TRIBE//: Still I Rise is a contemporary dance piece consisting of 5 female dancers, where raw and energetic dance is combined with instinctual physicality, emotive movement and cinematic scenes. Still I Rise which performed at The Lowry Salford Quays is described as a journey beginning of simmering unison, stunning partnering work and tender solos all performed with a gut wrenching power. Pounding rhythms and a haunting cello drive the movement and creates an intense, stark world where hope dies last. Falling down, gathering up, breathing, letting go, claiming back the space and together, rising.
Inspiration for this piece of work is drawn from the poem by Maya Angelou. It’s powerful and defiant words have an ability to resonate with many people, in many different situations or places in our lives, of struggle and rising up from it, which feels ever more appropriate in our current unsettled world:
“You may write me down in history,With your bitter, twisted lies,You may trod me in the very dirt,But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?Why are you beset with gloom?‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wellsPumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,With the certainty of tides,Just like hopes springing high,Still I’ll rise.”
Excerpt from Still I Rise
by Maya Angelou
What I saw last night were these famous words metaphorically punching us, the audience in the face with every move, jerk, twist, jump and turn. This all-female cast each gave their very all to this piece and worked magnificently as a tight dance troupe. They created a piece of work filled with oppression, torturous minds, control, confusion and yet also empowerment, fearlessness, compassion and freedom. Still I Rise is an extremely passionate performance and the partner work was very impressive. However for me, it was the solo work where each performer got their moment to shine under the equally impressive yet simple lighting designed by Mike Bignell. Each dancer gave me a sense of their own individual personality during the solo work and I really enjoyed the moments where they let their vulnerable side really be expressed through the medium of dance.
Choreographed and with the concept by Victoria Fox this truly is a powerful piece of dance. TRIBE//, a new Brighton based U.K. company is bringing us visceral, raw and punchy dance. Fox is creating movement driven emotive work, and is quickly gaining a reputation for gutsy, daring dance and strives to create work that an audience can connect with and is relevant in today’s modern world. Each dancer deserves a special mention as I couldn’t pick just one performer out who stole the show as it were, so credit to Lucija Bozicievic, Caterina Grosoli, Kassichana Okene-Jameson, Yukiko Masui and Finetta Mikolajska. I’m always amazed when watching powerful dance and how moved you can actually be emotionally, feeling the inner struggles we all face but also witnessing the rising, the lifting of the soul and I think Still I Rise in its 1 hour length captured these emotions very well. Every part of the human body was used and it’s powerful to see how our body can indeed be used as a tool to connect with an audience. It was an exciting piece and reading the full poem by Maya Angelou further proved how much the dance and Angelou’s words were intertwined.
As Fox herself says: “I have a desire to see female dancers really owning the stage, to take the space. Raw and physical, subtle and extreme. I want to see women enable each other and represent the full range of their strengths, virtuosic to vulnerable, the realities in which we live and the journey we continue”
Reviewer - Mary Fogg
on - 19/11/19
No comments:
Post a Comment