Choreographers
Rui Horta
Henri Oguike
Maresa
Von Stockert
Darshan Singh
Bhuller
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Phoenix Theatre
Dance Company
Sadler's Wells
7 - 9 May 2004
Rui Horta's Can You See Me, the most visceral of Phoenix Theatre's quartet of newly commissioned dances, explores the relationship between creativity and expression (you might say: freedom and determinism) in a way that is breathtaking. Four dancers ease and pull their own limbs into position; but they are on the edge of complete loss of control, of giving themselves over entirely to their bodies.
A male dancer stands in the spotlight, he howls, he falls to the floor, contorted, looks to the sky like a werewolf. He strains to dance, at each moment his body and reflexes sabotaging his purpose. A girl standing vacant in the sidelines tries out moves, fixes our gaze, gives up, steps forward, flashes her chest, two others enter. Cradling herself in his arms, protected, next moment the girl writhes and struggles to get free. Tender like lovers, he follows her, she winces, they try out ways to clasp each other. He is muscular, he throws her to the floor, she kicks him, he lifts her, they struggle, she makes fists, he leans on her. They are arrogant, playful, inexplicably needy and dismissive of each other. Sinuous, provocative, and attention-seeking.
In these ways dance appropriates its distinctive territory. The male dancer clasps his spasming arm, brings it under control, restricts himself, attempts to stifle is spontaneity. Where meaning and significance are traditionally associated with language and representation, these moves turn that idea on its head. We find an immediate, overwhelming significance in the stifled gestures, the barely concealed impulses.
A similar theme is taken up, more self-consciously, in Maresa von Stockert's surreal and macabre comedy waltz Polystyrene Dreams. The dancers are production-line workers at a toy factory, they glide and slide onto stage on swivel chairs, wearing tawdry uniforms, to the instructions of a corporate loudspeaker. The meanings imposed on their movements by the dictates of the impersonal voice then inexorably give way to their collective daydreams. And with this shift from the intentional to the subconscious comes something again disarming, languid, magical.
The chairs swing and pull with a strange elasticity, the dancers rush and spin across the stage. Beneath their grey skirts, silk underwear is incongruously revealed - as if the rules of conduct haven't quite extinguished individuality after all. Ralentissimo, their motion becomes slo-mo, all the plastic toys are fallen on the floor, and the girls themselves slide slowly down the conveyor belt.
Henri Oguike's Signal, and Darshan Singh Bhuller's Source 2 on the whole ring less true, lacking the vision and vigour of their neighbours. Even so, a girl leaps high into her partner's arms only to wilt, lifeless, over his shoulder on contact. In another scene they are naked, locked to each other, exerting weight, and perceptible pressure.
Human freedom has long been taken to consist in the triumph of reason over passion. The subordination of natural impulse by the intellect (thoughts, intentions, rationalisations), has indeed been held up as paradigmatic of self-realisation. In watching Phoenix Theatre's contemporary dance one is struck with precisely the opposite feeling. Any trace of premeditation seems dishonest, inadequate, restrictive, the dancers on the contrary seeming most free when the choreography is least representational.
Naomi Goulder
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