feet in the air.
But these first two pieces weren't promising or inspiring – it wasn't until he second half that new dance ideas began to emerge.
Passo is a witty exposition of the interplay between the audience and the dancer. Two female artists create layers of fiction by distorting reality. At one point an audience member's phone goes off with an annoying Japanese jingle – as the culprit rudely answers in the theatre and audience members turn to each other in horror the same ringtone occupies the main stage and the girls perform an amusing piece in their new meta-awareness.
Cardiff's own Cai Tomos is the first dancer to use new ideas and exhibit true potential as an emerging choreographer in the international arena. His Calon is a dance to his own over-voice, talking about the human heart and its many fluctuations. It's a self aware and beautifully transparent piece, exposing one man's fears and emotions. More dancing and less lip-syncing would improve the piece, but Thomas is full of promise and proudly giving a fresh input into contemporary dance from Cardiff.
The programme is finished with Foutrement from Virginie Brunelle. It's both a brutal and delicate mix of contemporary phrases with balletic foundations – a nearly naked exposé on the physicality of dance and delicacy of relationships.
Les 9e Bancs d’Essai Internationaux: a review
by Sylvain Verstricht (courtesy of indyish.com)
Expectations are meant to be defied. I certainly did not go into Les 9è Bancs d’Essai Internationaux expecting to see the best dance show I’ve seen in months. The Tangente-initiated biennial event puts together choreographers from five different countries and sends them on a tour of each of their hometown. This past weekend, they started their tour here in Montreal before heading over to Europe. The level of quality of this year’s program is exceptionally high.
The Netherlands’ Jeans van Daele started the evening off with a bang with Battre le Fer, a duet for Estelle Delcambre and Patricia van Deutekom. We hear the two women before we even see them as they walk around in the dark with shoes with heavy soles. There is but a dim green light at the back of the stage, so we can barely see them. A cheeky choice since even at this early stage we can tell from the sounds onstage that the choreography is extremely physical. Then some lights by the side of the stage come on for brief periods of time to give us glimpses of their violent dance. Floor work takes up the beginning of Battre le Fer and the dancers’ principal means of moving around is by rolling on the floor. The rest of the time, they are most always in contact, pushing and pulling the other into the position that each requires to execute their own movement. They might look antagonistic but they are completely dependent on each other. The loud sound of their shoes against the floor adds to the dramatic impact, like in the section where they lie against the floor and repeatedly arch their back to propel their legs in the air, which come down with a bang. No wonder one of the dancers ended up with bloody knees.
The dancers are back on their feet for the second half of the piece. At the beginning of this section, they are backlit by a blue light that barely reveals their silhouettes. Their most visible body part becomes their long hair as the light shines through it, almost creating a halo. It becomes the primary focal point of the dance, a most unusual one. Though this section is not quite as strong as the floor work (a rather high standard to maintain), it is still full of choreographic gems that jump out at us and move through us. By the end, the dancers obviously take pleasure in their complicit sadism, smiles drawn across their lips.A tough act to follow, especially with a more understated solo, but Wales’ Cai Tomos pulls it off brilliantly. His Calon (which means heart) deals with the heart from a multitude of perspectives: scientific, personal, physiological, emotional, physical, conceptual. In a sound recording, Tomos talks about the heart. The interaction between his words and his movement multiplies meanings, the words colouring his movement just as his movement colours the words. For example, we hear him say that the average human heart weighs 310– And, just as these words are spoken, Tomos opens his arms as if he were carrying a large object so that we almost expect him to say that a heart weighs 310 pounds, when the word that follows is actually and evidently “grams.” Often his movement illustrates the sound recording, but there are delightful touches of humour whenever there is such a perceived discrepancy. A lot of his movement is of an emphatic nature, the kind of everyday gestures that we unconsciously produce while involved in the act of speech, but pushed further so that it crosses over into our consciousness. Tomos is incredibly charming, not to mention an utterly compelling performer.
Italy’s Ambra Senatore displays great wit with Passo, a duet danced by herself and Caterina Basso. At first, she appears alone onstage (or, as we will wonder later, was it really her?) in high heels. She spreads her legs to the point that it makes maintaining her balance difficult, especially since she insists on keeping her upper body in movement, also spreading it in all directions. As she dances, an arm can briefly be seen poking out from the curtains in the same fashion as hers, like an instant parody of her movement. When her own body becomes hidden by the curtain, another body comes in through the back door in the same position that we can extrapolate she is in, a fragmented yet duplicated view of a single action. Passo is obviously concerned with doubles as another dancer comes out looking almost exactly like the one already onstage, from the dress she wears to the black wig that smoothes out their physical differences. Senatore also turns on the charm by incorporating a (performed) casualness into her work, rubbing her elbow as if she hurt herself, taking a sip of water, or shaking her head as if she’d made a mistake. However, as we discover with the synchronicity between her and her double, everything is carefully choreographed, from putting their hair behind their ears to clearing their throat. If Passo doesn’t put a smile on your face, you might as well end it now; you’re dead on the inside.
There is a temptation to try to find some sort of common thread in all the works to give us a snapshot of current concerns in contemporary dance. The one that was the most obvious to me is that almost all the works incorporate periods of (much needed) rest for their dancers, who are given the chance to catch their breath for a few moments or take a sip of water before going on with the show.
