Sunday, 21 February, 2010| Comments | Make A Comment | Share on Facebook
From Wednesday 17th February until Saturday 20th February Scottish Dance Theatre presented their latest double bill to audiences in Dundee's Rep Theatre, I was privileged to attend on the Saturday Evening. The evening would consists of two pieces, one choreographed by established choreographer and performer Ben Duke, and the second choreographed as a collaboration between Janet Smith, Caroline Bowditch and Marc Brew. Life and Times of Girl A and NQR seemed to have something for everyone to connect with.
From the outset of 'The Life and Times of Girl A', Duke set up a theatrical environment for a dance piece to exist in, with the main female role hardly ever 'dancing.' In past experiences with dance theatre productions that I have seen I would of frowned upon such an idea, but for the first time since seeing Jasmin Vardimon's 'Yesterday,' this mixture of art forms blew me away. Setting the audience's imagination up by looking upon the piece as a film was genius. It made me look at the dancers differently to what I did previously. I now looked at them as characters and people rather than performers and athletes. This is a refreshing concept to understand and one I would love to explore as a choreographer myself.
The female lead was sensational, and even though you didn't see her actually dance, you respected her as a truly sensational performer. The way in which Duke used a female quartet and a male trio during the performance spoke to me on a deeper level than just the narrative which the lead female was delivering. The choreography of both sections was intelligent and mature and executed perfectly by every dancer involved.
Everyone who was an audience member for these performance would come go away with something new to think about. Duke stirred a lot of raw emotions within quiet a few members of audience that I have spoke to after the performance and that is always nice to see. As i'm in the process of creating work to be presented both in Scotland and Wales it's always good to know what connects with the majority of an audience and what makes work have a 'marmite' reaction.
The second instalment of the night was N.Q.R. The piece was very mature and obviously you could see that a lot of time and effort had gone into the choreography and staging of the dancers for it to work. However, personally I didn't connect to its intention and parts offended me. This I feel was partly because I'm not very open minded to its theme and my personality didn't respond to some comedic moments well. Having said that the dancers performed the choreography with true conviction and individuals with more experience on such a topic would be able to give a more varied opinion than myself.
I strongly recommend for anyone to attend if the performance is at a theatre near you. Even though I hold a varied opinion, the evening still showed Scottish Dance Theatre to be one of Britain's most exciting rep company's.
Andrew
