James Wilton, the new mover and shaker of the contemporary dance world, made philosophy the central theme of his latest choreography, Cave, for Tuesday night’s Resolution! at the Place.
Like any great thesis, this choreography was a slow burner, but the Eureka! moment came in the form of a ‘push me, pull you’ duet – a fast-paced contact section flooded with light from a downstage spot to dramatic effect. Two distinct movement styles peppered Wilson’s choreographic style: the men kept the piece grounded with their legs performing hip hop tricks in a lyrical fashion, whilst the women performed with a more puritan contemporary technique. The barrage of lifts that concluded this work left a lasting impression.
Laura McGill’s Palimpsest opened with a duet, which, despite its contemporary costuming and steps, emitted a courtly feel. Light touches between the couple, hand to hand, fingers barely contacting before the movement was over, all performed to a Baroque-infused score. In stark contrast, Steve Johnstone’s weighty duet that followed heightened the elegance of the initial duet. The central duet performed by Sarah Lewis and Gaelin Little dissolved into a trance-dance in silence but luckily it recovered to end on a high with a melancholy trio which saw the dancers move as if one organism.
The final piece of this triple bill came in the form of Richard Bermange’s Virus (pictured). Virus was quite possibly the happiest piece to grace the stage in the history of Resolution! The dancers threw themselves into the movement with gay abandonment, producing beautiful duets in the vein of Mark Morris’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato. The dancers took to the stage like pros, making it easy to forget that they were supposed to be depicting viruses – or perhaps they intended to spread happiness!
By Libby Costello
Resolution! 2011 finishes tomorrow night.
