Lorna Irvine continues her report on EIF's (****) dance marathon.
Contemporary Classics
Christopher Bruce's Shift is a tale of the daily grind, with the women dressed as 40s munitions workers and the men looking more 50s, like James Dean. As they frantically shimmy and leap, they are cogs in the machine, with shades of West Side Story to the bold choreography, but the caterpillar-like movement of hip-hop is also integrated, suggesting we are still slaves to the endless wheels of industry: not much has changed. However, when clocking off time comes around, bodies relax into a sassy, looser posture...ready to play.
There is a broader sweep to Twyla Tharp's The Fugue, with the fantastic trio of Laura Kinross in feisty form, Daniel Davidson and Sophie Laplane, all clad in androgynous shirts and grey trousers hopping, mirroring each other and then malfunctioning like robots. Often, all try to outdo each other, by making their movements larger and more exaggerated. Thighs are slapped and tapped for rhythm, as there is no music. Symmetrical structure is at the heart of this piece, as the title suggests.
Another trio dominate Jiri Kylian's masterful 14'20'' but this time it is a different dynamic: Brenda Lee Grech, flanked by two men (Davidson again, with Victor Zarallo) in a futurist, jerky routine to a glitchy score with an industrial backdrop. Coldly erotic, but cruel like a David Cronenberg film, Grech's exhaustive pas de deux with both men leaves her lying spent and wrapped in the plastic on the floor.
Human bodies as machines again, but with provocative and deeply disturbing undertones.
Double Bill: Sea Of Troubles/Silhouette
Kenneth MacMillan was a hugely influential choreographer, but sadly some of his Sea Of Troubles hasn't aged well. The brittle piece starts off wonderfully with an urgency and mercurial spirit, playing with stereotypes of gender and simmering violence, and the fluttering hand gestures are witty, but by the time Quenby Hersh and guest artist Jan-Erik Wikstrom's pas de deux arrives there is a sense of a narrative that has lost its way. The theatrical staging is lovely, though, with fantastic costumes and a curtain that changes from gold to silver, to red when the mood turns dark.
Far more satisfying is Cristopher Hampson's absolutely gorgeous Silhouette. Bethany Kingsley-Garner, radiant like a cyber prima ballerina in white/silver tutu, is flanked, then spun, by five men in black. Any warmth in the traditional pirouettes and pointe work is undercut by the stark half-light and a sliding black border which 'swaps' dancers. Kingsley-Garner and Katie Webb's solos are tender, yet jarring, in keeping with the angry bursts of harpsichord.
In one witty movement, Webb becomes almost an umbrella, sheltering Remi Andreoni and Nicholas Shoesmith, but it is Andreoni's spins (I counted around seven) that mesmerise—he appears to be powered by an electrical current.
Silhouette is flawless: an acknowledgment of ballet's past and nod to its ever-shifting future.
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