A Spoonful of Reflections [FringeTIX]
HartBEAT Dance Project @ Higher Ground (Art Base)
7:00pm, Sun 8 Mar 2009
It’s an interesting idea, this one – fourteen distinct pieces of dance, all named & numbered, with photos spread around the venue depicting each in action, accompanied by a little descriptive note – it’s dance presented in an exhibition setting. The music starts almost as soon as we start treading downstairs; a dancer appears from a side room, walks to the centre of the prescribed space, and starts dancing. As the music morphs into the next piece, they leave the space, returning to the room for a breather, and are replaced with other dancers… or sometimes they hang around, creating a bigger group. One through fourteen, then back to one again – the performances on the return leg appearing to be slight reduxes of the originals, often turning group-based movements into solo performances, without losing the intrinsic nature of the piece.
The choreography seems to be very much focussed on the beat of the music – which, whilst that sounds somewhat sensible (given that it’s dance), unfortunately often feels very contrived – especially when the dancers mime sentiments expressed in the song’s lyrics (this was especially bad in 4). And, given there’s a heavy reliance (with more than one dancer in play) on the co-ordination of particular movements, it’s quite surprising to see that there’s a very liberal (and individualistic) interpretation of those movements by each dancer. I’d have thought that any choreographer worth their salt would’ve had conniptions at the different variations of the same general idea.
That’s not to say that it’s all bad, though – some pieces (5, 6, 11, 14, then 6 and 5 again on the way back) are fantastic – vibrant and full of enthusiasm. And, on the reverse leg, the dancers were all smiles and laughs, which added a certain playful element to the performance. And this certainly constitutes the best use of space in the ArtBase that I’ve yet seen – the columns define a natural space in which the dance is performed and allows the audience to frame the performance to their liking, with no particular vantage point favoured by the performers. Clad in white, the six dancers (five women, one bloke) are of all different shapes and sizes – and, perhaps surprisingly, my favourite performer was significantly heavier than the stereotypical dancer.
So – there was some good dance, some bad dance, great use of space, and an innovative presentation. Overall on the positive, I reckon.