Knowing I was about to be a fly on the wall again during the making of nine new dances as a culmination of the London-based edition of the international creative residency ArtsCross 2013, a dear friend sent me a youtube clip. It’s a mock-Chinese ditty sung by what looks like an animated badger. I don’t find it offensive, just engagingly…
After-the-Fact: Group B
[Things have undoubtedly moved on since I scribbled down what I am now shaping into the following observations, but here they are for the record…] Founders Studio: The dancers chosen by choreographer Ho, Hsiao-Mei include four Westerners. Two of them – Azzurra Ardovini (small, contained and often low to the floor) and Henry…
After-the-Fact: Group C
[Another collection of in-studio notes from the recent past, here distilled…] In silence Dam Van Huynh’s dancers jerk, wiggle and vibrate with an assertive sense of exploration. What are a dancer’s habits and how can they be (positively) broken? Dam spends a bit of time wiggling on his own over by the windows…
A brief post-reception
The facts and figures anchoring ArtsCross London impress: 30 dancers, 15 interpreters etc plus at the Asia House reception a small stage littered with partners. I admire Chris Bannerman’s style: both diplomatic and witty, he knows how to put across his words with a bounce that keep formulaic dullness…
After-the-Fact 2: Group B again
Tung, I-Fen brings in some exercises she herself has experienced in a workshop possibly earlier that same day. One dancer’s spine is like a table upon which another dancer rests their arms at the neck and base of the spine. There is much rocking and swaying as these human tables raise…
After-the-Fact 3: Group A
Riccardo Buscarini’s ‘boys’ look kind of like they’re the partial splitting of an atom. Wu, Cheng-An is a cat-like escape artist who ducks away and out from under any configuration of bodies that try to entrap him. His slides and jumps, and the knotted cunning of the others, is highly engaging for both eye…