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Press release:

New Year's New Dance: Resolution! Fri 3 January – Sat 15 February 2003

January and February at The Place is dominated by Resolution!: six weeks, 33 nights, 100 companies, over 350 performers – The Place’s annual new year’s celebration of new dance.

With the scale of the festival comes the inevitable mix of the surprising, the intriguing, the infuriating and the just plain baffling. With three often wildly different pieces in each night’s programme, it’s unlikely to be boring.

Companies appear under one of three banners: First Footing – for new, UK-based choreographers who have completed dance training, Evolution – British companies returning to the festival, and Aerowaves – companies from continental Europe showing their work in the UK for the first time.

As ever, it’s hard to pick from such a crowded field, choosing between prang’s vertigo (Sat 1 Feb) and Arcane Dance Company’s Fear of Falling (Sat 4 Jan). The cream of this year’s crop may be Concordia’s Inside Of (Sat 25 Jan), Inka Hella’s In Between (Fri 17 Jan) or Martial Dance’s Neither Here Nor There (Mon 27 Jan). The lucky-dip arrangement of Resolution! has always been part of the fun.

There are some noted performers showing their developing choreographic talents in this year’s Resolution!, including Imlata’s Rani Nair (Fri 24 Jan), Random Dance’s Niklas Laustiola (Sat 25 Jan) and Richard Alston Dance Company’s Martin Lawrance (Wed 12 Feb).

For many of the artists, Resolution! provides an opportunity to show their most personal and passionate work, as with Zimbabwean Bawren Tavazina (Thu 30 Jan) and Lebanese Omar Rajeh (Maqamat Dance Theatre, Tue 11 Feb) who have each created work based on their experience of life in their troubled homelands.


The Place: Robin Howard Dance Theatre
17 Duke’s Road, London WC1
Resolution! 2003
Tickets and information: 020 7837 0031
www.theplace.org.uk

[FF= First Footing; E=Evolution; A=Aerowaves]
Company Work (choreographer)

Fri 3 January 8pm
(E) Dioden Dance Enchantment (Nigel Fitzsimmons)
(FF) Before the Fall BED (Sarah Dowling)
(E) Rosie Kay Dance Company Honey You’re a Pig

Sat 4 January 8pm
(E) Steven Whinnery Lying with the Animals
(FF) Elbow Room Angel On Runway (Jamieson Dryburgh)
(FF) Arcane Dance Company Fear of Falling (Joanna Rhodes)

Mon 6 January 8pm
(FF) Creative Dance Limited Femme Fatale (Sangeeta Ghosh & Kalithasan Chandrasegaram)
(E) Pretty Good Girl Dance Theatre Sally Up Steps (Louise Barrett)
(FF) white smoke Air Around (Fumi Tomioka)

Tue 7 January 8pm
(FF) Soma/Numa 3fold
(E) Sinman and Company The Third Sex (Sinman Yue)
(FF) Freefall Physical Theatre Friday Night (John Healey)

Wed 8 January 8pm
(E) Inter-Fiction Dark Game (Steven Murphy & Inter-Fiction)
(FF) Manoeuvre Dance 4 Scales (Vanessa Westgate)
(E) ‘What if?’ Dance Company In your element (Louise Dixon)

Mon 13 January 8pm
(FF) Linology Dance Company Spaceometry (Carly Annable)
(E) 10000 Steps Mimizu (Maho Ihara)
(FF) Imagina Dance Theatre My little black dress (Lovisa Tobieson)

Tue 14 January 8pm
(E) RE:DS Growth (Robert Eugene)
(FF) Paul Ibey La Volupte d'etre
(FF) Dancers Farm Dance Company Holy Hell (Maggie Ho-ki Kwan)

Wed 15 January 8pm
(FF) Wired Plaything (Wendy Hesketh)
(E) Rawhead Dance Theatre …We swung on the swing all day… (Rosaria Walker)
(FF) Abigail Marion Dance Company Buckledown (Abigail Cook)

