Sanjoy Roy

writing on dance

  • HOME
  • Step by Step Guides
  • Reviews
  • Articles
  • Books
  • Audio
  • Resources
  • Etc
  •  
  • FAQ
  • Me
  • Events
  • Blog
  •  
You are here: Home → Reviews → Jasmin Vardimon Company: Yesterday
  •  
  •  
By: Sanjoy Roy · Published: The Guardian 24 November 2008 · Category: Reviews · Place: London, Peacock Theatre · See original at The Guardian

Jasmin Vardimon Company: Yesterday

Though a little ragtag, Jasmin Vardimon's retrospective piece is still inventive and punchy

Israeli-born choreographer Jasmin Vardimon founded her company 10 years ago – to mark the event, she has choreographed a new piece, called simply Yesterday, a resetting of selected scenes from her body of work. Vardimon, though, is much too tough for nostalgia: this is less a trip down memory lane than a series of blasts from her past. In the opening – to a pounding beat and backed by a screen buzzing with eye-scorching televisual static – the eight dancers scuffle, reel, launch upwards and dive downwards, all in strict formation. The hard-hitting, attention-grabbing combination of anarchic energy with military discipline pins us to our seats.

Now she can show us her stuff. And that reveals two special strengths. She is good at putting metaphors into material form. Luke Burrough and Mafalda Deville play a doctor and patient whose particularly vicious pillow-fight perfectly poses a troubling question: does treating sickness become attacking the sick? Another scene links flag-waving to the broader cultural climate: Burrough makes a blustering, nationalist speech, and his wantonly brandished English flag sends the dancers scudding and tumbling, as if buffeted by storms.

Secondly, Vardimon is also inventive with visual technology, often superimposing relayed images onto live action. For a piece dealing with memory, this is particularly suggestive; nowhere more so than the thermal screen that bears the shadows of bodies pressed against it, or the fading imprint of words and scribbles.

But a retrospective of this kind exposes weaknesses as well as strengths. Even more than with most physical theatre, there is a rag-tag feel: several scenes really need more thematic context, and by the end, the anarcho-militarist format feels like a formula. Still, Yesterday clearly hit the spot for its vociferous and largely very youthful audience.

  •  
  •  

Related articles

  • Jasmin Vardimon Company: Park
  • A ragbag of a piece packed with an assortment of hits and misses

  • Retina Dance Company – Me:Mo
  • A dance about memory is a bit… unmemorable

  • Laura Krasnic, Daisy Thompson & Ian Garside, Longfellows Physical Theatre Company
  • A contemporary dance cliché – oh, and another one – and a sight-gaggy satire

← Previous: Sankai Juku Next: Patterns in rain: Reich evening by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker/Rosas →
Get an email alert when a new article is published on sanjoyroy.net

You like

  • Stage to page: a guide to dance reviewing and writing 2 December 2015
  • Make it happen: the role of the dance producer 1 September 2014
  • Zero Degrees: nothing is singular 30 September 2005
  • Norwegian National Ballet: Hedda Gabler 1 November 2017
  • Signs and wonders: The Nutcracker 30 March 1995

I like

  • Foot and mouth: on words in choreography
    1 April 2007
  • One last dance with Patrick Swayze
    16 September 2009
  • The shape shifter: Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui
    2 November 2013
  • Javier De Frutos Les Enfants Terribles, Project Polunin, Crystal Pite Flight Pattern
    25 May 2017
  • Rambert: Life is a Dream
    24 May 2018

Recently published

  • Shobana Jeyasingh Surface Tension podcast #5: Staging Schiele
    25 November 2019
  • Cullberg: Figure a Sea
    1 October 2019
  • Boy Blue: Redd
    29 September 2019
  • Rosie Kay: Fantasia
    27 September 2019
  • Shobana Jeyasingh / Surface Tension podcast #4: Science and science fiction
    20 September 2019

 

  • 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