Fringe Dance
Sunshine Boy
three stars
Atomic 3001
three stars
both shows at Dance Base
Mary Brennan
In 1980, Leigh Bowery left his native Australia, moved to London - and found himself, as a creative wild card. More recently, Scottish dance-maker Andy Howitt moved to Sunshine, Melbourne - and found himself close to where Bowery was born and grew up. Howitt’s solo, Sunshine Boy, brings together those life-lines in vivid celebration of an iconoclast whose influence has outlived him - he died in 1994, aged thirty-three.
It’s doubtful if Bowery was ever as svelte as Howitt is, when he manifests in the candy-pink unitard underneath the frou-frou costumes that the hefty Aussie cross-dressed in. But as Howitt skips blithely across the stage, he really catches the buoyant spirit, the arch mischief, that Bowery brought to the 80’s London club and fashion scene. And when he references Bowery’s time with the Michael Clark company, Howitt has Clark’s signature moves - the edgy angularities, pelvic swivels, fleet footwork - to a tee. Facts and anecdotes mingle with the dance, the music - Velvet Underground, Bowie - and the outrageous frockery, to showcase the radical, but intrinsically private, artist who hid behind a series of garish masks.
Throbbing, insistent pulses cudgel the darkness in Atomic 3001, relentlessly drilling into the very muscles and nerve-ends of Leslie Mannès’s isolated figure. Frozen in a centre spot of light, she twitches, flickers, ratchets robotically as if wired into the soundscape - you wonder, however, if it is controlling her, or is she generating the beats and beeps herself? This notion gains ground when - discarding her ‘prisoner’s’ red blouson - Mannès breaks out, freely owns the entire space, turns rock chick with seriously groovin’ moves, asserts her own power with the same intensity she brought to the earlier endurance test. Bowery would have loved such unstinting defiance.
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 hereComments are closed on this article