Justine Reeve Dance, Kirstie Richardson, Daniel Somerville

Oddball disjointedness, marriage blues, and corpse brides


“Disjointed” is the word that springs to mind, though not necessarily in a bad way. Justine Reeve’s Someone else’s perception of perfection is a series of non-sequiturs, each scene displaced by the next. Its dance style is also discontinuous, full of hitches and wrong-footings. Emma Gogan executes some off-kilter callisthenics, then a puppet-limbed man builds up a sequence of swizzles; another man lurches about with ragdoll tumbles and swaggers. The men form an oddball twosome in the one section that’s sustained enough to become weirdly compelling, before Gogan returns in heels and posh frock, her hair untrammelled. Very baffling, but sometimes tantalisingly so.

Kirstie Richardson’s At the age of 40 I decided to be honest is a confessional piece. Richardson throws a ring onto the floor. She parades up and down, hand outstretched to show it now on her finger. Her hand shivers, then shakes, but the ring stays on. She lies inside the outline of a human figure that she’s made from tape, then slithers away. She gets hooked on some sassy poses, caresses her own hands, flounders on the floor, and finally she roams restlessly in the dark in front of projected images of a man, two children. “I’m married,” says Richardson near the beginning, but she needn’t have spelled it out: the solo speaks for itself as a collage of evocative actions and images.

Daniel Somerville’s Mad Scene is built on evocative imagery. A dapper Somerville appears with shirt splattered red, sidling forward wanly like a recently shot duck. With a theatrical flourish, he sweeps back the curtains to reveal our cast of characters: a corpse bride in diaphanous white with crimson lips; a white-faced man in a singlet, part pierrot, part ghostly b-boy; a wild, dark-haired woman who flings about her bouquet and veil. Shame about the action, then: having set up the imagery brilliantly, the choreography itself serves mostly to fill out the swooning strains and quivering coloratura of its operatic score.