Each evening at the Place’s Resolution festival of new choreography showcases fresh green shoots and this particular triple bill of bright, idea-driven dance was united by intriguing concepts. Each piece is a consideration of in-between states, most outlandishly the standout, Interchange, a questing solo by Seirian Griffiths. In a particularly bureaucratic purgatory, the recently deceased Michael is informed, via a brisk yet personable voiceover from Sam Booth, that he has some excess baggage to process. The only way forward is to revisit the loves of his life, from his mother to fleeting relationships.
The setup, with its slightly overdone pastiche of muzak-accompanied admin hell, prompts a dance of not quite exorcism but certainly cleansing as Michael spins through his past. The occasionally galloping pace suggests the near-death notion of events flashing before your eyes, as Griffiths makes graceful yet quicksilver transitions between contained bouts of torment that are strikingly well acted and boosted by his own coiled compositions. The hip-hop stylings are featherlight, too, when he pivots with a headstand or practically levitates, his shadow like a chalked outline below.
It’s audaciously done while thoughtfully considering the weight we carry, although the holding bay scenario and voiceover strangely fall away. Like Michael, the piece has some of its own unfinished business.
The transitional state in Chinese choreographer Qi Song’s rave-inspired Archive/Flesh/Echoes is the small hours. Sound designer Sanki supplies an ethereal, increasingly juddering score for a corps of clubbers who mobilise after sharing whispers and touches in an informal beginning. In thrall to the DJ, drawn to the golden allure of Sanli Lin Wang’s lighting, they are not so much lost in music as fiercely concentrating on it with as much focus as another intense scene in which they separately seek sexual climax. One clubber suggests the pain of keeping up with the beats, another is sent flying by them.
Whether as an undulating throng or in isolation, the dancers capture the thread of an epic night out, its momentum waxing and waning, as if a force is created between them to ride until closing time. It is done with elan, although there is some generic clubby filler in the movement and it needs tightening to sear like The Butterfly Who Flew Into the Rave, a not dissimilar attempt at transcendence through techno.
Isadora D’Héloïsa is “between bodies” in Entrecuerpos and also between flamenco and voguing, styles she finds akin in their background of “marginalised histories and resistance”. Performing her own choreography – accompanied by Bryan Reyes (guitar), Ago Hernandez (percussion) and Carlos de Luisa (cante) – she moves from flamenco’s tempestuous footwork and yearning to the voguing crouch of a duck walk and general runway pizzazz.
D’Héloïsa finds a commonality, including framings of the arms, though she more successfully isolates hands than legs, while the flamenco percussion accentuates the voguing angularity. The fusion never quite becomes more than the sum of its parts, but its joys include some inventive skirt-ography, her ruffles transforming into cape and camouflage for a piece alternating between sheer fabulousness and inner conflict.
