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Charles Linehan founded his own company in 1994 believing that ‘dance as a medium has the ability to involve an audience in a way that other art forms cannot’. Having toured and taught extensively throughout Europe, his company returns to Dance Umbrella as part of its first nationally funded UK tour, promising “an evening of seriously entertaining
dance” (Time Out).

His latest work, a duet for Greig Cooke and Andreja Rauch, is a Dance Umbrella commission. A new and re-worked version of Speak, Memory, one of last year’s commissions, completes the programme. This beautiful and mesmerising work features music by Julian Swales, video projection by Wendy Houstoun and lighting by Lucy Carter.

www.charleslinehan.co.uk/flash.html

In 1998 Charles Linehan was the winner of a Jerwood Choreography Award.

"Linehan's movement has an apparently spontaneous quality of fluent energy which the dancers seem to relish..." Dance Now
“his cool delicate productions of cool contemporary dance make audiences swoon” Evening Standard

SPEAK, CHOREOGRAPHER
by Donald Hutera

“I’m usually evasive about my work,” admits Charles Linehan. His personal reticence isn’t a problem, given the exceptional quality of his dances. Linehan’s forte is the elusive emotional undercurrents of human interaction. Submerged in ambiguity, his subtle, atmospheric dances thrive on implication. It’s the balance between the physical clarity of the movement and its non-explicit meaning that makes his choreography so special.

Consider the elusive, evocative Speak, Memory. This dance inhabits some pretty deep thematic shadows. It could be read as a kinetic reflection of the continuum of time. The movement - glancingly sharp, yet tugging and pensive - is delineated by dancers of alert ease and presence. A duet of deliberate but fleeting contact between long, tall Henry Montes and compact Ioana Popovici is a particularly fine indicator of the Linehan style. The dance’s inherent contradictions are echoed in Julian Swales’ cyclical ambient score, supplemented by rock-like rhythms, and Wendy Houstoun’s grainy, colourless video of nocturnal fireworks, imagery suggesting both celebration and disaster.

His new Umbrella commission, a duet for dancers Greig Cooke and Andreja Rauch, is related to Speak, Memory but is “harsher, much more physical work.” It’s also about a relationship. “There’s no way of getting away from that,” he says, “and no reason why you should.” The score is again by Swales, who is working on riffs and loops of the source material Linehan has given him. The goal, the latter says, is to “interweave lower and high-pitched frequencies, trying to get something that builds up in speed and energy.” The lighting will be by the young Finnish master Mikki Kunttu.

Having trained at the Rambert school, Linehan spent nearly a decade “dancing round Europe” before forming his own company in 1994. “I was quite lucky. Each time there was an opportunity to choreograph, I accepted it. So I got a lot of bad pieces out of the way before I showed in London. Doing everyone a favour. I’m interested in combining different movement,” he explains his motives and working method, “and in the inter-connectedness of performers and their human qualities. In the studio I set up conditions where improvisation is possible. It’s not a free-for-all. It’s very structured. Things happen that I can’t explain. They speak to me somehow.” He also believes in “changing things at the last minute so they don’t become routine. In live performance there are so many variables anyway.”

Linehan’s dances have been described as ‘distinctively English.’ This means little to him. “I’ve no idea if that’s true. My work could be a lot of things. In the past a lot of it hasn’t had a very long life. I’ve been forced to make pieces to get funding. I’d like to have some time away from choreographing to think about what I’m doing. But I can’t do that unless I get another job. I’ve been less confident only recently, because I’ve been questioning myself about dance. What does it mean to me?”
It is precisly this self-questioning that makes Linehan and his work such a sensitive asset to British - and international - dance.

WHO: CHARLES LINEHAN DANCE COMPANY
WHAT: SPEAK MEMORY /
NEW WORK
WHEN: TUE 22 - WED 23 OCT
WHERE: THE PLACE: ROBIN HOWARD DANCE THEATRE
TICKETS: 020 7387 0031

<small>[ 09-08-2002, 09:04: Message edited by: Donald Hutera ]</small>

Review in The Times.

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