The Ties that Bind.

[rhythmaning]

Companhia de Danca Deborah Colker, a dance company from Brazil were performing in Edinburgh last night, at the Festival Theatre.

The Festival Theatre is a wonderful building: it is a glass-fronted adaptation of an old music hall, so there are amazing views front of house and wonderful sight lines in the auditorium. Once I picked the ticket up, I climbed the stairs to the top bar and stared at the summit of Arthur’s Seat across the rooftops of south-central Edinburgh; you could count the people on the top. [Memo to self: time to get back up the mountain.]

The house was pretty full – the theatre’s publicity has been working on this a while. The Festival Theatre does a lot of dance, and they get pretty good audiences – last night must have been three-quarters or more full. I habitually sit near the back, in the rear stalls, where you can see the whole stage without craning your neck.

The curtain lifted on a huge bundle of ropes hanging from the flies, pulled together to form a tree trunk and branches. The ropes made for a perfect set, and provided the name for the piece – Knot.

To a loud soundtrack – kind of beats put together – a male dancer binds a woman to a rope from the trunk; she swings balletically (natch), more in control than her captor; spinning, she climbs the rope, he clasps her, he caresses her. Yup, bondage and S&M seem to be the flavour here.

The sexual overtones are emphasised in the low light by the female dancers’ costumes, which have a triangle of black clothe over the mons veneris. that can’t be chance, can it?

Other dancers come on to the stage, their movements slow and well defined; some climb the ropes or are bound, others move with each other in precise patterns.

There is more tying, dancers linking up into complex cats’ cradles of ropes held within a cluster, the power shifting between those bound and those holding the ropes. They leapt and spun climbed and dived. It was very beautiful, but also slightly menacing.

It was overtly sexual: there was phallic imagery from the ropes, hetero- and homo-erotic dances. It was also very athletic and acrobatic, the dancers climbing and swinging impressively, as if the were contortionists escaping from their chains. The set changed as the ropes were released, forming first four smaller clusters and later a forest of ropes hanging separate. The dancers moved through them, parting them and hiding behind them.

The music – an essential part of the dance for me – was changeable; the first act finished with what sounded like a modern take on Bach – simple piano rhythms, but slightly atonal. The ropes hung free, and then a backcloth fell from the flies and the stage was flooded in a warm red. Two dancers moved exquisitely through the forest, as others swung the ropes this way and that. It was quiet and beautiful.

The set completely changed for the second act. The ropes were gone, replaced by a large perspex box, maybe eight feet high, which had ladders in each corner. A dancer danced around the box, and climbed in; others joined, mirroring their motions. They climbed up the ladders, dancing with the poles – again the imagery seemed sexual (I’ve never been to a pole dancing club, but - ) – and the whole seemed very voyeuristic: the box could have been a goldfish bowl.

There were dancers inside and outside the box, and on the narrow ledge at the top of the box. They pressed against the perspex, squeezing flesh against the plastic; the mimicked and copied each other.

It was very athletic, dancers jumping to the top of the box in one bound (aided, sure, but still), and humorous – they hung there, held by the feet from the top of the box.

The music was a lot jazzier: the act opened with the sonorous tones of Chet Baker’s trumpet in trio with piano and bass, a late recording (from “Let’s Get Lost”?), his voice cracking painfully as he sang My One and Only Love.

(The press pack says that Alice Coltrane, Ravel, and Henry Mancini were also in there. Alice Coltrane? I missed that bit! Mancini will have been the piano and strings [I had it marked down as Erroll Garner or Nat King Cole, which shows how much I know].)

It was very beautiful, sexy and energetic, but at times it felt like I was watching something private – the perspex room being separate, not quite part of the theatre.

A solo dancer – I believe Deborah Colker herself – performed a long piece, and then joined by others inside the box and out. It finished with an ensemble piece, several dancers all over and inside the box (I keep trying to write “cage”, and maybe that is what it felt like to watch), and in a breathtaking acrobatic moment a dancer walking along the edge of the box fell, to be caught by the men below her.

It was a great show, but disturbing, and the overtly sexual nature of much of the dance may almost have distracted from it beauty.

[See some video clips here: Deborah Colker > Video Clips Interestingly, they have a Parental Guidance tag.]

[Some performance pictures of “Knot”.]

[Read the review of last night’s show in The Scotsman]

Comments

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

Oooh :)

My stepmum would have liked that. I wonder if she was there?

[frankie-ecap.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've ever known anyone actually use the term mons veneris until now.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I was trying to be polite!

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Strangely enough I've shared your reaction to dance pieces in the past - I often feel in the position of voyeur rather than audience. It might have something to do with the fact that it is a wordless form - dialogue in plays tends to emphasise the fact that these are actors, performing a script. Painting, also worldless, can be equally intimate but lacks the artist's presence. Dance, having performers essentially demonstrating emotion and physical interaction with only the slight modesty shield of metaphor, sometimes seems too real to me.

Interesting, because in my brief experience of a lap-dancing bar, the only element of voyeurism I felt was in covertly watching the customers, which I found a lot more interesting than what was hapening on stage.

[frankie-ecap.livejournal.com]

Italian schoolgirls!

*fans self*

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Where did Italian schoolgirls come from?!

[(Anonymous)]

Italy, natch.

[frankie-ecap.livejournal.com]

Me, sorry.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I guessed. So Ms Pedant, what I meant was, how did they end up in this thread?

[frankie-ecap.livejournal.com]

You'd need to get the story from f4f3, preferably in person. But I will tell you that it is very, very sexy.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

But even there, it was watching the Italian schoolgirls watching the go-go dancers that did it for me...

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Hang on: Italian schoolgirls. Watching in a lap-dancing club? Was it legal?

Have you posted about this, then?

I am very curious!

And of course, the Italian schoolkid tourist season is open us soon...

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Hmm, don't think I've ever posted about it - it's a fond memory from a long ago trip to Prague, which I'm not sure I can disclose without permission from Bill (that would be BillKing1959 or whatever his cunningly disguised user-name is on LJ). Of course, if I've been bought a couple of malts...

[frankie-ecap.livejournal.com]

That was my point.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

It was indeed - I'd forgotten that I'd given you the full story when under the influence.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Usually I don't feel voyeuristic about dance - well, no more than any other performance (and let's face it, sitting in a dark room watching people do things on a stage is pretty voyeuristic anyhow). But watching the dancers in a perspex box - caged - did seem a step further.

I can understand your experience in the lap-dancing bar.