Review: Concrete Impermanence
InReview
Choreographer Alison Currie’s latest dance work Concrete Impermanence features various sized cardboard concertina fans, which are used to explore the relationship between inanimate objects and human beings.
The show starts with Matt Adey’s flashes of lighting, which appear randomly across the wide stage. Two dancers then appear from underneath the flexible concertinas, signalling the beginning of the interaction between people and things.
Amrita Hepi and Lewis Rankin work hard for the hour as they move sensuously alone, together and with the objects. Versatile local performer Stephen Sheehan dances and repositions the objects so that they surround, impede and shelter the dancers.
Clever use of the stage has half of it sectioned off and well lit while Hepi, in a contrasting darkened space, goes solo.
Alisdair McIndoe’s soundscape is appealing with its gentle sounds of both nature and the mechanised world. It complements the dancers and is never intrusive. Anny Duff’s costumes work well – creating three casually dressed ordinary folk. I was expecting something audiovisual but all I saw was a TV monitor with a lot of red lines – perhaps something went wrong with the technology.
The dancers’ repositioning of objects is usually done to good effect, especially when an impressive room is created with Sheehan seated and basking in the moment. The dancers are creative and the piece is innovative but it could have been a little more inventive with a few more surprises. The piece heads towards the dancers experiencing a loss of material possessions as we hear crowds, fireworks, gunfire and a voice saying the loss of buildings is enormous.
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Audiences will interpret the piece as they will, but I felt a sense of journey and a notion of building. I also felt mindful that our lives are only one small step from major change.
Concrete Impermanence is an interesting piece of movement in a world of abstraction and imagery with the final scenes showing hope and renewal.
Concrete Impermanence is showing at Space Theatre tonight.
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