Intoto Dance is one of four companies created from final year students of the London Studio Centre. They comprise of young dancers on the cusp of their professional careers, and the aim of these companies is to aid the dancers' understanding of the rigours of small-scale touring and therefore giving them excellent preparation for what much of their early career years may well be like.
One thing that immediately struck me about these 16 young ladies on stage this evening was that not one of them had what one might call a 'classical ballet body'; and therefore the company also obviously championing non-conventional dancer body shapes and this can only be hugely applauded and encouraged.
The Intoto Company specialise in contemporary dance / ballet, and this evening they presented three original works in a 70 minute show with no interval. All three were highly abstract in nature, and if there was any internal narrative to their dancing, it was, sadly, completely lost on me. The final of the three did give glimpses of 'theme', but little else upon which I could hang my hat. perhpas though, like many contemporary dance pieces, they were meant to be abstract and for us to glean what we could from their expressive movements.
The first piece, 'Citizen' was the longest of the three. Choreographed by Victoria Fox Markiewicz, the 8 dancers involved in this piece were dressed in loose-fitting clothing all in different shades of grey. There was no set, and danced only within a square of light - and as such there were no peripherals to aid one's understanding of the dance. It started with a section where the groupe danced together, but never quite in unison. It was very difficult to tell whether this was intentional or not, but they were always just ever-so slightly out of sync. This must also have been a technically demanding piece for them choreographically since every so often I could see the dancer checking her position or marking it for her partner. I understand of course that these are dancers-in-training and this has to happen in all choreographies for all dancers no matter what stage of their career, but I didn't notice this in the subsequent two pieces and I noticed it enough to make comment about it. The central section of the piece was the most dynamic for me with a very stange denouement which started with them all lined in single file at the front of the stage as if to take their bow, but instead the piece took a darker turn and continued.
The second piece, 'Never odd or eveN', was choreographed by Luke Brown in collaboration with the dancers. Again nothing in the way of peripherals to aid the dance, and this time the dancers wore variants of oranges, browns and yellows, some of which seemed to be based on oriental costume designs whilst others were distinctly European in their basing. This was a very interesting piece choreographically, starting with small groups with the others standing on the sides, watching, and there was some intersting use of body muscle isolation in the first part too. The company emsemble work in this piece was lovely and there were some excellent lifts and leaps. For me, this second piece was much more visually thrilling than the first, but even this piece had a very strange ending which didn't really seem to fit with the rest of the piece.
The final piece utilised all 16 dancers [8 each for the first two]. and this time a much brighter lighting was created as the dancers entered in different shades of blue. This was 'Haptics' choreographed by Nathan Johnston, again in collaboration with the dancers, and this was, for me at least, by far the most successful of the three pieces, and certainly the most enjoyale. Visually interesting, and I was even able to discern a simple narrative here about 'touching and not touching - and the touch affecting and / or controlling'. I think the dancers themselves responded to this piece more positively than the first two as they also seemed to be enjoying this dance more. The leaps and the lifts here also were more adventurous and executed with precision. Once again though, there was a very strange ending. This saw one dancer holding another in a hug in their arms (off the ground) for a very long time, and despite the inaction being just as important as the action, you could see the strain the dancers were under holding each other for such an extended period. Despite this though, the third piece was joyous, visceral and thrilling.
Having seen Intoto I am now more than curious to see the other three companies from London Studio Centre [ jazz dance / classical ballet and Musical Theatre ] These 16 dancers are obviously highly talented and I wish them success in their chosen metier.
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 5/6/19
No comments:
Post a Comment