3/5 stars
April 11
Joss Arnott Dance
Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre, Northern Ballet
The Dark Angel Tour, created and choreographed by Joss Arnott, promises a triple bill of dance exploring the human body in all its strength and beauty. The first piece, entitled Origin, starts off small as Arnott took to the stage performing a slow yet intensely powerful solo that eases the audience into the performance well.
The second movement, entitled 24, was the most eagerly anticipated by myself; inspired by the themes and concepts explored within the late Alexander McQueen exhibition Savage Beauty, I was excited to see how this would be interpreted creatively through dance. What particularly stood out was the stripped-down and raw style of choreography that certainly took on McQueen’s ideas of primitivism and the ‘noble savage’, re-enforced by the ‘Amazonian’ style of dress worn by the physically strong female dancers. For me, this piece truly came to life when the five dancers emerged from their individual upstage spotlights and performed simultaneously, dominating the whole stage and creating a true collective pulse of energy.
Nevertheless, the climax comes with the final and longest piece, Threshold, whereby the dancers perform physically demanding moves at a disturbingly quick pace, contorting their hyper-mobile bodies, all with a more sinister feel than what came before, yet holding onto a kind of dark elegance. The dancers finally interact and you get a sense of relationships building in this movement, which perhaps comes little too late in the performance. With seven dancers I could not help but consider the ‘seven deadly sins’, with themes such as envy and lust certainly coming through, particularly when one dancer performs a kind of puppetry; manipulating another dancer’s body, moulding her into strange and contorted positions.
Overall, the performance was technically highly impressive, with choreography being executed to the absolute, particularly by the captivating Lisa Rowley. However, a lack of development left something to be desired and it was difficult to consider the performance as a whole rather than three isolated pieces. Moreover, I could not help but think that the choreography was at times too consistently intense and powerful, and that it left no room for elements of repose, for respite, even; the more poignant moments of pathos came with Arnott’s introductory solo, which remained one of the few moments of true emotion within the piece. Nevertheless, this Dark Angel Tour has cast Arnott into the light, and I look forward to seeing what he will create next.
Melissa Baksh