| |
Theatre listings >
Spring Tour 2004 -
Scottish Dance Theatre.
Four Peices in the Programme three seen at each venue.
These Three Peices were reviewed.
Moment.
Choreographer - Sean Feldman.
Composer - Tim Motzer (www.1krecordings.com).
Designer - Phyllis Byrne.
Lighting Designer - Tim Skelly.
Broken.
Choreographer - Rui Horta.
Assistant - Sonia Rodriguez.
Music - Fred Firth, Kato Hideki and Ikue Mori.
Designer Lighting, Set & Costume - Rui Horta.
Track.
Choreographer - Didy Veldman.
Composer - Philip Feeney.
Sound Design - Andy Wood.
Designer - Miriam Buether.
Lighting Designer - Tim Skelly.
Company - Scottish
Dance Theatre SDT are based at Dundee Rep 01382 342600
Artistic Director - Janet Smith.
2004 Spring Tour details here.
Seen to review at Dundee Rep Theatre on 20 February 2003.
Reviewer - Thelma Good.
Movements which delight.
I came away from this programme fascinated by the contemporary musical
compositions I had heard and the visual images Scottish Dance Theatre
and their invited choreographers and designers had created. From relatively
new to choreography Sean Feldman with his Moment, to the established choreographers
Didy Veldman and Rui Horta there are distinctive approaches but each work
convinces as pieces of note. But I'd like a little more grit, ageing and
stepping away from a particular kind of perfection next time.
SDT's approachable style is brought out in each, developing a real sense
of occasion and delight from the packed and almost completely convinced
home crowd on the opening night. I did overhear one pair who were less
than enthralled with the modern music, but were taken with the company's
skill and execution. The pieces are all about movement, somewhat about
narrative for only the shortest one, Broken, has clearly formed characters
in an entire storyline.
In Moment by Sean Feldman seven dancers
meet and form alliances and then separate, often together, just occasionally
a dancer will manage to get away and then move alone. With the males dressed
in trousers and half kilts, the back half is there but not the front,
the masculine dancers movements are given more lyricism than usual. Feldman's
approach gives us male duos where there's just a frisson tinge of violence
in a work where movements grow out of and into the music.
Broken by Rui Horta I first saw in
SDT 2003 Autumn Tour with Riccardo Meneghini and Victoria Roberts, James
McGillivray danced the Meneghini role this time. An encounter between
a being who can't move freely and fluidly and one who can, the piece alters
interestingly with McGillivray (a much shorter dancer than Meneghini).
McGillivray seems to move more swiftly - a puck-like figure, where the
previous dancer's greater height made him more like an aloof faun. When
I first saw it I saw a "physical exposition of our attempts to fuse
the abstract concepts of order and freedom". This time the piece
contained a more sensual charge, and I saw in it a piece where attraction
and intense relationship develop. It's a reminder of how dancers like
actors colour their roles. It's danced against a video of trees projected
so they frame the dancers, the music including creaking and pure tone
sounds.
Track by Didy Veldman had all but,
Victoria Roberts, Baptiste Bourgougnon and Holly Warren on the stage.
It unlike the other two pieces has a three dimensional set of metal poles
linked together by masking tape, some of the links made or destroyed by
the dancers during the piece. Philip Feeney's music includes choral moments
and a wide variety of styles and tempos, the second excellent piece of
modern music of the programme the first being Tim Motzer's in Moment.
Track contains props as well as set, including the masking tape, postcards,
red shoes and tulips. The props add life to the narratives fleshing out
the tentative stories the dancers' movements and liaison on stage generate.
The most extraordinary movements are in Track, at one point a female dancer
ripples her body in response to the male dancer's movements as he bends
over her, it is as if she can magically levitate. There is humour too
as one girl in brief and bra struggles with her image while two others
pout and flaunt theirs.
SDT is a young, zesty company and the themes centre on love, attraction,
and lightly treated sexuality and discord. To many's relief, mine among
them, SDT has not gone into the hard core, mutilation titillation slot
(or should that be slit?) that has made some dance companies become turn-ons
for some benighted beings and turn offs for more. Here it is interactions
between small human groups that preoccupy all the choreographers' offerings,
but companies like this, highly accomplished though they are, need to
watch they aren't trapped by being all similar types presenting pieces
limited in a way which could be become bland.
As a good looking, in their twenties and thirties troupe perhaps it's
churlish to yearn paradoxically to see a less than physically perfect
dancer or one of greater age among their number. Such additions to the
company would enable more diversity in the potential underlying narratives
to widen even more the appeal of this company. They already bring designers,
composers and choreographers together to create movements which delight,
more variety could add uniqueness.
© Thelma Good 20 February 2004. - Published on EdinburghGuide.com
News - Scottish Dance Theatre (SDT), Dundee Rep's dance company,
was awarded a 2003 Critics' Circle National Dance Award - the Company
Prize For Outstanding Repertoire (Modern) for their Spring tour.
The repertoire featured Beth Cassani's 'My House Is Melting' & Victor
Quijada's 'Self Observation Without Judgement' - both of which can be
seen at selected dates on the company's current Autumn Tour - and New
Art Club's 'Revenge Of The Impossible Things'.
Reviews of 2002
Tour and 2003
Spring Tour which contains a review of the fourth piece in the
2003 Autumn tour by another 2003 Peter Darrell Choreographer Award
Winner - Self Observation Without Judgement by
Victor Quijada.
Dancers - James MacGillivary, Baptiste Bourgougnon, Ruth Janssen,
Richardo Meneghini, Anthony Missen, Gemma Nixon, Victoria Roberts, Holly
Warren and Philippa White.
2004 Tour details
31 Jan at 2pm British Dance Edition Cambridge Arts Theatre.
19 - 21 Feb at 8pm Dundee Rep Theatre 01382 223530.
27 Feb at 7.30pm Giffnock Eastwood Theatre 0141 577 4970.
2 March at 8pm Skye Sabhal Mòr Ostaig 01471 844207.
5 March at 7.30pm Strontian Àrainn Shuaineirt (Sunart
Centre) 01397 709228.
9 March at 7.30pm Huntly Gordon School 01466 792181.
10 March at 7.30pm Elgin Town Hall 01343 562600.
12 March at 7.30pm Peterhead Community Centre 01779 477277.
24 March at 7.45pm Newbury The Corn Exchange 01635 522733.
30 March to 3 April at 8pm London The Place (Robin Howard Dance
Theatre) 0207 387 0031.
6 April at 7.30pm Edinburgh Festival Theatre 0131 529 6000.
23 April at 8pm Guernsey Beau Sejour Theatre 01481 747200.
28 & 29 April 8pm Jersey Arts Centre 01534 700444.
20 May at 7.30pm Dunfermline Carnegie Hall 01383 314000.
22 May at 8pm Stirling Macrobert 01786 466666.
Tour Ends.
Theatre listings >>
|
|