The program also includes Running Sculpture, a duet performed by Katri Siipola and Taneli Törmä, choreographed by Denmark’s Lars Dahl Pedersen. Though it is the weakest of the works in this program, the comparison is misleading since Running Sculpture has plenty of positive qualities, not the least of which is that it shows just how fucking hot a man in a skirt can be. Montreal is represented by Virginie Brunelle, who showed a duet (danced by Luc Bouchard Boissonneault and Claudine Hébert) from Complexe des genres, a new show she is working on. It’s showing a lot of promise and, even though Brunelle just presented a new work last month, it’s already making us look forward to the next one. In Europe, she will be presenting an excerpt from Foutrement, which has already been seen here. All in all, Les 9è Bancs d’Essai Internationaux made for an invigorating evening of dance.
Road warriors head to Chapter
May 28 2010 by Matt Thomas, Western Mail
Biennial touring dance festival Dance Roads is about to hit Cardiff. Gathering performers from five countries, it’s a unique snapshot of the international state of the art. Matt Thomas chats to our homegrown representative to find out more
MODERN dance gets a bit of a short shrift at times. Despite being of the more visceral and immediate forms of art, it still has a veneer of inaccessibility that puts some audiences off.
This is something Dance Roads, an initiative of Welsh Independent Dance and partner organisations in four other countries, hopes to address.
Representatives from Canada, Denmark, Italy, Netherlands and Wales have been selected to present their work in a tour that covers their home nations as well as their counterparts.
Wales has sent Cai Tomos, who will be appearing with the other dancers at Cardiff’s Chapter Arts Centre tomorrow.
Having spent four years with influential physical theatre company Earthfall and some time as a choreographer/director, the National Dance Company Wales Tomos was at the heart of the Welsh dance scene, before he struck out on his own.
For the current Dance Roads tour, he’s presenting Calon, ‘heart’ in Welsh, an on-going work exploring concepts of the heart in its figurative, literal and medical aspects.
Given that it’s a piece that has its genesis back in 1997, he needed a new approach to the concepts to re-ignite his creative flames.
“Oh absolutely, my feelings had changed towards it,” he says, speaking from a Danish hotel. “It’s a work that’s some three years old, but I felt it could be re-purposed to reflect how my thinking about dance and about movement have changed over that time, so I took it right back to the studio and worked on it from the beginning.
“I mean it still reflects my preoccupations, my concerns with the symbolic and scientific significance of the heart, but that chance to go back and work on it, alone, really made me think very hard about what I was doing.”
Not that having to interrogate himself is something that Tomos regards as a particular hardship. He’s keen to push himself and quite scathing about his own efforts at times.
“I love working like that, in the studio anyway, when it’s just me and the score. It really makes you confront the way you make art and the practice of your dance,” says the 31-year-old.
“It made me think about the balance of the theatrical and the physical in my work and realise I’m working in a much more theatrical vein now.
“That obviously has a fairly major impact on the way you view yourself and the work you do, so that in itself was a valuable experience. If I’m honest, it also made me think it’s only recently I have become capable of doing anything of any worth. But there you go.”
Not all his discoveries have been made in the solitary and inward-looking environs of the studio – the rough-and-tumble touring life is throwing up a few interesting points as well.
“That’s the other exciting thing about this, we’re all learning a lot from each other, leading classes for each other, discussing various different aspects of what we’re doing,” he says.
“The biggest company is a duet, so it’s a very close-knit tour already.
“One of the most interesting conversations that has arisen has been how we all survive as artists. In the main, we’re all having to maintain some sort of teaching career back home in our various countries, and since I’m an associate lecturer (at the University of Chichester) I actually have one of the more relatively stable positions. Most other people have a more hand-to-mouth existence, taking a couple of months here and there.
“But it’s not something that detracts from what we do, it enables it and enriches it. It’s very encouraging.”
Once Dance Roads has finished its stint in Cardiff, there are two more dates in the Netherlands before Tomos once again finds himself a free agent.
“I’d like to work with more non-dancers, the body which hasn’t been shaped and directed in quite the same way as a performer is interesting to me, it’s more honest in some ways I think,” he says.
“Then I’m going to be back in Wales in Barmouth at the end of June working with Marc Rees, the installation artist, for a National Theatre of Wales production in Barmouth.
“We’ve worked together before out in Spain on a residential project of his and I really admired the way he approached things and found it very rewarding, so it’s great to be working with him again.
“The concept behind the project, For Mountain, Sand and Sea, is that Marc has gathered six artists, of whom I am one, and we’ve all been given spaces around Barmouth to devise and perform works.
“I’ve ended up with The Sanddancer nightclub, which I’m pleased about since I used to go there when I was 18, being from Dolgellau and everything. So it’s nice I’m coming full circle in that way.”
Dance Roads is at Chapter Arts Centre tomorrow at 3pm and 8pm. Call 029 2030 4400. Tomos will also be leading an Insight event at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay tonight discussing how dancers and choreographers work together to create a brand new work. Call 029 2063 6464 for a free ticket. |