Thu 16 January 8pm
(FF) Mano Creates Intimate Details (Leon Baugh & Delphine Gaborit)
(E) Plire Multi Dance InTransit (Tharan Revfem)
(E) Inka Hella In Between

Friday 17 January 8pm
(A) Antonio Montanile (Italy) Quoduo
(FF) Murby Residua (Adam Murby)
(E) Out On A Limb Copy (Gitta Wigro)
(FF) Do you know who i am? All In the Mind? (Anouska Anderson & Janice Draper)

Sat 18 January 8pm
(A) Wampeter (Russia) Wake Up Believing Happy (Alexandre Adiiashkine)
(E) Louise Katerega DNA: Destiny's Natural Ally (Sheron Wray)
(FF) Oblik Dance Company Deep Skin Divers (Elizabeth d’Aloia)

Wed 22 January 8pm
(E) Vilas con Krilas distorted waves (Helga Stromberger)
(FF) Roberto Filoseta Sadhaka
(FF) Marie-Louise Flexen Better Red than Dead

Thu 23 January 8pm
(FF) Abstract Abstract Stories (Frank Wilson)
(FF) Aud Aasbo Luggage
(E) Mobius Eye Spy (Kate Mason)

Fri 24 January 8pm
(A) Joclécio Azevedo (Portugal) Of cabbages and kings
(E) Rani Nair Cityscape
(E) Fracture Dance Theatre Verte (part 1) (Stephan Hickey)

Sat 25 January 8pm
(A) Concordia Dance (Czech Republic) Inside Of (Robert Tirpa’k)
(E) b-movie Room to Manoeuvre (Deborah Tiso)
(E) Niklas Laustiola Await Turn

Mon 27 January 8pm
(FF) Form in Motion Production Black Raisin (Fredrik Persson & Vivianne Jonsson-Valenzia)
(FF) Rajni Shah Theatre The Awkward Position (Rajni Shah & Nicola Conibere)
(FF) Martial Dance Neither Here Nor There (Martin Robinson)

Tue 28 January 8pm
(FF) Das Bewegungstheaterensemble Köln Angels (Susanne Beschorner)
(FF) Jia-Yu Chang The Onion House
(FF) Dance Out! Duel (Dora Frankel)

Wed 29 January 8pm
(FF) who_loves2dance.company d_o_c
(FF) Alice's Restaurant I Will Arise And Go Now (Alice Sara)
(E) Smallpetitklein Dirty (Thomas Small)

Thu 30January 8pm
(FF) Pasgetti Thinking With Our Feet (Maria Blundell)
(FF) Bawren Tavaziva I do not own a shy tongue
(E) Max Barachini OUBLIQUE: things i forgot to tell my dad

Fri 31 January 8pm
(A) Rapid Eye Movement (Netherlands) (Daniel Renner)
(E) Jacky Lansley Coats And Plays: A Work In Progress
(E) Chard Gonzalez Eyespace

Sat 1 February 8pm
(A) Two Fish (Germany) Christiane Muller, Gabriel-max-str. 2, 10247 Berlin (Angela Schubot)
(FF) ChwHo Linsia (Chris Ho)
(E) prang vertigo (Marina Collard)

Mon 3 February 8pm
(E) Combination Dance Company off-side (Anne-Marie Smalldon)
(FF) Vena Ramphal Fluid Transformations
(FF) Synapse Mitochondria Eve (Sayaka Tamagawa)

Tue 4 February 8pm
(FF) Moved Dance Theatre The Yellow Wallpaper (Stephen Mason)
(E) Gabriela Solini Mebras
(FF) Inside Out Dance Pictures and Fingerprints (Josephine Dyer)

Wed 5 February 8pm
(E) 5/thirds projects She dwells in... (Meghan Flanigan)
(E) Christopher Tudor Dance Company Portrait
(FF) solas Clepsydra (Monica Argenton & Linda Remahl)

Thu 6 February
(FF) Angelus Dance Three-Inch Golden Lilies (Karen Mok)
(FF) fLight Dance Approaching Pasts (Deborah Light)
(E) Gelede Dance Sky Burial (Menelva Harry)

