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Flash Review 2, 10-31: Cyber Dance
in the Church
Random Dance at Danspace, UKinNY
By Josephine Leask
Copyright 2001 Josephine Leask
NEW YORK -- One doesn't usually associate
churches with cyber space, so for Random Dance, a company whose work is about
new technology and virtual dance, St. Mark's Church, home to presenter Danspace
Project, might have seemed a strange choice of venue. However, having seen the
company many times in London, I felt that its New York appearance was a particularly
strong one. St. Mark's is not a high- tech venue, and Random had adapted its performance
accordingly, but the high ceilings, elegant architecture and the intimacy of the
church seemed to show off the projections, virtual images and live performance
to their best advantage. In spite of the downgrading, the dancers appeared confident
and totally in the work from start to finish.
The company presented "The Trilogy,"
a culmination of several years work and three major projects which have all explored
digital technology and movement. Random is one of the first British dance companies
to have worked in this field, under the directorship of choreographer Wayne McGregor,
whose interest in computer technology together with an idiosyncratic movement
style has made him one of the UK's most popular choreographers. He has evolved
a new technique for a younger generation of dancers whose liquid softness from
a training in release techniques has been treated with an angular precision, then
performed at speed to create a complex dance language that bodies of older generations
could not articulate. McGregor has done to release technique what William Forsythe
has done to ballet - taken it to a daring extreme, stretching the limits of the
body.
"The Trilogy" is based on the components
of Water, Fire, Air and Earth. Both the choreography and images seem to focus
on how these elements merge, are broken down or mutate into different forms. A
net cyclorama hangs between the dancers and spectator onto which are projected
digital images. Behind the hazy mirage of the net curtain, the eight dancers appear
and disappear in solos and groups joined by other virtual bodies as if on a computer
screen. With the pulsating industrial sounds of zoviet*france and the fast, punctuated
movement of the dancers, the atmosphere is one of intensity and suspense. The
effect of the bodies in slippery blue costumes moving like androids in the dim
lighting creates a particularly alien nuance which juxtaposes with the familiar
spirituality of the church.
Next, a huge image of what appears
to be a flame morphs into one dancer's body and signals the transition of Water
into Fire. Now, bathed in brighter lighting and dressed in tight red body suits,
the dancers resemble the crew of a spaceship. Their movements are purposeful and
they work together as a team, as if their lives depend on it. To the loud ambient
sound of crackling, two dancers appear stripped down to their underwear in a hot
wash of light, as if in the process of burning out to some pure raw state. Accompanied
by their virtual partners on screen, they seem to grow out of one another in an
endless confusion of limbs.
As if a carbonized copy, McGregor
himself appears in black, accentuating his long aerodynamic body. His brief solo,
in which his razor-sharp long limbs seem to cut up the space, is as disturbing
as it is striking. As he leaves, the net curtain separating us from the dancers
falls and he drags it off like a strange alien bird of prey hauling its victim.
We are left with images of membranes or floating amoebas that menacingly fly around
the walls.
A radical shift in light, sound and
mood takes us into the final phase of the 'Trilogy,' which includes Baroque music,
baroque touches to the costumes and partner work, all still with the jagged aesthetic
but softened with more human interaction and playfulness. This conveys the solidity
of Earth although it is the earth of some futuristic planet, where elements of
the classical clash with some reinvention of nature. Somehow, clearly visible
for the first time, the movement loses some of its intensity, and the work becomes
less unique. We are definitely out of cyberspace now.
The company was invited as part of
the modest UK in NY season to bring a taste of British culture to New York, and
I couldn't help thinking that its cool, detached, precise aesthetic had a particularly
British look.
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