OneTouch Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness, 30 October 2008

Jasmin Vardimon Company - Yesterday

THE JASMIN VARDIMON Company celebrate their 10th anniversary with Yesterday, presenting a retrospective of new work and excerpts from previous shows. The production explores the idea of the choreographer’s memory in what Vardimon describes as a “process of recall … rather like walking backwards; there is no straight line and the path can be a bumpy one.”

The production is certainly sporadic and lacking coherence in a strict narrative sense. However, it is precisely this approach that allows the greatest freedom in terms of taking the audience on a journey to a series of unexpected destinations. More performance art than choreography, Vardimon utilises multimedia, animation, dialogue, music and movement in an innovative and experimental way.

This is physical, visceral theatre where the body is explored, written upon and turned inside out through animation. Vardimon’s training as a psychological interviewer during a period of conscripted military service in Israel, her powers of observation and her “body memory” as a dancer are all visibly brought to bear upon the work.

There are fleeting moments of sheer brilliance in this show, sequences that are violently powerful counterbalanced by playfulness, humour and direct addresses to the audience.

The OneTouch Theatre is the perfect space for engagement with an audience at this level of intimacy and immediacy. Use of technology, including real time film footage projected onto the set, displayed dramatic close ups of the dancers and their character’s emotional state.

Ordinarily the audience is protected from such display by theatrical distance and the comfort of traditional elements of choreography, which even in contemporary dance are rooted in the classical tradition. Vardimon incorporates street fighting, martial arts, gymnastics, stage falls and slapstick in movement often anchored low to the floor. This grounding of the work and movement on a horizontal axis is extremely interesting in relation to the choreographer’s exploration of memory and her implied world view.

There is nothing romantic in Vardimon’s choreography; wherever there is seemingly gentle music, an expression of love or a pas de deux it is never without irony and often accompanied by violence. Dancers are trembling and vulnerable rather than united in any kind of lyrical embrace. This approach is refreshing and the movement precise, but the effect can also be acutely distressing.

The post-fire sequence is a prime example, where the tortured movement and rigidity of the dancing couple is a horrific combination of tenderness and revulsion. In another sequence Vardimon combines the banality and upbeat humour of a weather report with the observation of a violent relationship written on the body.

The fight between the body and disease is the dynamic in another sequence, this internal war of attrition delivered with great comic effect. Throughout this production there is no light without darkness and in this way the choreographer anchors the work firmly in reality.

This is also echoed in a sequence set ironically to ‘The Power of Love’, where the waving of a flag is almost like the action of a scythe cutting its sway through the group of dancers. The dialogue beginning with ‘I Believe’ delivers a series of dichotomies “dictated democracy”, “individuality expressed in exactly the same way”, “united division” and “The borders that join us together”. The political implications of this work make this one of the most powerful statements in the production.

In painterly terms pure line is used as movement to mesmerising effect, through projection, UV light effects and marker pen on the body. In terms of the overall design, however, there were times when the production felt technologically laden. Sometimes the ultimate trick is deciding when not to use it. Defined by raw physicality and layering of multimedia this is a striking production of memorable albeit fragmentary moments.

© Georgina Coburn, 2008

Related links

• Jasmin Vardimon Company