Fri 7 February
(A) Ekka Dance Theatre (Iceland) Eva3 (Aino Freya Järvelä & Karen Maria Jónsdóttir)
(FF) Jean Abreu Hibrido
(E) genau 10 sec. (Maika Klaukien )

Sat 8 February 8pm
(A) MAD center (Romania) Today at 7pm (Ioana Macarie)
(E) Jane Sekonya Untitled
(E) Darkin Ensemble Cosmopolitan (Fleur Darkin)

Mon 10 February 8pm
(FF) Twitch 1 in 365
(E) Kompani Helt Enkelt Temporal Resident (Rikke A. Sundberg)
(E) little mishaP pRODUCTIONS Dancing with Dinosaurs (Liz Mitchell)

Tue 11 February 8pm
(FF) Maqamat Dance Theatre Beyrouth Jaune (Omar Rajeh)
(FF) Lilith’s appetite Third Body (Larissa Tiusainen)
(E) Ionaeon Sphere (Tom Dale)

Wed 12 February 8pm
(E) Kaisa Oinonen Marked
(FF) .AINT.&.INNER. Dance Theatre The Cactus Land (Camille Litalien)
(E) Martin Lawrance Grey Allegro

Thu 13 February 8pm
(E) Brazen Dance Theatre Branded (Caroline Bridges)
(E) Paradigmz Physionyx PTII
(E) Kompany Nikita Nieomal (Nearly/All but) (Victoria Fox)

Fri 14 February 8pm
(A) Claire Croizé (Belgium) Blowing Up
(E) Naked Fish Productions Fugue for a Furnished Flat (Sarah Fahie with Antonio Caporilli)
(FF) In Our Own Company Aftermath (Gildas Diquero)

Sat 15 February 8pm
(A) Ipso Facto Danse (France) Sense of humour is like guard dogs. It’s vigilant
(E) Lamat Dance I don’t agree (Carmen Vilches)
(FF) Irven Lewis Ignite

*********************************************

From across Europe to The Place: Aerowaves 2003

From Iceland to Siberia, the line-up for Aerowaves 2003 stretches the boundaries of continental Europe to deliver the most wide-ranging and ambitious international programme yet for Resolution! – the UK’s biggest new dance platform event.

29 Aerowaves partners – dance promoters from 29 different European countries – have selected ten companies from over 200 applicants to appear in Aerowaves. They showcase the rich variety of new work being made across our continent, and they are all performing in London for the first time.

The influences behind the work are diverse: from Antonio Montanile’s solo inspired by the philosophy of Pascal, to Joclécio Azevedo’s work for four dancers based on the writings of Lewis Carroll.

Equally varied are the physical achievements of the companies: from Two Fish, whose work was originally devised for five people and a small 3-room apartment in Berlin, and is now remounted on a bare stage, to Wampeter, whose performers are travelling 3,359 miles from Novosibirsk in South Eastern Russia to perform in London.

Aerowaves companies form the first component of the Resolution! triple bills on Friday and Saturday evenings from 17 January.

Aerowaves 2003 (performances at 8pm)

Fri 17 January: Antonio Montanile (Italy) Quoduo
Sat 18 January: Wampeter (Russia) (chor: Alexandre Andriiashkine) Wake Up Believing Happy
Fri 24 January: Joclécio Azevedo (Portugal) Of Cabbages and Kings
Sat 25 January: Concordia Dance (Czech Republic) (chor: Robert Tirpa’k)
Inside Of
Fri 31 January: Rapid Eye Movement (Netherlands) (chor: Daniel Renner)
Sat 1 February: Two Fish (Germany) (chor: Angela Schubot) Christiane Muller…
Fri 7 February: Ekka (Iceland) (chor: Aino Freya Järvelä & Karen Maria Jónsdóttir) Eva3
Sat 8 February: MAD Center (Romania) (chor: Ioana Macarie) Today at 7pm
Fri 14 February: Claire Croizé (Belgium) Blowing Up
Sat 15 February: Ipso Facto Dance (France) L’humour des chiens de garde

The Place: Robin Howard Dance Theatre
17 Duke’s Road, London WC1
Resolution! booking line: ++44 (0)20 7837 0031

<small>[ 12-06-2002, 16:56: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

Just a reminder that if you book now, you may get some cheap seats to see this celebration of tomorrow's dance.

