Snagged and Clored

A private tardis, a sleeping couple, and dream wasps and worms


Snagged and Clored is a two-week showcase of contemporary dance in the airy Clore Studio at the Royal Opera House, each mixed programme comprising diverse works by experienced dancers and choreographers. On opening night the three pieces were, coincidentally, all concerned with coupledom.

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Show, by Joanne Fong, is more like an installation than a staged dance piece. The audience mills around a tall wooden box, its walls slit by oblong doorways which reveal glimpses of two figures within, Darren Ellis and Pari Naderi. As they duck and dodge inside, you can only register fragments: an arm, a run, a gasp, a glance. You feel like a nosey neighbour angling for a view on a couple who are having a domestic inside their own private tardis. It’s okay for a while – but soon your attention is more distracted by, than focused on, the piece.

Uncouple is a much more engaging work, a portrait of a partnership performed by Henry Montes and Deborah Saxon. The two start far apart, and their gradual coming together throws the rough edges of their involvement into relief: their heads swivel away from each other like repelling magnets; their arms lock stiffly behind them into ill-fitting cogs that link their bodies awkwardly together. One sequence sees them opening and circling their arms, like a series of revolving doors through which they pursue and slip away from each other. Several times they roll and shunt on the floor, like a couple sleeping in the same bed but dreaming in different worlds.

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Mimizu has a more explicit dream theme. Musician Steve Blake has wasp nightmares. Dancer Maho Ihara has anxiety dreams about a big-headed pink worm that’s coming to get her. Blake settles into his armchair for some insomniac telly-watching, as Ihara sways and somnambulates about the living room. It’s offbeat, lightly comic, and rather homely, like two parts surrealism to one part Horlicks.