Currency Festival held by UK’s premiere centre for contemporary dance, The Place, is a brilliant example of the global language of dance merging with other art forms to find new ways of telling stories.
Watch Performances on Currency TV
Tony Adigun and Inua Ellams Any Given Night
UK choreographer and artistic director of Avant Garde Dance, Tony Adigun collaborates with writer Inua Ellams to explore where narrative, symbolism, imagery and story intersect in Any Given Night.
This work in development had the beginnings of something interesting. The pair sits on piano stools amongst a sea of black pieces of paper all with the words ‘any’ and ‘night’ written on them. They shuffle about with a rigid vocabulary, scrunching up the paper, not leaving any part of the studio unturned.
The repetition of the title in the sheets and speech makes the assumptive message of anything being possible at any given moment somewhat literal. Nevertheless this 15 minute experiment does what they aim to do, which is to test out and play with connections between them and the shows they make.
Tabea Martin Field
The highlight of the evening had to be Switzerland based, Tabea Martin’s Field. A love triangle between two guys and a girl, the trio are fluid in their sexualities, fighting for each other’s infatuation.
100 love songs are reeled off, with dancer Carl Staaf seducing members of the audience. Before number one is reached Luca Cacitti and Stephanie Bayle join Staaf tumbling and climbing on each other, climaxing into a sweaty mess. Love is not gentle.
Martin has choreographed this piece with such intention and bite, supported by dancers who, quite frankly really go for it. Of course where there is raw love there is nudity and the three compete for attention by removing their clothing. A fantastic piece that I could watch again!
Marco da Silva Ferreira Hu(r)mano
Closing the night Marco da Silva, from Portugal presents us with Hu(r)mano with ever-shifting relationships between its four dancers. Expressive depths are opened up in an otherwise abstract and bare world as we connect with the individual characters and moods of the performers.
The continuous beat from the club track sets a monotonous rhythm that is not broken away from in the movement, forming a hypnotic feel. If edited and trimmed Hu(r)mano could be an intoxicating spectacle with a primal vocabulary that uses urban influenced movement and popping to expose beauty, awkwardness, connection and alienation. The quartet are tight and clearly in tune with each other.
Currency 2015
With work on display from UK, Switzerland and Portugal, the 3rd night of Currency Festival – in partnership with Crying Out Loud, European Commission, EUNIC London, Institut français du Royaume-Uni and Aerowaves – presented a varied triple bill of pieces that evokes thought and excitement.
Reviewed @ The Place, London 11 September 2015