It's underway, folks!

Resolution!
By Donald Hutera for The Times


DANCE addicts know that The Place will supply their new year fix. Each January this key venue hosts Resolution!, the UK’s biggest platform for emerging artists and new work. Continuing until February 15, the 2003 edition encompasses 33 triple (and one quadruple) bills, 100 companies and more than 350 performers. And no two nights are the same.
Programming is split three ways, with the British contingent in two categories: festival virgins, and those who have shown work in previous seasons. The third, which doesn’t kick in until January 17, focuses on European groups playing London for the first time. Competition for the latter is fierce. Out of more than 200 applications, only ten companies are selected by John Ashford, director of The Place theatre, and his continental counterparts. This year’s winners range from Iceland to Siberia.

click for more

Resolution
By Judith Mackrell for The Guardian

The point about Resolution, the Place's annual showcase for novice choreographers, is that each of its mixed programmes should feel like a random sampling of work. Any one performance will not give audiences a coherent overview of new directions in British dance, nor a startling glimpse of new talent. The shows are more likely to suggest the ways in which young choreographers are picking up on the trends that dominate the high-profile activity at the top of their profession.
Creative Dance Limited are two dancers who, having trained in classical and contemporary Asian forms, are now interested in bending their inherited language to the shapes and rhythms of other vocabularies.

click for more

Resolution! Sat 25 Jan 2003
Robin Howard Dance Theatre
Concordia Dance/b-movie/Niklas Laustiola

It’s a common fault for young writers to squash all the ideas they ever had into their first novel, just in case they never write another. Thanks to festivals like Resolution! young dance makers have an annual forum to present and develop their work, but they still suffer from the same problem – too many ideas all thrown together, rather than a single one, explored and developed.

b-movie are the prime culprits tonight. Deborah Tiso’s ‘Room to Manoeuvre’ comprises a series of danced interludes interspersed with video clips and some playing with props. There are plenty of interesting possibilities here – a dancer creates strange shapes by stretching her clothes; two men mould each other’s faces and limbs like puppets – but they are merely toyed with and don’t have the impact they could.

For example, the piece opens with a chair, table, plant, basket, rug and a chicken on stage. One by one, a woman takes each object off while at the same time, a video projected onto the backdrop shows the same woman, in a park, bringing each item into view and setting up the opening picture on the lawn. So as she takes the plant off stage, she is bringing it on screen at the same time. What would have been more effective would be to take the plant off stage and only then bring it on to the screen, as if the two worlds were connected.

It’s a small detail but, to me, it would have made this idea coherent rather than just quirky. It's likely that I’m completely missing the point, but that was my problem with this piece – it was very easy to miss the point. There was some nice dancing from the company, but it was obscured by gimmick.

Two of tonight’s pieces used video projections (you’re probably more likely to get funding if your proposal includes the word ‘multimedia’), and the two films were quite similar, both inspired by road movies and shot on amateur camcorder. They were also both pretty ineffective in enhancing the performance. On stage you can suspend disbelief, create impossible worlds and characters, or use a single object to signify something much bigger. But things are more literal on screen. Young dance companies don’t have much money to make fancy videos and it’s hard to conceal that you’re filming in your own house or the local park, wearing your dressing up clothes. There’s no room for imagination and the distance between the two mediums is clumsy.

Niklas Laustiola’s ‘Await Turn’ gets a little closer to integrating the stage and screen, but still it doesn’t seem entirely necessary. Opening with a blasting power chord from a live guitarist and blinding spotlights silhouetting the dancers, this started with a strong statement. The characters, at first, seem equally brash. A vamp in a red dress with black hair and stark white skin, and a macho man in paint splattered shirt. They dance through the stages of an affair – flirtation, first touch, passion, comfort, distance, intimidation – leading, lifting and manipulating each other.

