Resolution goes to sea with a triple bill that evokes an eerie marine world as an expressionist metaphor for human perception. Lighthouse shows us the way. A light-rope strands us outside a safe emotional harbour. Two protagonists straddle this boundary, one a solo dancer, Hazel Lam, the other a writhing mass of translucent tubing like the tentacles of an unseen cephalopod. Approaching apprehensively, in silence, she becomes enveloped, enthralled, embraced … but she has crossed the emotional boundary, for as she releases herself to the sensuality of this relationship, the piece becomes a graceful aerial ballet, accompanied by Nyman-esque original music by Max Morris. Lam’s agility amalgamates art-forms to illuminate the strength of the tender over the terrifying.
The senses are inundated in Ondule. Laura Rouzet’s expressionist approach combines video and music in a mesmerising dance form, aquatic in its palpitating, pounding fluidity. With fellow choreographer, Alejandro Martinez, their synchronised patterns are organic, a single life-form. These organisms, girdled and veiled in articulated pink, are hyperactive decapods, which throb to a heartbeat sound as the cyclorama swirls with hydrodynamic globules. The promise of popping and voguing suggested a more angular and assertive style, but this performance takes the technique to a much more fluent form that is hypnotically watchable.
The mood is much different in Mara Vivas’s time/less, a contemplative study of the nature of time. We are on Crosby Beach. The superficial rusting on Antony Gormley’s statues is replicated in the long shifts worn by the performers, Lynn Dichon and Tara Silverthorn, who stand in silence. Gradually, by almost imperceptible degrees, they engage with each other and drift together. I’m an impatient sort of chap, and ached for action. It came as slo-mo miming of life’s experiences, and resolved by a manipulation of a representation of the celestial spheres. It is an elegant elegiac piece, which I will ponder for some time.
Reviewed on 13th of February by Mark Aspen within Resolution Festival