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Theatre listings >
Freshmess - Innit...Innat
and Maintain. - Tour .
Company - Freshmess. Contact vis Dance Base, Edinburgh 0131 225
5525.
Artistic Director - Allan Irvine.
Dancers for these performances - Allan Irvine, Wallace Sulley,
Matt Foster, Jillian Thomson and Tara Hodgson.
Tour Dates and Times - here
.
Seen to review at Traverse Theatre 6 March 2003.
Run Time - 1 hours 50 mins including 20 mins interval.
Reviewer - Thelma Good.
Fizz with their thrill.
Queues at the book office and two sell out nights with lots of young enthusiastic
audience,. The Traverse had a great buzz this week when Freshmess arrived
with their two new dance pieces. Each one jumped and popped with the bounce
of hip hop.
The energy of their performances and the sheer togetherness of the night
is something to see. These dancers mostly have full time jobs and/or don't
live in the same city And one has no so call formal training. Highly professional
and informally trained Matt Foster is a member of Random
Aspekts b-boy and b-girl crew which is "Scotland's premier breaking
crew", Foster now teaches dance to others. Irvine, who started Freshmess
in 1996 with Wallace Sulley, is Youth Dance Worker at Dance Base in Edinburgh,
Sulley is Dance Artist in residence at MacRobert Arts Centre, Stirling
and is a kent face on the DJ scene in Edinburgh. Thomson is currently
working as Dance Development officer for Aberdeen Council at City Moves
Dance Space and Hodgson has just finished a dance film, Gasp. These are
artists who really get a kick out of performing and the pieces fizz with
their thrill.
So what are they like?
Innit...Innat .
Choreographer - Frank McConnell.
Music - Martyn Bennett, Quee McArthur and Traditional.
Lighting Designer - Maire Bechaalani.
This took Scottish dance and flung it around with dances from further
east using music of both and western and eastern feels. Choreographer
Frank McConnell,l a novice to hip hop and its culture, has created a dance
piece which keep shifting and changing as the dancers spark off one another.
It really gets the exciting edginess of Scotland and its many influences
now in the 21st Century.
Starting off slowly with Foster and Hodgson moving together in unison
using oriental style movements like the Chinese early morning exercises
it spins off in all kinds of rhythms and styles. Hip hop has a perky up
front nature, sometimes teasing, sometimes showy. But just because it
comes off the street don't think it's in anyway sloppy. No indeedy, diagonals
suddenly appear, the asymmetrical shapes sometimes becoming a symmetrical
whole or refreshing in their oddity. And the Scottish dance has spirit
and verve even when danced like the guy on terraces who's too drunk for
words but still able to reel in style.
Received enthusiastically at the Traverse who responded to its honest,
alert and warm style where dancers' faces are alive, not the dead made
up faces of artificial ballerinas.
And
Maintain.
Choreographer - Allan Irvine.
Music - Shaun McCabe.
Lighting Designer - Maire Bechaalani.
Maintain - Freshmess
The company
© Nico Major 2003
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This piece like Innit...Innat feels that the music is creating and stimulating
it. Sometimes in modern dance the music bears little relationship to the
movements on stage but Freshmess's style is that the music and moves are
related so it feels as though one is watching the act of creation rather
than a mere recreation. The result is accessible and exciting performances.
This piece isn't quite as easily followed as Innit..Innat. Described as
being about how we look after ourselves and others, it is pleasurable
to watch but hard to follow the theme in it. The dancers give us solos,
duo, ensemble work form four or all, and particularly fascinating trios.
Danced by two men and one woman the trio is sensual and full of fluid
close work, as one or two winds round the third, the pas de deux supplanted
by the ménage a trois!
Maintain doesn't quite sustain all the way through. Though mobile lights
illuminating the movements, switched on and off by the dancers keep interest
in the final sequence. The night I went the zest of the performances was
carried by us into the bar where conversations and encounters were spiced
and energised by people move their bodies as well as using their lips
to communicate.
© Thelma Good 6 March 2003. - Published on EdinburghGuide.com
Tour Details of Freshmess's production of Innit...Innat
and Maintain.
Tour begins
15 Feb at 7:30pm Musselburgh Brunton Theatre.
18 Feb at &:30pm Aberdeen Lemon Tree.
1 March at 8pm Stirling MacRobert.
5 & 6 March at 8pm.
(7 March at Kilmarnock, Place Theatre Cancelled)
25 March at 8pm Inverness Eden Court Theatre 01463 234 234.
Tour ends
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