OneTouch Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness, 26 October 2010

JIM CARREY needs special effects and CGI to make you laugh. Tony Mills doesn’t. His hypermobile face and even more mobile body can speed up or slow dooooowwwn and create the same effects, live onstage in front of an audience. The man’s a dancing cartoon film and uses it to great comic effect in both the works in this programme.

The shorter first piece, Such a Bloke, starts in immobility and silence before exploring relationships and modern life, moving seamlessly between humour and poignancy. He uses flight as a metaphor, actual flight as seen in slo-mo film of birds taking off, the strength, the curving wingbeats to create forward and upward thrust, not the conventional sideflap that is usually used as a shorthand for it. The only other object on stage is a perspex chair, and from time to time Mills’ own shadow on the backdrop.

Orkney-born dancer Tony Mills

Mime is a scary word, tainted forever by memories of white-faced Marcel Marceau’s inferior imitators, but it’s just another part of his movement vocabulary. Mills is originally from Orkney and qualified as a veterinary surgeon, but in a dizzying headspin of a career change became (along with David Hughes Dance’s Matt Foster) a founder member of Scotland’s premier b-boying (aka breaking) crew, Random Aspekts.

He’s also worked with Freshmess and other dance companies. The injection of breaking skills and the culture they spring from into the dance world today is not limited to a token inclusion of airswipes and applejacks, it’s acting as a catalyst, leading to the creation of some thrilling work.

Like the title piece, for example; a tougher, more Robert Crumb style of cartoon in which Mills flows bonelessly on and off his armchair, in thrall to the box and the remote control, exploring and building on the movement vocabulary of breaking.

It’s ideal for mimicking pause, rewind, fast forward and scratching to a soundtrack which includes thematic and possibly inspirational ‘Television: The Drug of the Nation’ by the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy. The humour is darker, more powerful, edging gradually towards a Dante-style journey through the levels of IT hell.

Mills finally moves from armchair to stage in a loved-up duet with a television set, on to a superb “dancing with myself” sequence where he duets with a projected image of himself. He ends with a bravura journey through and into the screen.

It’s an exemplary, boundary-pushing integration of projected imagery and should be required viewing for any stage director considering using the medium – if you can’t at least equal this level of creativity, please don’t bother.

© Jennie Macfie, 2010

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