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Motionhouse Dance Theatre: Scattered
Motionhouse - Scattered
The Lowry
February 9, 2010
THIS was the first dance show I’ve seen in which gargling was part of the entertainment.
No need to ask why. The performance of Scattered, at The Lowry on Tuesday, was by Motionhouse dance company, and it was ‘a show about water’, as artistic director Kevin Finnan says.
Put together physical dancers who don’t hesitate at the most extreme challenges, and bottles of water, and you’ve got to have gargling.
But that was just a small part of what Scattered was about. It’s a film-and-dance work, in which for 70 minutes the sound score and film background run continuously and the seven performers interact with them – with uncanny precision and incredible skill at every level.
Their style is as much gymnastics as dance, and the result is breathtaking. It takes you from ice and cold, through a slow thaw to the gushing, surging power of water on the move, to heat and drought, the coming of rain, floods and immersion in water, and back to snow and ice again.
You might think that’s a survey of recent British weather, but Finnan was thinking of a north-south journey across the earth, from Arctic to Antarctic. It proved a fascinating experience anyway, and though, in terms of choreographic invention alone, it had its limitations and stuck in repetitions occasionally, as an assault on the senses it was amazing.
Special credit to Simon Dorman, who designed the towering super-slide of a set, and Claire Armitage for the highly functional but individual costume design.
Reviewed: Wed, 10 February, 2010
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