Choreographer Ben Duke has an unusual approach to dance. He wants to combine dance and narrative and tries, like artists showing their brushstrokes, to allow dance to “…reveal rather than disguise…” the dancers.
Starting with an idea about "people in a space", the end result of The Life and Times of Girl A is a self-referential piece featuring a chic and beautifully coiffed young woman on a stage whose three sides are occupied by sliding double-door white screens.
She asks the audience to "imagine this is a film" and describes the shots and angles involved as her narrative unfolds. She is like an impotent director, not quite getting the moves she wants from the dancers who have to play the crowds in what is to be an airport. Of course, these "false" moves are done with consummate skill and perfect synchronisation by the ten barefoot dancers, dressed in colours that were bright and subdued at once, creating a pleasing aura.
At times, the action is shown on the white screens, but just a second out of sync , drawing attention to the making of the piece. At one point, the film ends and the dancers’ real reflections are on the screen but these real reflections are fuzzy, unclear like life itself – nothing is what it seems.
We see this narrator, set apart from the rest by her actions, by her dress and appearance. We see her reaching a crossroads in her life and how she makes a choice.
There is a poignant scene where her lover appears from the past and another young woman’s voice overtakes hers. Is it a rival or her own inner voice taking over? Who is who? When she eventually joins in, dancing in time with the group, then making their own moves, she may be learning that she can be an individual even in a crowd.
This absorbing and unusual piece is punctuated with music by Fourcolour, Godspeed you! Black Emperor, Silver Mt Zion Track, The Cure, Bach and Animal collective.
The second piece in this dance double bill is NQR, which is an acronym ("Not Quite Right") formally used in medical records to describe unexplained difference. A starkly different work from the first, not least for its having three choreographers who have produced this startling spectacle.
The stage is strewn with translucent white cubes held together with black studs. The dancers are dressed variously in black and white, looking at once clinical, bureaucratic and vulnerable. They begin the dance to metallic sounds seated and moving on the floor, a hint to the theme. Small hands and feet appear over one of the boxes but it is not a child, but a small adult (Caroline Bowditch). Contrary to the costumes, nothing is in fact black and white.
In the programme, Caroline writes about discussions held in the group about how fellow dancer and wheelchair user, Marc Brew, and she would be covered should either of them be unable to perform. The discussion covered whether or not wheelchairs would be used; whether they would be a prop or represent something more political. The situation has not arisen, so the question remains. I can only observe that this company works together on stage in an equal and co-operative manner and style that suggests the issue would be resolved in a way to entertain and amaze as they did in NQR. Their joint seated bow at the end was significant.
I have a residing image of the energetic wheelchair ballet between Marc Brew and one of the company (sorry, I can’t recall which dancer in particular, but what fantastic moves!) The showing of various couples’ dynamics in the show was insightful and realistic. There is a wonderful surreal element with a measuring tape that measures things beyond mere feet and inches like someone being ‘three feet from happiness’. All this to the live cello music of Robin Masson. Lovely!