When a second woman shows up their relationship becomes less clear cut, while bringing another body into the equation opens up the possibilities of playing with shape, balance and power. The fourth dancer, a transvestite (on film) stripped of his costume (on stage) contrasts the confident poise of his affected character with a lonely tormented solo. It is a piece full of confused identities, where people may not be all they seem.

Most pleasing in this programme was the first offering, part of the Aerowaves section of the festival which brings young companies from across Europe to Resolution! Robert Tirpak’s Concordia Dance came from Prague to perform ‘Inside Of’, a 16 minute duet which aimed to illuminate and bring together the male and female sides of the human soul. That’s a tall order for a quarter of an hour, but the lyrical choreography was full of grace and intrigue and Tirpak’s partner Helena Arenbergerova was particularly captivating. Trapped inside circles of light, the dancers explored their own space, moving with a fluid and agile elasticity. Then breaking out, they confronted each other, tested, trusted and tore apart their alliance.

Apart from a nifty trick with lights and coloured water, ‘Inside Of’ remained relatively gimmick free, giving the performers a chance to prove themselves and putting the dance firmly in the spotlight.

<small>[ 26 January 2003, 09:02 PM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

Resolution!
31 January 2003
Rapid Eye Movement/Jacky Lansley/Chard Gonzalez

Question: How come body popping is so cool when it is so similar to mime – which is exceptionally uncool? You can’t help but wonder this as Amsterdam’s Rapid Eye Movement straddle that line between real artistic innovation and street theatre. A male dancer dressed in tight white executes slow motion robotics, as if caught under a strobe, priming us for this collision of hip hop and modern dance. And while there are echoes of Marcel Marceau this is mostly an innovative experiment. The three dancers are all very talented, and have obvious areas of expertise – one popping, one breaking and one contemporary dance – but the choreography succeeds in fusing these elements rather than cutting and pasting them together.

What makes this piece interesting, and set for the stage rather than a club or pavement, is the music. There’s no bouncing hip hop beats or feel-good 4/4 rhythm to drive us along. Instead, a soundtrack of electronic clicks and shhh, that could well be the flickers and brain waves of a sleeping nervous system. This immediately puts the movement rather than just the momentum on show. And it’s worth looking at. Hallmarks of hip hop remain, the unfeasibly fast footwork for example. Breakdancers spend a lot of time on the floor, feet and legs in the air, tipping upside down the natural order of the dancing body. Apart from a puppet routine (impressive, but it’s that mime thing again) choreographer Daniel Renner blends solos and synchronicity, the serious and showy into an absorbing half hour work.

The remaining two pieces approach dance from completely opposite directions. Jacky Lansley works with text, film and two actor/dancers in a carefully devised and not entirely decipherable piece, whereas Chard Gonzalez throws a group of amazing dancers on the stage together and just waits to see what happens. Lansley’s ‘Coats and Plays’ takes us inside a film, onto a London street where dance steps look like madness and a man recites Hamlet as cars drive by. A girl in a black coat, mute and tragic, repeats a sequence of movements. He partners her on stilts. Another woman looks on. It’s stark, yearning, abstruse and not completely satisfying.

After that it’s a relief to revel in pure movement with Gonzalez’s ‘Eyespace’. Seven dancers each have their own motifs, their own trajectory, but their exact decisions of time and space are made on-stage. They are dependent on the factors around them; the bodies in their path and the spontaneous sounds of Martin Payn’s percussion. Like any good improvisation, it’s a dialogue, an argument, with peaks and troughs, caution and explosion. They anticipate others’ moves and manipulate them with their own. The audience can create their own experience – follow one dancer’s story or take in the bigger picture, predict which paths will cross or enjoy the serendipity. There is some exceptional dancing; lyrical Alston-esque styling, beautiful strong balances and vibrant virtuosity. And when a dancer’s face bursts into a grin, you know they’re enjoying it as much as we are.

