GEORGINA COBURN finds artistic quality and social comment skillfully integrated in Phoenix Dance Company’s programme.

INVERNESS AUDIENCES have been treated to a superb range of modern dance this year with touring performances by the Australian Dance Theatre, Curve Foundation Dance Company and now Leeds-based Phoenix Dance Theatre. “Inter vivos” is an exhilarating, ingenious and engaging triple bill with works by choreographers Robert Cohan, Didy Veldman and Phoenix Dance Theatre‘s Artistic Director, Darshan Singh Bhuller.

All three pieces are a gift to the audience, highly evocative, compelling and socially relevant. PDT successfully broaden the communicative range of dance, fusing movement with other art forms to produce fresh, vibrant work that is a pure joy to watch.

The extraordinary skill and talent of their dance ensemble together with the company’s choice of choreography transports, engages and entertains their audience without reliance on traditional narrative.

The range of atmosphere, feeling and social critique revealed in these three very different performances is both challenging and affecting.

‘See Through Blue’ by Dutch choreographer Didy Veldman is a sublime, sometimes surreal experience of an aquatic world. Inspired by “the many qualities of water” as a “transparent and reflective life force”, Veldman utilised her own first experience of pregnancy and the “parallels between the underwater and human world” to create a truly unique performance.

Lighting Designer Ben Ormerod and Set and Costume Designer Stijn Celis created a multidimensional atmosphere with the filtered light of the deep ocean and mirrors suspended at varying angles on the ceiling giving a distorted view simultaneously above and below. It was like looking into the depths of the ocean and seeing movement emerge out of light, shadow and colour.

The costume design was intriguing, with fabric stretched to impossible lengths achieving a jelly-like distortion of limbs and human movement fused with the creatures of the sea. Dancers drifted in lines like kelp mesmerised by the ebb and flow of life underwater coming into being. The music was a mixture of underwater soundscape, the creaking interior hull of a ship, dolphin, whale, (or were they human cries?) together with the plucked strangeness and drama of strings.

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With Eden Court about to close its doors for refurbishment I hope it will continue to programme bold new work such as this in it’s new “21st Century Theatre”

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The Phoenix Dancers together form a powerful ensemble, but here too were stand out performances. Tia Ourila for her crustacean like, embryonic and highly disciplined movements and the particularly sensual beautifully balanced duet by Lisa Welham and Theo Ndindwa.

Robert Cohan’s ‘Forest’ was premiered by London Contemporary Dance Theatre in 1977. PDT‘s revival of the piece coincides with the hugely influential choreographer’s 80th birthday.

This is a grounded work of tremendous beauty, infused with an energy of place and the green glow of life and light of the forest. It is a relief from the modern world, and evokes a timelessness and power of nature through movement that was inspired by Native American healing dances.

It is the spirit of this piece that is so striking, the suggestion through the recorded soundscape is of a great cathedral of trees. We do not hear a rustle of leaves but the roar of the wind through a space that extends beyond the physical limits of the stage.

The natural sound of wolves, birds and insects, the elemental force of thunder and the sound drenched stage of cleansing rain all create a feeling of the lifecycle conveyed by the energy of the dance itself. In ‘Forest’ the human body and modern condition is linked to something more primordial and lasting. I felt a great sense of peace having seen it.

In stark contrast Darshan Singh Bhuller’s “ENG-ER-LAND” is a brilliant, often hilarious but ultimately knowing look at modern British binge culture. It could be Friday night in “Anytown” or city in the UK.

Fuelled by the infectious beat of DJ Blessed, which physically manifests as projected sound waves on stage, the dancers and audience are driven through the crude spectacle of a typical night out.

Bhuller’s collaboration with KMA Visual Designs and his own experience as a film maker and choreographer create a virtual world through digital media and dance which is as innovative as it is awesome. The dance action takes place between two barely visible screens onto which urban sets are projected, they themselves are subject to manipulation of perspective that mirrors the alcohol fuelled night out as it progresses. There are times when this virtual set is animated in motion and although it is drawn with cartoon-like white lines, you really feel that you are a participant in the whole Friday night experience.

The settings of our bedrooms (getting ready to go out), the curry house, kebab shop, club dance floor, toilets and taxi rank are the backdrop for a parade of comic characters that even as we laugh we can instantly recognise – the wallflower at the disco, the stumbling glitzy pair of gold lame blondes on a girls night out, young men drunk on booze and testosterone “out on the pull”.

The dancers engage in a heady fusion of disco, modern dance, hip hop, theatre and urban attitude that is an ingenious comment on our culture and completely relevant to every town in the UK today.

As the evening goes on it disintegrates into the one night stand that humorously ends up in cartoon form at the altar or the maternity clinic, the euphoria becomes the nausea of vomiting and the all too common sight of urinating in the street. At the taxi rank it typically starts to pour with rain, washing it all away, until the next night! This was a highly accessible work and a wonderful critique inspired by current affairs.

With Eden Court about to close its doors for refurbishment I hope it will continue to programme bold new work such as this in it’s new “21st Century Theatre”.

Georgina Coburn is based in Inverness, and has a degree in Art History. Her interest in the arts includes Visual Arts, Dance, Traditional Music, Film and Theatre.

© Georgina Coburn, 2005