Menage a Trois

12 Sep 2012 in Dance & Drama, Highland, Showcase

One Touch Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness, 11 September 2012

IF THE summer of 2012 is remembered for anything other than its dreadful weather, it will be the very un-British outpouring of emotion triggered by the London Olympic,s and particularly the Paralympics.

THE latter, it is to be hoped, have changed the way we all look at disability forever. Luckily the Cultural Olympiads which have run alongside both Games have produced some stunning pieces which can now remain in the repertoire as reminders should we begin to forget.

Menage a Trois (photo Kenny Mathieson)

Menage a Trois (photo Kenny Mathieson – not the Northings editor, though)

Of these, Menage a Trois must surely be one of the brighter stars. It shows how dance can benefit from being able to draw on deep resources – in this case, the expertise of co-director Gail Sneddon and the creative and production teams of the National Theatre of Scotland, marrying the movement in a rich audio and visual environment. It also shows how the range of movement available to the disabled is only different; it is no less effective.

Dancer Claire Cunningham has been using forearm crutches since the age of 14. Rather than yearn after the unattainability of a perfect arabesque, she’s worked with choreographers to perfect her own vocabulary of movement, and perfect it she has. She uses her crutches and the upper body strength they’ve engendered to soar, glide and swoop in a way that an able-bodied dancer can only dream of. She also has a way of curling her foot around the uprights, a small movement that can break your heart.

Menage a Trois is a meditation on her relationship with these two objects, essential to mobility and yet an inescapable signal of physical limitation. In one of many increasingly tender duets with Christopher Owen, she wears an intimidating spiky carapace fashioned from crutch sticks and cuffs for a dinner date in which she rebuffs his every advance, penned in by her own sense of inadequacy, until at last the defences fall away. There’s one particularly gentle little moment when he removes her shoes; Cunningham as a Cinderella in reverse…

Throughout the work a combination of voice, artful video, soundscaping and lighting amplifies the already considerable impact of the dancing itself to make a very satisfying whole. Beautiful, poignant, funny, both romantic and brutally honest, it’s also inventive and playful – there’s even an X-ray dog – without falling over the line into sentimentality.

In the heart of Menage a Trois nestles a message about allowing fears and insecurities to imprison and limit our lives, a theme which applies to all of us, disabled or not – everyone should see this show.

© Jennie Macfie, 2012

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