<small>[ 09 February 2003, 01:24 PM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

Resolution! 7th February 2003 – Ekka Dance Theatre; Jean Abreu; genau

This festival of new and developing talent can be a lottery. However, this was an evening when the Director, John Ashford was able to say afterwards, “It makes it all worthwhile.”

Ekka Dance Theatre from Iceland gave us “Eva3”, with choreography by Aino Freya Järvelä, Karen Maria Jónsdóttir and the two dancers, Erna Ómarsdóttir and Margarét Sara Gudjónsdóttir. The performers start with their backs to us, dressed in exquisite backless red dresses. After initial slow movement they take it in turns to dance with their bodies arched back so sharply that we see only see their necks and chins and their arms stretched out in cantilever shapes with sharply, trembling hands. After another period of stasis, they launch into an explosive duet with near-perfect timing. There is a mix of pace and styles and an effective section where one figure peers out several times from behind her taller colleague.

The piece created an atmosphere of physicality and sensuality that sometimes bordered on the disturbing, with one of the performers more assertive and ended with her spitting pieces of apple onto the body of her partner. The programme gave us no clues as to the themes in the piece; perhaps the dancers represented different aspects of the same character. I have to say that this was another instance of the general programme rule of The Place “Tell ‘em now’t”, where I felt that some insights into the background of the work would have been helpful.

The dance quality was high, especially from Erna Ómarsdóttir, who showed exceptional suppleness and dynamism. At 35 minutes I felt that the choreographic ideas were over-stretched, but “Eva3” proved a distinctive piece of dance theatre and I am keen to see more from this group.

The high spot of the evening for me was “Hibrido” by Jean Abreu. This was a First-Footing presentation, that is a first time visit by a company. However, we saw a wealth of dance talent from the performers – Abreu is with Protein Dance and Marion Ramirez has dances with various companies, including a notable duet with Darren Johnson. With a mix of Latin American and Modern movement, “Hibrido” has a strong structure and much choreographic interest and deserves to be seen by a wider audience.

At first the two dancers stand one behind the other and slowly move away in simultaneous solos at the end of a long diagonal. Abreu performed Capoeira moves with powerful grace and Ramirez moved sinuously and with a precision that sometimes took my breath away. After these extended linked solos, the dancers move together for an intense and fascinating duet full of sensuality and melancholy, as the two figures struggle to find common ground. At the end, we see them walking away from eachother in sadness.

The emotional charge of “Hibrido” was no doubt heightened by the fact that this was Marion Ramirez’s last performance here before her visa runs out. CriticalDance wishes her every success in New York, but we hope to see her back before too long, as she has proved one of the best young dancers performing in the UK over the past couple of years. Remarkably, this was Abreu’s first attempt at choreography and is one of the most promising debuts I can remember at Resolution!

To close we saw genau with a piece called “10 seconds” based on the memory span of a goldfish and a mix of other ideas, including a bossy dance teacher. This group of 8 dancers seems to specialise in humorous themes and I enjoyed the wit and the two kids in the central section stole the show as kids do. The previous Resolution! work by genau, ‘Absolutely J’, struck me as more tightly structured and the geometry of the full ensemble pieces in “10 sec.” was sometimes confused. Nevertheless in the serious world of modern dance, a lighter touch is always welcome and Akane Abe-Trimmer as the bossy teacher giving instructions in Japanese was good fun, as long as you weren’t one of her students.

Resolution! has another week to run – Thursday sees a CriticalDance contributor Vicky Costello performing with Kompany Nikita Nieomal and Friday and Saturday round off the Aerowaves series. If you haven’t tried the Festival before – give it a whirl.

Resolution! 14th February, 2003 - Aftermath; Naked Fish productions; Claire Croizé

Valentine’s Day at The Place was a special occasion with pink lighting, winged cherubs in the bar to dance your love messages (few takers, but we are English, after all) and vodka cocktails, not the sort of thing you associate with modern dance, but jolly nice.

