Dance
SOFTLAMP.autonomies, four stars
Dadderrs, three stars
Tramway, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
It’s ‘weird and wonderful’ night at DIG (Dance International Glasgow). The limits of endurance – for audience as well as performers – are tested in SOFTLAMP.autonomies while the usual formalities that divide audience and performers evaporate in Dadderrs where, as in life, we are all in it together. It makes for a brilliantly disruptive double bill that encourages you to re-think the ‘what and how’ of your expectations in terms of dance and performance.
SOFTLAMP.autonomies begins in incense-perfumed silence. Downstage, two white-clad performers - Ellen Furey and Malik Nashad Sharpe – lie prone. Gradually, limbs move. Both dancers follow their own trajectory until they’re upright. What next? The meditative silence is blown apart by the insistent, pulsing rhythms of Pillen de Yung Hurn, a piece of electronic music that will loop over and over – at full volume – until you long for it to stop. Except it’s underpinning a gorgeous, lovesome episode of tightly-synchronised dance where Furey and Sharpe repeat, and build on, little phrases of movement: small hops, shimmies, side-steps, bounces - perfectly co-ordinated, so delectable you don’t want them to stop... Their unyielding stamina is almost terrifying. The light shifts into a blue wash. They do stop – the music doesn’t! When they re-start, there’s an element of divergence that asserts individuality even when the in-synch energies continue. By now, the music is like your friend, you’re maybe even singing the vocal line under your breath. Maybe starting to wonder if the music, the lighting change, altered how you saw the dance?
There’s more ‘love it? hate it?’ provocation in Dadderrs, where Frauke Requardt and Daniel Oliver declare Tramway 4 their Meadowdrome and the audience participates whole-sale in the fantastical escapism of the couple’s married life. It’s mayhem: he and she dress up, strip off, dance exuberantly, have volunteers re-enact their courtship. But there’s method in the madness, an honesty about how couples survive parenthood without losing sight of themselves.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here