Candoco/Double Bill
Queen Elizabeth Hall
AFTER the excellent Publife and the brilliant Banquet, you would have thought it impossible for Luca Silvestrini and Bettina Strickler to make a dud. But a dud they have made, and not for their own company, but for the mixed-ability CandoCo, which includes both able- bodied and disabled dancers.
Microphobia is a self-referring piece for six performers, two of which are in wheelchairs.
Everyone carries a microphone, which amplifies their movements as well as postmodern musings on what they do and what they feel. Some of this is very tedious. Worse, it squeezes the time available for the movement ideas that make mixed-ability troupes interesting.
Excepting one fascinating floor-based duet, Silvestrini and Strickler have little time for the contrasts between walking and wheeling, standing and sitting, and how each might interact. Also neglected are heads and necks, as are the boundless opportunities for hands and arms.
Better was The Human Suite by American choreographer Stephen Petronio. Set to a Johnny Cash and Tartini mix, it's a series of group dances or, more correctly, moving posed groups, some nimble, some static, and all redolent of the Greek reliefs you see in the British Museum.
The piece is pleasing to watch, but you leave with the impression that Petronio, like Silvestrini and Strickler, is scratching the surface, that integration between the different dancers is only intermittently being made.
Maybe they are nervous of overstretching the performers, who obviously need careful thought. Either way, CandoCo seem up for more.
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