DANSOX: Transparent film screening, Siobhan Davies and Meindert Peters in conversation. Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, St Hilda’s College Oxford, 15th May 2023 – Maggie Watson reports

Siobhan Davies’ film Transparent, screened by DANSOX at St Hilda’s College Oxford on Monday 15 May, is a personal retrospective that forms part of her on-going enquiry into the nature of dance and its position among the arts. The thirty-five minute film offers a vast array of images in the form of transparencies laid upon a back-lit panel, which her hands delicately manoeuvre and adjust, concealing, revealing, overlaying or juxtaposing pictures in a glorious palimpsest of ideas and associations. Her moving collage seems to gather together every kind of influence on her work. It is as if by literally looking through the acetates, which include representations of the human form and the natural world in photographs, paintings, drawings, and sculptures, Davies endeavours to look through herself and understand what it is that makes her dance.

 

Let’s Play Forever, presented by The Remarkable Dance Company, and Because I Can, danced by Lauren Potter. The Mill Arts Centre, Banbury, 30 March 2023

On March 30th, two performances at The Mill demonstrated how wrong it is to assume that dance is the preserve only of the young. On the face of it the two works were utterly different, yet through the medium of older dancers, both addressed or drew on issues of memory and control, and questioned which voices we hear and pay attention to.

Let’s Play Forever, choreographed by Luca Braccia in collaboration with The Remarkables, is an engaging work structured in a series of scenes that recreate children’s playground games to a musical compilation that ranges from Rossini sung by the King’s Singers to Debussy played by Richard Galliano. The Remarkables are a serious local community dance company, open to those aged fifty and over, and each dancer brought her own style and unique way of moving. This was a collective work, inspired by the dancers’ own improvisations, which Braccia had ingeniously threaded together into a unified whole that presented a metaphor for society. There was a hint of commedia dell’arte, as adults pretended to be aeroplanes, enacted circle games, or competed for possession of chairs or a hat. Gently humorous and slightly surreal, the dance presented a magnification of the normal interactions between people as they communicate, co-operate, and jostle for acknowledgement throughout their lives; we grow older, but we do not leave our playground games behind.

 

Dotdotdot Dance present Blue Ghost, Cornerstone Arts Centre, Didcot, 24th March 2023 – Maggie Watson reviews

Blue Ghost, performed by Flamenco dance company Dotdotdot, is captivating from beginning to end. At first the, stage is in darkness, then flares suddenly crackle and spark from its outermost corners, as dancers Magdalena Mannion and Noemi Luz gradually emerge from the gloaming, and the gathering light reveals composer and visual artist Nick Rothwell standing upstage centre at his music console, from which he creates a sensational soundscape that combines original Flamenco compositions and cantos with electronic music.

At times, rectangles of light projected on the wall at the back of the stage pierce the darkness, like illuminated windows drawing the dancers towards them, or the dancers themselves glow with LEDs embedded in their costumes as they vibrate, twist, and whirl with lightning footwork and stylised hand gestures. Towards the end, a beautiful image of a network of lights, like a pattern of glow-worms, appears behind the dancers.

There is a hint of display and courtship as if they are birds or insects, taking it in turns to show themselves to each other: one dancer wears a long dress and performs a spectacular shawl dance; the other wears high-waist trousers with a jerkin and transparent cloak suggestive of gossamer wings. Their fiercely accurate Flamenco taps are like a rhythmic conversation, both with each other and with the music, as they move faster and faster, their bodies strongly held and tightly centred, building suspense by containing their energy before the moments of release. They seemed to be ephemeral creatures, rather than human beings, that danced purely for the sake of dancing.

There was no programme available at the venue (not even a QR code), but afterwards I discovered that the work was inspired by the Blue Ghost Firefly.

Maggie Watson
26 March 2023

For more information about Dotdotdot Dance’s Blue Ghost, see programme here

 

Born to Exist: the Women I Know, by Joseph Toonga; Just Us Dance Theatre, Cornerstone, Didcot, 12th March 2023 – Maggie Watson reviews

Born to Exist is the third part of Joseph Toonga’s Hip Hop Dance Trilogy. It opens with a dancer standing, legs astride, centre stage, her back to the audience. Slowly, she starts to move, gradually expanding and extending with every part of her body, her torso undulating, her hips circling. Two more women join her and together they perform a tightly choreographed dance work to a score by ‘Mikey J’ Asante.