The show was also special in various ways. For a start, we had four performances rather than the usual three. John Ashford, the Director of Resolution! usually contributes a few urbane words, but this has now expanded to a short slot in its own right. He organised a “Spot the Move” competition, which he described as “…like “Spot the Ball”, but without the ball.” After some parish notices about the evening, he showed us a few fragments of movement and told us that the first person to tell him where it occurred in the evening would win a bottle of Chateau Tesco champagne, complete with plastic bag – great fun!

So to the dancing and the highlight was “In Our Own Company” by Gildas Diquero. This was included in the First Footing section, but although Diquero has only choreographed one workshop piece before, he is one of the most adept modern dancers in the country and his partner in the work, Dylan Elmore also enjoys a strong pedigree from Batsheva Dance Company. To a mix of electronic sounds, piano tunes and narrative from director, Stuart Lynch, Elmore and then Diquero each performed a solo, while the other looked on. Both were danced to the highest standards and Elmore began and ended his section with a memorable move, with his arms curved in front of him and turning with a simple, but eloquent steps to allow his feet to catch up with his body. The relative softness of his dance was contrasted with Diquero’s solo with swinging arms stretched out and rapid, distance-covering steps.

But most remarkable was the duet that followed. This was filled with conflict and abrasive jerks and pulls, showing a relationship with many points of contact, but no harmony. Whereas Russell Maliphant’s male duets are all smooth power, “In Our Own Company” sometimes made me worried for the safety of the dancers. In the end there was a change of pace and a greater understanding between the two characters, reflected in dance where they accommodated, rather than resisted, each other’s dynamic. This was a successful second work from Gildas Diquero, although perhaps the solos could bear some editing. I hope we see more from this gifted dance artist.

Naked Fish Productions gave us “Fugue for a Furnished Flat”, choreographed and performed by Sarah Fahie and Antonio Caporilli. In a room the two characters follow their own paths to great humorous effect and a few comments about the consequences of taking self-interest too far. The dance opened with Caporilla playing a record on-stage repeatedly, occasionally looking across at Fahie. I remember thinking that he looked like a finalist in a Vinnie Jones look-alike competition and lo and behold, when he got up to dance we saw football kicks and headers amid speedy, neat steps. Eventually Fahie’s seductive, yet awkward movement gets his attention and they duet in their own styles, ending on the floor, wrapping themselves around each other. Post-coitus, Caporilla is more interested in a solo card game, shuffling the cards behind his partner’s back. After an anguished monologue and tears from Fahie, it begins to look as if Caporilla has begun to get the message. Then in a memorable coup de theatre finalé, he turns his attention to the audience, where about 10 people stood up and sang along to the Halleluiah chorus – his love of music comes first. While it sags a little in the middle, “Fugue” has enough jokes and interesting dance to make it an enjoyable work.

The Aerowaves piece “Blowing-up” from Claire Croizé showed her links to the Brussels school P.A.R.T.S, the formalist mode of Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and the non-dance movement of Jan Ritsema. The choreography was deliberately not beautiful and sometimes Croizé covered her vibrant body with two ugly coats. While there was no arguing with the commitment she showed with arduous sequences and rapidly shaking head, this was a work where I looked at the programme after 10 minutes and was dismayed to see that there was another twenty minutes to run.

Resolution! ended on Saturday and congratulations are again due to The Place and John Ashford and his team for providing a platform for 100 young companies and new choreography. I have certainly seen pieces that deserve a wider audience and that promise much for the future.

<small>[ 16 February 2003, 12:41 PM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

ChwHo Linsia and Two Fish Christiane Muller, Gabriel-max-str.2, 10247 Berlin – Sat 1st February 8p.m.

This was my first visit to a Resolution event and it was an interesting evening on which to cut my teeth.

The first piece ChwHo Linsia was described as being Tai Chi based and being greatly influenced by the precision and focus of this discipline. The stage setting had many lights hanging down from the ceiling which the two dancers, Lisa May Thomas and Victor Choi Wo Ma, had to negotiate their way round. The light given off from the setting gave a very calm and tranquil aura to the piece. However I was disappointed by the precision and togetherness shown by the two dancers, which I felt, was not cohesive enough to fully convey the choreographers’ intentions of light leading to a “harmonious and beautiful interaction with the environment”. The piece had the potential to do this and perhaps with further development could become quite visually stunning – there were certainly some clear ideas and moods coming through, it just didn’t quite make the connection I was hoping for.

