Jasmin Vardimon’s dance company is now 25 years old, and this performance functions in part as a retrospective and sampler of past delights for those who, like myself, might have heard the name but had never previously caught any of Vardimon’s work.
While looking back is justified for a company with this pedigree and at this key milestone, this is no mere ‘greatest hits’, though. These sequences and stagings are assembled lovingly, stitched together and combined with new material to tell a fresh story about the here and now, rather than resting on the laurels of past successes.
From the opening moments, Vardimon’s style announces itself boldly: striking, playful and endlessly inventive. The seven dancers manipulate their physicalities in ways that can be sinuously hypnotic, powerful, acrobatic, and at times (often) unashamedly silly.
Early on, Risa Maki performs a cyclical choreography evoking vociferous protest, interrupted by comically puzzled workers decked out in hard hats and hi-viz jackets. Now is in part concerned with reflecting on a moment when legitimate protest is silenced and repressed: a later sequence sees an intricate choreography of six dancers, faces obscured by stop signs, providing an impenetrable barrier to the seventh dancer, seeking a way through but endlessly beaten back.
But while we see individuals bump up against faceless forces, and some of the video backdrops show barbed wire and bleak landscapes, the show is always infused with humour and imagination. Great use is made of video projection (designed by lighting designer Andrew Crofts, with material by Guy Bar-Amotz and Vardimon). Two onstage cameras, one overhead, are employed to capture and project action from different angles. Some of the wittiest and most slapstick sequences involve the dancers shuffling themselves across the stage floor, producing images which, when seen via the overhead camera, appear to defy gravity, creating a cartoon logic which is thrilling, collaborative and joyful.
Dancers Evie Hart, Sean Moss, Hobie Schouppe, Juliette Tellier, Donny Beau Ferris, Risa Maki and André Rebelo throw themselves around and contort their bodies in ways that must (especially over the near-90-minute run-time) be incredibly strenuous, but which always look fun. The choreography throughout involves a play with shape, gesture, set and light that often evokes childish exploration: why shouldn’t we wave our arms wildly and rhythmically as we move from one place to another, or shuffle forward on our backsides instead of walking? It might be less efficient, but it looks great!
Another memorable, and more touching, use of projection comes when two of the dancers step forward as an image is thrown onto their torsos: a cartoony drawing of internal organs and the beating hearts of two people in love—for now. This is a microcosm of how the piece’s design is built from simple ideas to serve the inventiveness of the choreography and company. All this is backed by eclectic and propulsive music choices, from Vivaldi to Einstürzende Neubauten.
Flags of various sizes come into play in different sequences, perhaps showing protest, perhaps surrender. At one point, they release a flurry of fake snowflakes which carpet the stage. Again viewed from above, this ‘snowy’ landscape is manipulated by the movements of the performers so we see shifting topographies carved out into the white. Then, just as quickly, they are swept away and replaced by a new ‘now’.
Never purely reflective, always offering originality and fun, this is a dazzling mix that keeps you guessing—and smiling. The tour continues around England into March. Don’t miss out on this stunning, energising work.