Toonga has drawn on street dance styles, to develop a theatrical performance technique and vocabulary. The dancers displayed accuracy, precision and sharp focus in carefully structured sequences, full of choreographic content, which called to mind urban violence and scenes of racial conflict. They moved in synch with one another, despite their markedly different heights and physiques, subtly taking cues from the sound of each others’ breath and footfall, as well as from the soundtrack.

This is not an easy work to watch: the dancers speak, one delivering a long and weary monologue in Portuguese that seemed to be about how terribly tired she is and how difficult it is to be a black woman; another dancer angrily demanded, over and over, ‘See me; why can’t you see me?’, before looking members of the audience in the eye and telling them to ‘F*** off’. Nobody answered back, and nobody walked out, but at that moment, I felt that anything might happen.

I was disappointed that there was no accompanying programme available for the performance; not even a QR code to link to information about the production. I had to search the Web to find the names of the three accomplished and talented dancers: Aisha Webber, Amanda de Souza, and Paris Crossley.

Maggie Watson
12 March 2023

Find out more about Joseph Toonga and Just Us Dance Theatre here

 

The Four Seasons, JamesWiltonDance, The North Wall, 10th March 2023 – Maggie Watson reviews

On Friday evening as part of an intensive Dancin’ Oxford week of events, JamesWiltonDance presented The Four Seasons before a packed auditorium, preceded by a lively ‘curtain raiser’ by a dozen local students who had attended a company workshop. Choreographers and performers James Wilton and Sarah Jane Taylor have created a truly immersive dance work, with designs by Vibeke Andersen, to Vivaldi’s music as recomposed by Max Richter with extensions by Michal Wojtas. The entire audience seemed to hold its breath from the first moment, as Taylor slowly emerged like an amoeba from a chrysalis, while the light gently glowed and dimmed, suggesting the passing of day and night.

Taylor and Wilton seemed to move in perfect unison, using every part of their bodies to support themselves, creating the illusion that they were drifting in space. Embracing, carrying, catching, and holding each other, they sometimes seemed to swim in the air, opening up to the warmth of the sun. Their arms were like slowly beating wings when they carried one another, back-to-back, and the mysterious globe that descended from above like the moon seemed to draw them as if they were the tides of the sea. They danced alongside the score rather than slavishly following it, yet when they stood vertically, close together, there was an almost Baroque formality that echoed colours in the music. The choreography carried ideas that it is impossible fully to capture in words, reminding us of the overwhelming extent of the cosmos, and our tiny part in it.

Maggie Watson
11th March 2023

 

Unknown Realms, ACE Dance and Music, The Mill Arts Centre, Banbury, 8th March 2023 – Maggie Watson reviews

On Wednesday night, ACE Dance and Music presented a two-part programme of original work; TNBT – The Night Before Tomorrow by Serge Aimé Coulibaly, and Mana – The Power Within, by Vincent Mantsoe and Gail Parmel. In TNBT artificial grass, benches and a table, alongside the seven dancers (five women and two men) dressed in casual hot-weather street clothes, suggested an outdoor scene. The company burst across the stage to Yvan Talbot’s score with a blistering energy; leaping, spinning, falling, they seemed driven by a furious rage against each other and against the audience. Their ferocity felt like an assault as they vented their anger, silently mouthing words that we could not hear, challenging each other, yet strangely dissociated from one another, pursuing their own trajectories as they moved between different formations, brief duets and solos. There was a passing feeling of more intimate connection between the guest performers Thabang Motaung and Mthoko Mkhwanazi, who introduced a sense of wit in a dance in which they interacted moving with fluidity and precision, but the overall impression was one of isolation. When Mirabel Huang-Smith danced on the table, although she was surrounded by the company, strobe lighting seemed to capture her movement in a series of stills, as if she was being observed by outsiders.

