‘Currency’ Exchange in a Valuable Place

Tuesday evening at The Place saw dance artists indulge in their craft, sharing and nurturing their wealth of ideas in the form of ‘Currency’. This season aims for a common currency to be shared through experience, bridging cultures and crossing borders. Little needed to be added to the scrumptious feast served up in the basement; dance enthusiasts relished the chance to converse in all things dance over a plate of delicious falafels, hummus and salad. However this currency had yet to fully convert its followers. In the hours that followed, they happily meandered from floor to floor savouring the rich ideas of Frauke Requardt (Germany/UK) and Alessandro Sciarroni (Italy), Alma Söderberg (Sweden) and Tabea Martin (Switzerland).

Requardt and Sciarroni were given two days to explore, exchange and envelope their ideas. Their fluid exchange is delivered in an intimate sharing at the Founders’ Studio. Coined a ‘blind date’, this collaboration uses an economy of movement to highlight immense difference. Requardt scans the room with curiosity bringing intense awareness to her fingers’ gentle movements. She strokes her expansive, pregnant belly. Sciaronni joins in with his comparatively flat and hairy torso. We are invited to make comparisons with their bodies, their voices and their movement aesthetics. They carefully package their engagement, silently dressing and undressing, slapping and smirking, shaking and holding. The beauty of difference is unwrapped and laid bare.

Ryan Djojokarso and Stefan Baier question difference and homogeny in Tabea Martin’s ‘Duet for Two Dancers’. ‘I am a dancer and I dance like this’…’I dance exactly the same.’ Erotic, beautiful, wow, still, decisive, impossible and unexpected movements are executed with glittery nudity. The microphone perspires as some serious questions about identity are brought into the spotlight. ‘Since I became a dancer, I sometimes wonder if I chose the right profession.’ Baier has every right to wonder; his breath fails him as he delivers his lines, his arms quiver as they hold his partner above his head and his legs buckle as he comes down to the short mike. These performers fight tooth and nail to discover what their identity means ‘I doubt if this dance makes any difference at all’. Their labour results in sweat dripping from every pore. Exhausted, the men call for musical movements, throwing in the towel to the sound of Igor Stravinsky.

Music drives ‘Travail’, a rigorous solo by Söderberg. Her working tools include sound, movement and language; she shakes, stamps and sings ‘uncensored’. Her serious interest in sound sizzles through the space from the onset. Intense rhythms are thrown out from her hand held shakers. She punctures her ankle bells with beat box vigour. Her range of tones are phenomenal and it is a treat to see her move through the space to the sound of her homemade DJ set. Meanwhile, a coil of copper sits and asks to be seen in silence. We will Söderberg on through her exchange, and she seems extremely grateful for our support.

What is important about this currency is the manner in which it is shared pre, mid and post performance. ‘Come on in, take a seat,’ says Söderberg to a latecomer, happily resting from the opening moments of her ‘Travail’. Martin, with her little infant wrapped in a sling, silently encourages and smiles at her dancers as they invest in her acclaimed duet; ‘This is how I choreograph’, she says, leaving the stage with a trusting glance at her performers. Reqardt and Sciarroni are content to be engulfed by intrigued spectators following their interchange of movement ideas. ‘Why did you hit her?’, says a concerned viewer addressing Sciarroni, a small boney structure who slaps his date repeatedly on the arm. ‘Because I like a bit of violence’, Requardt interjects humorously, laughing with her bemused audience.

The value of the Currency season at The Place cannot be underestimated. I experienced fluid international exchanges in which shining gems came to the surface, bringing light to this precious art form. The ‘International Exchange of Danced Ideas’ flourished and enriched The Place over a mere four hours. The possibilities for this to grow are endless.

Currency at The Place, Night 2 – Alessandro Sciarroni & Mor Shani

The current Currency mini-season at The Place aims to facilitate a dialogue between dance artists from across Europe, in London.  The three evenings each consist of a pre-show sharing of brief work-in-progress (a collaboration between an associate Work-Place artist and a European practitioner, thrown together in a blind studio date), then double-bill of new and exciting work from across the continent.  Oh, and dinner!  At each evening, you are treated to a communal dinner in the café, where you can break bread, have a chat and share your thoughts before the main event.  The entire evening felt very relaxed and familial, with Eddie Nixon and his team joining in the fun and conversation too.

I’ll spare you my review of the café – although my veggie burrito was tasty and satisfying on a chilly evening after a hurried commute through the post-work throng – and move swiftly on the dancing.  Igor Urzelai and Chiara Frigo’s pre-show sharing in the airy Founder’s Studio certainly promoted the concept of danced ideas realised and shared.  The pair performed a series of gently unfolding arm gestures and focal shifts whilst in close contact.  Their movements accelerated and decelerated in waves of repetitions.  Midway through, they broke into a conversation, interrogating ideas of age, change and death (or, perhaps disintegration), addressing each topic with a lightness of touch that was both endearing and appealing.  An interesting collaboration to keep an eye out for in the future, should they explore this seed further.

Settling in to the Robin Howard Theatre, I was unsure of what to expect.  Alessandro Sciarroni’s Joseph posed the promise of ‘generating mysterious images like white rabbits from a magician’s hat’, and I couldn’t wait to see how the performer and choreographer was going to deliver!  My skepticism was soon kicked to touch, as Sciarroni not only presented indiosyncratic and humorous movement material, but played both puppet and master by controlling the soundscape and imagery projected onto the cyclorama from his laptop, which was set centre stage.  Setting up the theatrical device of using the computer’s camera to capture and project the front of his movement, the audience was able to take in three Sciarroni’s – his back, live on stage, his front, projected large, and him in miniature on the computer screen.  Well-chosen and timed musical shifts enhanced the increasingly bizarre projected versions – facilitated by some funky Photobooth effects – and led to a break in the action, and a shift towards the interactive with the opening of networking site Chat Roulette.  I don’t want to give away the ending, but Sciarroni manages to engineer a scenario where both virtual (or should that be remote?) participants and audience become as much part of the performance as the performer himself.   I would thoroughly recommend seeing Joseph if you have a chance – often  comical, at times contemplative, and concluding with an earnest dance in a Batman costume to an Antony and the Johnsons track, this piece was (literally) as engaging as it was entertaining.

Mor Shani positions his piece Flatland as a mockumentary based on a TED lecture presented by a neuroscientist who becomes, after a stroke, a subject in her own field of study.  An actor – who delivers a version of the original lecture verbatim – is joined by a trio of dancers who may or may not react and/or represent in movement what the actor presents in speech.  The piece, for me, was altogether simultaneously too transparent and too opaque.  I found the actor’s delivery condescending and trite (perhaps this was where the ‘mockumentary’ aspect came in?), and whilst the speech was over-elucidatory of the conceptual starting point of the piece, the relationship between the actor, his words and the dancer’s movement seemed to have no connection whatsoever.   The narrative arc of the dialogue suggested a lack of physical control, but a widening of mental horizons, whilst the movement was very restricted in both vocabulary and feeling.  An interesting concept, but the use of the actual lecture prose in the performance felt superficial, and pairing this with the movement was at best an odd juxtaposition.  This, in conjunction with what I felt was unnecessary and un-precipitated nudity and violence, left me longing for the whimsy that the programme note seemed to promise.