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Last time I saw CandoCo, I was completely entranced. Seeing their double-bill, The Journey and In Praise of Folly, in this same venue last May was my dance highlight of 2006, so my level of anticipation for this new work was high, to say the least.
Featuring two new pieces, this is the final work from under the artistic directorship of Celeste Dandeker. The first piece, The Stepfather, has been choreographed by Arthur Pita, while the second piece, And Who Shall Go To The Ball? has been choreographed by Rafael Bonachela, with new music by Scott Walker.
The Stepfather is the tale of a strange, disturbed family, inspired by the lyrics of Country Death Song by the Violent Femmes, a song that includes lines such as "I swear I lost my mind. I started making plans to kill my own kind… "
Pita's piece displays real narrative drive, in fact at times it feels more like a drama than a piece of dance. The movements of the dancers manage to be both mundane and disturbing, even the shrugging shoulders of the daughters are unsettling.
CandoCo is of course a company known for the way in which they embrace both able-bodied and disabled dancers, but what's interesting about The Stepfather is that you only really become aware of the dancers disabilities fairly late on, so well has Pita incorporated them into the piece. Nadia Adame, for instance, walks with a crutch, but her wiggling walk is turned into something hypnotic and seductive – and strangely disturbing.
The Stepfather is full of strange angles, odd glances and claustrophobic sexuality. The music adds to this sense of disturbance, the Violent Femmes coupled with a soundscape that includes the dripping of water, something that slowly works its way into your head.
Unfortunately the eagerly anticipated collaboration between Rafael Bonachela and Scott Walker is not as successful. And Who Shall Go To The Ball? is supposed to examine the idea of man lost in a dysfunctional world. Bonachela states in the programme notes , that "this work is very busy, intense, with layers of choreography upon choreography, giving the audience multiple choices for where they look."
In practice, though there are multiple strong and interesting ideas at work here, they simply do not work as a cohesive piece, in fact each element battles the other to the point where I struggled to focus on the piece altogether. While I can understand the need to alienate the audience at times, this was simply too much.
It opens with a number of dancers dotted around the stage and gradually a white line illuminates the space, until you notice five cellists at the back of the stage and a conductor. The silence is broken by loud dissonant sounds and flashing lights while the dancers slowly start to move.
While certainly creating an impact, I found the noise levels were almost painful at times. Indeed, the most moving part of the piece was the quietest, when the two male dancers, Marc Brew and Jorge M Crecis, one able-bodied and one wheelchair-using, performed a duet of real beauty, creating wonderful shapes, connecting and separating and gradually enfolding into each other once more.
However for me, despite this lone moment of beauty, there was simply far too much going on. Walker's music, in his own words, is “full of edgy and staccato shapes" and this doesn't work with the choreography. There is so much happening on stage that you soon lose focus altogether. This is not helped by having the cellists and conductor on stage, as they often distract from the dancers.
This was something of a disappointing evening, the two pieces were so different and, while this in itself is not a problem, the sheer weirdness of The Stepfather, for me, was simply a much better piece, cohesive and satisfying in a way the Walker collaboration wasn't.
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