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Theatre listings >
In Your Dreams
- Tour.
Concept/Artistic Direction - Alan Greig.
Designer - Miranda Melville.
Lighting Designer - Mark Parry.
Choreographed and preformed by - Christine Devaney, Alan Greig, Kira
Riikonen and Ian Wooller.
Soundscore - Tom Murray (additional music Bernard Herrmann.)
Company - Xfactor Dance Company . Website
Tour Dates and Times - here
.
Seen to review at Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh Edinburgh on 8 March.
Run Time - 1 hours no Interval.
Reviewer - Thelma Good .
Admire the skill but where's the story.
In Your Dreams takes us to the places we go to in our sleep but the effect
of those worlds' disjointed forms leads to a work which ultimately fragments.
It does have Miranda Melville's releasing design with black floor stage
against black curtains and with wired forms, hang like wraiths and sometimes
illuminated in colours, suspended from above all skewing our perceptions
just as dreams do.
The piece also resembles the form of dreams their weird strange logic,
where in trying to get somewhere you frantically run but backwards, you
fly or move and do what is undoable awake. The soundscape includes not
just music but the recorded voices including a psychiatrist speaking about
dreams and the dancers themselves sometimes speak a few words live. When
you use so few words it's really irritating when you can't make one of
the speakers out. Dancers should not have a problem with diction or projection,
their craft depends on a wholly tuned body.
The most successful sequence is when a sleeper moves underneath a length
of polythene raised and lower by another dancer so it billows and ripples
like water or wind. Sometimes she is rocked in the motion, sometimes she
tries to draw air but remains trapped in the elemental flow.
Dance Companies are increasingly experimenting with speech and movement
close to real life, heightened perhaps but drawn from reality. I have
no problem with them doing this but companies sometimes seem to be hesitant
to create work with strong or even weak narrative strands. While we can
admire a dance artist's control and movement in the abstract, after a
while many humans need a narrative on which to hang what they see.
How far companies go is up to them but I wonder why they don't experiment
and develop conversation and arguement through movement. Often when speech
is intorduced it comes across as added to help explain what is going on
rather than be only a small but intergral part of its content.
At times dance companies hover on the borders of dance and physical theatre.
I don't mind if some do go fully into physical theatre, a field in which
we have too few Scottish companies. But I hope, as well, clear narrative
in dance theatre will soon be brought back into more productions using
the body primarily. I am mystified why so many choreographers resist the
power and spell of story telling in their work.
© Thelma Good 8 March 2003. - Published on EdinburghGuide.com
Spring 2003 Tour Details of In Your Dreams from
Xfactor Dance Company.
Tour begins
* = Post performance discussion
Tour Listings Information:
1 March* at 7.30 pm Aberdeen The Lemon Tree £8/£5.
01224 642230.
8 March* at 7.30 pm Musselburgh Brunton Theatre, £8/£4.50.
0131 665 2240.
12 March at 7.30 pm Livingston Howden Park £5/£3.
01506 433634.
15 March* at 8 pm Findhorn Universal Hall, £7/£5.
01309 690110.
18 March* at 8 pm St Andrews Byre Theatre, £8.50/£6.50
01334 475000.
21 March at 7.30 pm Galashiels Volunteer Hall, St John Street,
£7/£5 01750 724 901. boxoffice@scotborders.gov.uk .
2 April* at 8 pm Stirling Macrobert, University of Stirling, £7/£3.50
01786 466666.
4 April at 7.30 pm Paisley Arts Centre £7/£3.50.
0141 887 1010.
8 April* at 7.30 pm Dunfermline Carnegie Hall £7.50/£6/£5.
01383 314000.
10* & 11 April at 8 pm Edinburgh Traverse Theatre £10/£6/£4
0131 228 1404/www.traverse.co.uk.
12 April at 8pm Glasgow Tron Theatre £8/£5 0141 552
4267.
Tour ends
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