In Jessica Huber’s I Spy With My Little Eye, a woman chases tennis balls rolled on stage from the wings. Soon they’re being lobbed in, and then fired at her. Bowling has become tennis, and turned into shooting. That idea – taking a game and then pushing the rules to up the stakes – sets the template for this piece, performed by four energetic dancers and one laconic guitarist. A gentle game of “Simon Says” escalates into a bootcamp training session. A group therapy exercise grows into hysterical affirmation, then sinister confrontation. Playing games with games, I Spy is diverting: both fun and inconsequential at the same time.
Fish in a Bowl are a company of classically trained dancers led by Anthony Kurt-Gabel. With moody lighting and wintry selection of music, Abusing Love tells the enigmatic story of two couples. Alex Newton and Samuel Guy are the younger, more innocent pair. He lifts her into hovering steps, she coils around him; they’re wrapped up in each other. Newton is lured into the more complex web of tilts and strides woven by Charlotte Broom and Richard Curto. Nothing is explicit, but there are haunting undercurrents of powerplay and jealousy. By Resolution! standards, the modern-ballet style is choreographically fairly mainstream; yes, and it’s also finely crafted, convincingly performed (especially by Charlotte Broom), and leaves you wanting more.
In Prem Dance Collective’s Brisk, Bright But Broken, a fleshy egg shape – Marcella Cappeletti and Yamuna Devi, wrapped around each other – grows swan wings (Devi’s arms) and eagle claws (Cappeletti’s hands); then splits into two beings who stalk and mirror each other. Swaying like birds on a branch or strutting like storks, they enact strange rituals of territory and display before returning to the egg from whence they came. The piece is strong on image and atmosphere, weak on development and contact. With its hypnotic score and vocals, this feels like an invocation of some otherwordly spirit – fleetingly compelling, strangely insubstantial.