Fringe Dance

Mary Brennan

M.I.S – all night long

Dance Base

five Stars

Contemporary?

Zoo Sanctuary

four Stars

Lost in Complete

Dance Base

four Stars

M.I.S stands for Men in Sandals... with hand-knitted woolly socks, to offset any unpleasant chafing. A quick look at the feet of Jannik Elkær and Kristoffer Louis Andrup Pedersen – who combine as Denmark’s Don Gnu company – and yes! those 70’s era sharp suits end in a folksy-hippy footwear statement. It’s not the only point of confusion in this deliriously daft but astutely nuanced piece of dance: our lads are still playing games with each other, and with themselves, in a mid-life bid to discover who they are. We reckon that Elkær’s Don sees himself as a bit of a cool boss dude to Andrup Pederson’s support buddy, Gnu. Think Laurel and Hardy, maybe, as the duo – in what they call “slapdance” – try repeatedly to fill a gap in the upstage fence with a long plank. That plank is like an umbilical between them, a brilliant and often ridiculous metaphor for the to-and-fro power shifts in their relationship. The comedy twists nippily, however, with the arrival of a third party, a feathery-winged El Chino (Simon Beyer-Pedersen) whose angelic status is a moot point as he impudently muscles in on the Don Gnu set up. There are tussles, shows of one-up-manship with big beach-balls –– go figure the emblematic rivalries in that – but what surfaces, actually, is a need for male bonding at a primal,reassuring level. There is something tender and beautiful in the tango that Andrup Pederson leads Elkær into at one point, the footwork a demonstration that – for all the clowning – these dudes can really dance. Does El Chino (whose facial expressions are a hoot) get to wear those socks and sandals? Ahhh... that would be telling! What I will say is that the visuals – especially the “sock porn” sequence – are great fun and the live music from Alice Carreri is another layer of sophistication.

Runs until August 28

NOT many performers would leap up and announce – after some ten minutes of all three dancers’ slow, very slow inchings out of a foetal position – that “This is boring!” But this jolting (and not inaccurate) statement is par for the course followed by the Lithuanian outfit Arts Printing House. Perhaps it’s because all three dancers – Agn? Ramanauskait?, Paulius Tamol? and Mantas Staba?inskas – know, from their own award-winning experiences on-stage and on TV, how to gauge audience response in all degrees from cool to tepid to hot. They also know how easy it is for contemporary choreography to lapse into pretentious navel-gazing that smacks of Emperor’s New Clothes inadequacies. The element of clever parody in Contemporary? is only a springboard for some incisive discussion about style, content and values in modern dance – with room made for side-swipes at egos and costume choices. If the squabbling among the three smacks of studio confrontations they’ve know, the dance itself is a sly mix of cliches and handsomely-made movement that simply reinforces the impression that they know what they’re talking, and dancing, about. They do both with great humour and panache.

Run ended

FIVE guys, all with different nationalities. Five guys who speak street dance styles with different, highly individual accents. Five guys who belong to the well-named Complete Dance Crew from Sweden. Their short – only 35 minutes long – show is called Lost In Complete and it’s like a slice of what they do when they’re riffing on ideas, trying out their own new moves, or just getting into the zone where ensemble synchronicity is the aim of the game. An unseen, computer-metallic voice occasionally calls out commands that then re-direct energies in another direction. There are glints of tongue-in-cheek comedy here, but the skills-set on-stage is seriously strong and full of slick invention. It’s hip hop in an eye-popping variety of forms, morphing to meet the changing beat, making light of challenges that send bodies moving like animated Swiss army knives. A Complete class act.

Run ended