 

Varsity Dance Competition. St John’s College Oxford Auditorium, 12th February 2023 – Maggie Watson reports

Hilary (or ‘Lent’) Term can be bleak with its freezing weather and public examinations, so the 7th Annual Varsity Dance Competition on Sunday, at the start of Oxford’s Fifth Week, was a high spot of energy and warmth. This year, Oxford University Contemporary Dance (OUCD) was host to Cambridge University Dance Competition Team (CUDCT) for the event in St John’s College Auditorium, which buzzed with chatter as friends, families and dance fans crammed in. There were tantalising glimpses of competitors, with hair ready dressed and costumes concealed by their team tracksuits, and the audience was bursting with excitement by the time the Presenter, Leah Aspden, took the stage to open the match.

Varsity Dance pits each troupe against the other in seven categories: Tap; Jazz; Solo/Duet/Trio; Contemporary; Street; Ballet, and ‘Wildcard’. The winner must take at least four of them, and both teams were clearly ‘in it to win it’. Supporters cheered them on, whooping at virtuosic feats and applauding wildly after each dance. The judges sat alone and slightly apart from the tumultuously enthusiastic audience in their reserved row of seats, and without knowing which team was which, used clear scoring criteria to award marks for choreography, technique, performance and execution.

 

Coppélia, Varna International Ballet, New Theatre, Oxford. Monday 30 January 2023 – Maggie Watson reviews

The Varna International Ballet dancers are youthful, energetic and engaging. On Monday, they danced Coppélia, one of the three great nineteenth century ballets that they brought on a three-day touring visit to Oxford (the others being Giselle and The Nutcracker; they are also presenting Swan Lake at some venues). This is a very hard working company and orchestra delivering performances to a terribly demanding schedule: they were in Darlington the previous week, and opened in Ipswich immediately after Oxford, in a tour that takes in 23 theatres in about ten weeks.

Monday evening’s show was an opportunity to see a version of Coppélia with choreography credited to Alexander Gorsky and Gergana Karaivanova that is markedly different from the more familiar English productions. Gone were most of the mime sequences, the traditional national dances and some of the corps de ballet set pieces. Other changes included the introduction of a tricky pointe solo for the dancer playing the doll, and the substitution of a more visibly virtuosic repertoire for the variations in the third act; there were a great many fouetté turns! These choices distanced the ballet from its origins at the end of the French romantic era, and gave it a very different flavour.

I did not feel that the production was true to the style of the original ballet, but it was bright and cheerful, fully costumed (the women in gauzy romantic tutu skirts lit with bright colours), and staged with a projected background, but otherwise a full set. The illustrated programme included an article about the composer Léo Delibes by Philip Ashworth, and brief biographies with photographs of the soloists, who had trained in a range of schools and styles. It is unsurprising, given the rigours of touring, that overall the quality of the dancing was somewhat variable, but there was lovely upper body movement to be seen in some of the corps de ballet dancers’ ports de bras, and the best of the soloists delivered buoyant grand allegro, strong pointe work and dynamic pirouettes.

The company played to a good house and the enthusiastic applause demonstrated that, post-pandemic, there is an audience eager for full-length classical ballets in Oxford.

Maggie Watson

5th February 2023

 

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

 

Jennifer Homans on 20th-century choreographer George Balanchine, in conversation with Dame Hermione Lee; Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, St Hilda’s College. A joint DANSOX and Oxford Centre for Life-Writing event, 24th November, 2022 – Maggie Watson reports

On Thursday 24th November, DANSOX and the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing presented a joint event in the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, St Hilda’s College, Oxford. DANSOX director Professor emeritus Sue Jones introduced the Centre’s founder, Dame Hermione Lee, who interviewed writer, academic, and former dancer Jennifer Homans about her biography Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century.

Homans had spent ten years working on the book: in 2017 at the Dancing Lives conference at Wolfson College, Oxford, she spoke of her quest to explore Balanchine’s work with a view revealing the man himself through the dances that he created. Five years on, this was an opportunity to discover more about that process and about how Homans had addressed the problems that she had encountered.