Moving With the Times: First Look (Dancin’ Oxford Spring Festival), Pegasus Theatre, 20th January 2023 – Maggie Watson reports

First Look was a chance to see the work in progress on four dances by artists awarded 2023 Moving with the Times commissions. Presented in the welcoming environment of Pegasus, the programme consisted of three solos and a duet. An onstage discussion, curated by Thomas Page, followed each work, enabling the performers to seek responses from the audience.

All four works explored what it is to be an outsider, who does not conform to society’s norms, whether through disability, gender, social class, sexuality, culture or ethnicity. Intriguingly, all the performances used words as well as dance to establish context and convey meaning, through songs, poems or pre-recorded monologues, and by the dancers themselves speaking on stage.

Audience feedback was sometimes practical: for example, discussions about whether Divija Melally’s piece could end with the dancer on or off stage, or the way in which dancer Lucy Clark shared the stage space with musician Philip Kinshuck. The performances also provoked more subjective reactions, including intensely emotional responses to the exploration of transgender experience by dancers Trayvaughn Robin and Tonye Scott-Obene in CTC Dance Company’s work, and a vote by show of hands on whether or not the audience liked or disliked the type of character portrayed by Vita Peach in her comic creation, HUGO.

Viewing the four works at this stage shed light on the artists’ different creative approaches. Vita Peach, directed by Tamsin Heatley, offered a brief but polished and sophisticated excerpt from her solo work, while CTC Dance gave several short developing extracts from what will be a longer narrative dance for two dancers. Lucy Clark and the interdisciplinary ‘fuse collective’ presented a collaboration between dancer, musician and visual artists Daniela Zaharieva and Yi Ting Liong in which sound, lighting and movement seemed to hold equal value. In contrast, Divija Melally’s dance was a solo work, apparently devised and staged entirely by herself, that began to the sound of her own breath, and included a beautiful visual effect (which it would be ‘a spoiler’ to describe here!).

There was wit, humour and grace on show, as well as the rawness of pain as the dancers in their various ways embodied experiences of rejection or exclusion. They all had ample ideas and material to work with; perhaps more than it will be possible to incorporate within the finished works. When Dancin’ Oxford presents the final versions at Pegasus on 3rd and 4th March, it will be almost as interesting to discover what the artists have chosen to omit, as it will be to see what they have refined and developed.

Maggie Watson

21st January 2023

 

First Look: works in progress for Dancin’ Oxford Festival, Pegasus Theatre Friday 20th January 2023

First Look provides a chance to get a preview of new dance work being created for Moving with the Times, the annual co-commission by Dancin’ Oxford and Pegasus Theatre for the Spring Dancin’ Oxford Festival. Four exciting dance artists/companies are interested in hearing your feedback on their works-in-progress. Expect to see Bharatnatyam dance, experimental music, drag, clowning, light displays, and hip hop fusion, telling powerful stories of identity. The final pieces will be presented on 3rd-4th March 2023.

This year our four featured artists/companies are Divija Melally, the fuse collective, Vita Peach and CTC Dance Company:

Divija Melally graduated from Bath Spa University, UK, with BA (Hons) Dance, and is trained in contemporary and Bharatnatyam dance. She is also a graduate of the Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts, Bangalore, India. She has performed with leading dance companies across Europe and in India. For her Moving With The Times commission, Divija will create a dance work based around her own experiences of intergenerational trauma.

The fuse collective is an interdisciplinary collective made up of early career artists including Trinity Laban graduate and disabled dance artist  Lucy Clark, visual artists Daniela Zaharieva and Yi Ting Liong, and experimental musician, Philip Kinshuck. For the Moving With The Times commission, the fuse collective plans to create an immersive, interactive piece fusing dance, art and light to communicate what it is like to live with a hidden disability.

Oxford’s own Vita Peach is a graduate from Middlesex University (BA Dance Studies, First Class). Vita is an actor, a burlesque dancer and a drag king. For her Moving With The Times commission, Vita plans to create a humorous work drawing on techniques from contemporary dance, acrobatics, theatre, burlesque, butoh, jazz and clowning to create HUGO, a piece of movement theatre about a man who goes through a very extreme transition.

Christopher Tendai founded CTC Dance Company in 2017. Christopher started his career as a dancer on the West End and performed in many West End musicals including Hamilton, West Side Story and Cabaret. CTC Dance Company creates innovative dance productions on topics including mental health awareness and gender diversity. For the Moving With The Times commission, CTC Dance Company will create a piece exploring the relationship between a cis man and a trans woman.

Date: Friday 20th January 7.00pm

Venue: Pegasus Theatre, Magdalen Road, Oxford OX4 1RE

Booking: Tickets are “Pay what you can” (suggested donation £5): book online here