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DRAMA & DANCE
Narratives of journey, images of adventure and scenes from Dali’s surreal landscapes
The Elephant, the Dancer & the Sleeping Man drew inspiration from the work of Salvador Dali, and the piece took us on a kaleidoscopic journey through the artist’s work, skilfully capturing the abstract tone and surreal landscape of this tortured genius. Using verbatim sequences and narration as well as some great physical theatre sequences with picture frames, the skilled quartet of Zain Almahdi, Alexander Poli, Matthew Boulton and Ben Reinton- Brown gave us an appropriately expressionistic take on the artist’s psychological struggle for self-fulfilment and artistic inspiration. Inspired by Lamorisse’s iconic The Red Balloon and images of David Blaine’s recent attempt to float above the earth lifted only by helium balloons (itself inspired by Le Ballon Rouge), Inside Out, devised by Joe Bailey, Alex Chapman, Beau McChesney, William Ransley and Alexander Reese, used colour and balloons as a starting point for the evocation of emotion within a story of a young boy’s relationship with schizophrenia. Their piece was both provocative and moving, with the audience following the protagonist on a journey as he unpacked his symptoms and gained a better understanding of his triggers with the disease. Drawing on the stimulus of Orson Welles’ chase scene from The Third Man , the ensemble of Charlie Boyle, Leo Chan, Jack Doye, Joseph Hill and Ewan Plowden-Wardlaw presented Le Stick Man.
Intended as a pastiche of heist movies, and further inspired by research into Lupin and other popular films and television, the devised piece combined scenes of physical theatre with heightened comedic interpretations of well-known tropes associated with the genre. Nat Rowney’s lighting design with shafts of light and shadows perfectly conveyed the tension of the heist, which was enhanced by the closing down of the space with pools of top-light to reveal the claustrophobic realm of interrogation. Exploring the symbolism of Dali’s paintings, in particular the layered Persistence of Memory , the final piece, Memory of a Soldier , followed the tragic life story of Joe Gardner, his recollections of life with his wife, and the brutal consequences of dementia. The piece, devised and performed by Alfred Ball, Marcus Deurell Benito, Wilf Edwards, Zaki Kabir and Oldrich Schwarz, integrated expressionistic elements to convey the inner state of the flawed protagonist, making use of gridlines, slow motion and fleeting choreographic flashback motifs to unsettling and highly moving effect. Matthew Garrett’s lighting design echoed the dreamlike quality, with saturated colour and sharply defined pools of light to highlight Joe’s isolation from his memory.
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