Sanjoy Roy

writing on dance

  • HOME
  • Step by Step Guides
  • Reviews
  • Articles
  • Books
  • Resources
  • Etc
  •  
  • FAQ
  • Me
  • Events
  • Blog
    • You
  •  
You are here: Home → Reviews → Resolution review → Rootlessroot Company, Off The Map, Temporary
  • share  
  • tweet  
  • share 
  • e-mail 
By: Sanjoy Roy · Published: theplace.org.uk 19 January 2008 · Category: Resolution review, Reviews · Place: London, The Place Theatre · See theplace.org.uk website

Rootlessroot Company, Off The Map, Temporary

Fight, fight, fight! – Memento in movement – OMG, is that really happening...?! OMG, OMG!

In Greek myth, Hector and Andromache are the archetypal heroic husband and devoted wife. Greek company Rootlessroot sees them rather differently in Sudden Showers of Silence. Josef Frucek, with “warrior” blazoned across his shirt, crouches and leaps like a belligerent chimpanzee; Linda Kapatanea (“widow”) kneads a baby out of dough. Mostly, though, they fight each other furiously – first with wooden rods, then with bare hands – in a high-tension combination of rigorous martial arts and no-holds-barred physical theatre. Overlong and occasionally bewildering (what’s with the silver platform boots?) it’s still a gripping, bruising experience.

In the film Memento, the plot runs in forward sections, but overall it’s told backwards, so only at the end do you understand the beginning. Steve Johnstone’s aptly named Rewind does something formally similar, but in abstract contemporary dance and without the story or the stars. Two women and one man run along in parallel worlds, limbs and torsos twisting in fluid, elastic phrases. Gradually their separate motifs – a hanging arm, a long lunge forward – begin to overlap and merge. It’s a well-crafted if rather academic study in composition, though hindered by the bland music. The ending reassembles the women’s opening solo material as a slippery duet – and suddenly, the composition seems to make sense retrospectively. Which makes you want to rewind and see it again, immediately.

That would be impossible with Charlotte Eatock and Rachael Mossom’s Secret Event, which has an unrepeatable ending. The piece is a determinedly zany response to various bits of music – a music-box solo to a music-box song, robotic group formations to techno. The wackiness can get as wearing as the kooky costumes, though one man (Guy Hoare, as wild and hairy as Rasputin), does a brilliant heave-and-lurch number to thrash metal music. Then comes the ending. A woman leans over Hoare and slowly, inexorably, hacks out chunks from his huge thicket of beard and mane of hair. I’m pretty certain it’s his real hair, so must have taken months to grow. The audience goes wild – gasping, screaming and tearing out their hair.

  • share  
  • tweet  
  • share 
  • e-mail 

Related articles

  • Who_loves2dance.company, Jiva Parthipan, London Diaspora Dance Theatre
  • Overblown portents, a loose cannon, and spirited contemporary-afro-jazz-funk

  • Ox, Sinman Dance Company, Neon Productions
  • A road movie, well worth the ride, a dance that’s more decoration than substance, and a plucky, rocky duet

  • Côte à Côte Theatre Company, Maaikor Dance Company, Joss Arnott Dance
  • Stools to fall between, a Russell Maliphant tribute, and an assault that aims to impress

← Previous: Miquel Barceló & Josef Nadj: Paso Doble Next: Jessica Huber, Fish in a Bowl, PREM dance collective →

You like

  • Stage to page: a guide to dance reviewing and writing 2 December 2015
  • Expanding horizons: on the metaphor of travel 1 March 1999
  • Profile: Siobhan Davies 1 September 2003
  • Zero Degrees: nothing is singular 30 September 2005
  • Signs and wonders: The Nutcracker 30 March 1995

I like

  • A frisson of the forbidden: dance and horror
    1 May 2016
  • Betroffenheit, Crystal Pite & Jonathon Young, Sadler’s Wells
    12 April 2017
  • How long is a piece of dance?
    1 June 2014
  • Rosemary Butcher: Choreography, Collisions and Collaborations
    1 April 2006
  • Expanding horizons: on the metaphor of travel
    1 March 1999

Recently published

  • Polyphony, playing and politics: the many voices of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui
    6 December 2018
  • Belén Bouzas, Diego M. Buceta, Fran Martínez: ‘No hay que ser una casa para tener fantasmas’
    6 December 2018
  • Eduardo Zúñigo: At Last
    6 December 2018
  • Kicking and screaming: how dance became cinema’s biggest boogieman
    22 November 2018
  • Shobana Jeyasingh: Contagion
    22 October 2018

 

  • Home
  • Privacy policy
  • Sitemap
  • Contact

Dance writing: links

  • Guardian dance
  • Springback magazine
  • Performance Monkey
  • Deborah Jowitt
  • dancetabs.com

Random fandom

  • Aretha Franklin
  • Guy Maddin
  • Joni Mitchell
  • Maurice Ravel
  • Slayage
  • The Spirit of the Beehive
  • Whedonesque
 

© Copyright 2013–2018 by Sanjoy Roy · All rights reserved · Site design by Sanjoy Roy

Cancel

  • Home
  • Writing
    ►
    • Step by Step Guides
    • Reviews
    • Articles
    • Books
    • Resources
    • Etc
  • Info
    ►
    • FAQ
    • Me
    • You
    • Events
    • Blog
    • Subscribe
  • Follow
    ►
    • Facebook
    • Twitter