Falling Wide, Outsider Dancing, Toynbee Studios
- Performer/company: Falling Wide
- Production: Outsider Dancing
- Venue: Toynbee Studios
londondance.com - Lindsey Clarke, londondance.com, 19th July 07
Performance: 13 July 07
Outsider Dancing bills itself as a performance event bringing dance from “the edges and margins of UK dance” and putting it centre stage. Its performers are described as maverick and the various programme notes are largely unhelfpul. What a pleasant surprise, then, to experience Outsider Dancing as an accessible, enjoyable and diverse dance bill in a truly genial environment.
Opening with a sinister and mysterious solo from Carolyn Roy to the rambunctious and seemingly inappropriate “What’s New Pussycat” a portable telly flickered to itself as Roy, on all fours and a fabulous dress, moved very slowly. Her intricate and obsessive paper, scissors, stone hand sequence was captivating, if very little else happened.
Including Rebecca Skelton films in each half of the programme was an inspired choice. Both Wall Dancing and Daphne were beautiful explorations of the body and its relationship to the landscape around it. In the first instance, Skelton pressed herself against a textured beach front wall and, in Daphne, lingered in a desolate attic room robed in a lush green silk dress. Atmospherically shot and cut together these films were utterly compelling.
The curator, Joe Moran, presents his own work Ending to take us to the interval. Tracing circles on the wall his body movement creates a continuous freeform scrawl. To the gorgeous soundtrack of Anthony and the Johnsons, he expresses his own wilfully deviant dance vocabulary; all unpointed toes and failed extension. At time it verged on clumsy but was lifted by the poignant song and the piece came alive when Moran was joined on stage by a motley crew of dancers shadowing him like adoring disciples, rapt and emulating his every move. At the penultimate moment he hovered weirdly Christ-like as if supported by his strange troupe and faded away.
Back after the interval Kate Brown’s Too Late, Too Late hit an upbeat note with an excellent group of five dancers line dancing in stetsons to Johnny Cash. They don’t settle for the fun aspect, though, and the formality and repetitiveness disintegrates into intriguing individuality from four diverse bodies using contemporary dance and some wonderful high releases.
Intimate Contenders, Moran’s duet with Florence Peake, is an athletic, progressive and stuttering piece which culminates in a defeated Peake losing control of her body, wavering and collapsing committing herself to Moran’s support.
The reconstruction of Claire Henderson Davies’ Chair/Pillow was the perfect close to the bill with its cast of many, diverse performers participating in the easy, repetitive routine of sitting, standing and pillow flinging. Delightful in its simplicity and immediate impact the piece grows as more performers join the fray and certainly makes you want to get up from the audience and join in.
It would be great to see Outsider Dancing become a regular fixture and bring more marginal artists to the stage in such a creative and unintimidating way. More please.
Members - Libby Costello
Performance: 13 July 2007
A portable TV shows footage of waves lapping the shore whilst a dancer slowly crawls, cat-like, backwards across the stage. Bland components of a postmodern work were the first images of Outsider Dancing. The programme was busy with works by Carolyn Roy, Joe Moran and Kate Brown, to name but a few, plus dance films interspersed between the live work by Rebecca Skelton. This selection of postmodern work culminated in a reconstruction of Yvonne Rainer's seminal piece Chair/Pillow by Claire Henderson Davis.The new work on the whole did not spark much enthusiasm from the audience but moments of humour and well-constructed ideas were acknowledged.
Ending by Joe Moran was an interesting piece. Using a pen to draw out circular pathways on a white backdrop, the soloist then performed a series of movements echoing the flowing lines. This piece was held together structurally and thematically by an Anthony and the Johnsons song, Hope theres someone. Moran's solo took on the dynamics of music, his movements more lyrical in nature than in the opening section which was performed in silence. The chorus of dancers who joined Moran, followed and watched him in a seamless flow of movement, like tumbleweed blowing in the wind. The dancers who varied in age moved as a group creating shapes behind the soloist, finally came to rest in a biblical pose surrounding and supporting Moran.
Too late, too late! choreographed by Kate Brown was extremely well performed and captured the style of the Judson era. The five dancers, of which Gill Clarke was in a class of her own, performed a range of movements from simple walking patterns to Johnny Cash to entertaining sequences of jumps, turns and gestures to a the operatic vocals of Kathleen Ferrier. Brown's ability to use timing and simplicity created an inviting piece, which brought a new perspective to the music that she used.
The final piece of new work that stood out from this programme was Intimate Contenders by Kirstie Richardson. The theme of gravity was creative in parts but worked with ideas that have been played with by many choreographers previously. The ending section of this duet, which saw Florence Peake’s body begin to collapse in a series of different body combinations, was expertly performed and portrayed a real sense of lack of control.
The main event of the evening was clearly the final reconstruction of Rainer's work by Henderson Davis. This reconstruction used a variety of different bodies to great effect, creating the almost dynamic free unison work Chair/Pillow. This work included twelve dancers, along with their chairs and pillows performing to the Tina Turner classic, River Deep, Mountain High. The initial trio set up this repetitive sequence of movement before being joined in turn by a row after row of dancers, chairs and pillows. The movements saw the dancers sitting on their pillows, standing on their chairs, dropping their pillows and slapping their chairs, all with a focus devoid of any emotion, regardless the actions being performed. It can only be hoped that this exceptional reconstruction will be performed for many more audiences.
