Review of Siobhan Davies work - Plants and Ghosts.

I watched this piece on film.
The work starts out with one dancer in the space moving her feet rapidly, (for search of a better word) 'bobbing' up and down whilst slowly moving backwards. She moves backwards though the space which you can then see is a transverse staging space with audience on either side while the dancing takes place down the middle. The music by Max Eastley is an installation piece of music that sounds naturalistic, as if we are outside. The basic long black trousers and black sleeveless tops prevent to costume from distracting from the piece while at the same time making the limbs of the dancers stand out as the lighting is fairly dark and blue. After the first dancer has moved back she is joined by more dancers, weaving and moving around the space in a straight line floor patteren back towards the front of the space only just avoiding eachother as they do so. The dancers often drop down to the floor where they either pause their movement or repeat one movement several times before getting back up again.
After this there is a solo by a male dancer. He moves on the floor is more subtle gestures which contrasts dramtically to the group work which is a lot faster. His movements are fairly jerky and pulsed as he lies, sits, rolls and crawls around the floor. Although the movement is almost a little uncomfortable to watch it still encaputres the audience to all the details of it.
Throughout the piece the dancers seem to bounce inbetween this idea of fast fluid movements standing and pulsating slower movements on the floor. Another key theme that shows through whether intended or not seems to be this idea of contortsion within the body, with hands twisted so the wrists are facing forwards.
My favorite part of the piece is a solo part performed by a woman, this part uses voice and sign language. The movement idea is the sign language that goes directly with the voice used which tells a story. This story is repeated and every time this happens it gets a little more complex, so starting from a sentence about a woman eating meat and biting her tounge it develops into a full anicdote of how she got there, who she is with, that she doesnt like pain and so on. Each time the story develops we find out a little more of this information and there is a lot of humor in the story through the suprises we find out, such as when we find out the man she is talking to/ breaking up with is married.

Review of second year performance projects.

Performance Projects was a second year project at Coventry University showing progression through their work with an outside choreographer. These were shown through three different groups, the first working with Kirstie Richardson.

Kirstie Richardson performed her own solo as a part of the performance in a studio space. Her work appeared to be based around her own views and journey through her marriage. She started the piece by rolling her wedding ring across the space, this drew in the attention of the audience as it was done in silence so you could clearly hear the ring as it moved. She then moved to the middle of the space and spoke the simple line 'I am married', this set up the basis for the whole idea of her dance. Through out the piece she commented on her being married, how is wasn't part of the plan, this was throughly confusing and complicated to understand. This piece caused mixed feelings in all the people I talked about it with, but when it all came together with the movement the piece was moving and powerful.

The second piece was performed by Chameleon Dance Collective, a company put together by Kirstie Richardson, made up of 2nd year students. They dressed in plain white tops and purple leggings the dancers are in different parts of the Ellen Terry building, the audience are lead around the building to all the different places. The first place the dancers were improvising was on the stairs down the back of the building, as you walked down them you could see different dancers at the different angles. This created a new and unique effect of viewing works that I had not seen before where the audience were really involved as we travelled around the spaces that they were performing in. In one of the spaces the dancers were in two small rooms with pianos in, as they danced they moved around and occasionally hit keys of the piano making loud noises as the rest of the piece was in silence. At the end everyone stood around the top of some stairs as the dancers moved down them and out of sight. This idea of taking the audience to the dancers was really unique however it was key for the audience to be in small groups to get the best of the performance otherwise they were unable to get a clear view of what was going on and so the affect is lost somewhat.