It would be a disservice to describe Two Fish as just a dance piece as it goes way beyond that in terms of physical theatre and comedic qualities. The piece is set within a flat and in the programme notes it states that it can be performed in a private flat or a bare stage. We saw the bare stage version but the performers did an excellent job of defining both concrete space and their own personal, individual space by clever development of movements and motifs for their own characterisations. Own private monologues were delivered against physical contortions to enhance group relationships and dynamics within the “flat”. At times it was gloriously painful to watch as we recognised exaggerated human qualities in ourselves and friends/acquaintances. The “dancing” scene was one of the most hilarious magnifications of inhibition, competition and interaction, which in some ways defined the piece and its’ intentions. The comedy element really engaged the audience but the actual development of themes and choreography was well thought out and polished.

Resolution! 29 January 2003
who_loves2dance.company / Alice's Restaurant / Smallpetitklein

d_o_c, choreographed and performed by who_loves2dance.company - Tom Goodwin, Kathi Palitz and Alex Guembel, was at once an interesting choreographic exploration and an engaging performance.

Both the movement and the sound score had a continual abstract driving quality, layered with sections of ‘melody’. At times I felt myself about to disconnect from the work, but my interest was always revived at just the right times by fleeting, effective moments of unison, repetition and interactions between performers.

The piece did start to drag in the middle section, but thankfully picked up during the final third when a new, quirky movement vocabulary was introduced. This final section used spinning on the spot, which seemed to effectively connect with the audience, no doubt through tapping into childhood memories, as well as repetition of ‘mistakes’ (for example repeatedly failing to achieve a balance). These moments were combined with the more ‘serious’ movement, until what were initially unexpected moments of humour became cleverly engulfed in the other movement vocabulary until they had almost become abstracted.

These young dance artists demonstrated a mature approach to choreography and possessed a smooth, satisfyingly humble performance style.

For I Will Arise And Go Now Alice’s Restaurant created a fragmented urban sound and landscape with illuminated broken strips, representing a congested, complex network of roads, traffic noises and dancers dressed in grey walking monotonously, continually changing direction.

The focus then changed, in sharp contrast, to a solo woman standing by a lake (depicted by a diagonal column of light). She describes a memory or a dream, which we discover is her escape from city life.

Each of the one male and three female dancers took turns to ‘escape’ their monotonous, noisy, polluted urban life to their own private quieter, more relaxed place, and gradually the urban and escapist worlds intertwined.

This idea wasn’t explored choreographically as much as it could have been and the approach was an obvious one. This was a shame because the performers certainly seemed talented and could perhaps have coped well with a more challenging approach to the subject matter.

Smallpetitklein's Dirty opened by filling the theatre with an unbearably piercing noise whilst the one male dancer, dressed in black, and the four female dancers, dressed in mainly short skirts and tight tops, stood or sat still and arrogantly confident looking.

The following movement section, perhaps set in a club, was fluid, dynamic and sexy, often flirtatious and often ‘dirty’, with lots of Christina Aguilera style open knees. The performers were strong, in particular Matthew Westerby and the female dancer (with short hair) who emerged and the central characters in Thomas Small’s subtle tale of lust, attraction and not knowing when to hold back.

The tale concluded with the two central characters in an uncomfortably beautiful duet mixing passionate embraces and violent struggles. The violence was ambiguous and it was unclear whether this ambiguity was intended, to demonstrate a fine line between passion and struggle, or whether it just wasn’t conveyed strongly enough.

The male becomes dominant; snaking over the top of the girl, and then finally leaves her on stage looking and sounding distressed, while the sound of a man breathing heavily after physical exertion fills the stage. Meaning was hard to pinpoint until this end scene. Whether this was intended or not, it was arguably an appropriate way to convey the confusing nature of the thought provoking subject matter.

<small>[ 17 February 2003, 05:09 PM: Message edited by: Vicki C ]</small>