211116 – Cloud Gate 2 – Sadler’s, London EC1 > words
Taiwan’s Cloud Gate 2 Sadler’s Wells. The performance was split into three acts Wicked Fish, The Wall and Beckoning.
Cloud Gates acts 1 and 2 were a frenetic, manic, complex choreography with the dancers working as a unified swarming mass. Weaving, layering, swirling they laid a mesh of movement across the stage that formed a rich uniform texture. Dark costumes and dark lighting set the mood. The dancers worked off of each other their execution fluid, skilful, quick and precise. The first two acts were the dance equivalent of a Jackson Pollack painting, an energetic canvas covered with undeviating fluid intensity from edge to edge.
If the first two acts were Pollack’s the third was a Kandinsky. The lighting was lifted and the costumes pure colour. The choreography more staccato with bunched group work, flying solos and dancers following a line all working within a sparse canvass. The composition continually takes the eye back and forth moving from areas of dance or mix colour conglomeration to isolated points of energy in vibrant colour.
The Contemporary Dance / Pollack comparative is also contextual. When the narrative, meaning, moral, hierarchy and emotive are stripped from a performance the free flow abstract of movement or paint are limiting. This pure abstraction of paint and dance had a purpose in the 1950’s and 60’s but its relevance is questionable today. Contemporary dance now requires additional layers of meaning, rationale and investigation. The Cloud Gate 2 performance was youthful, competent and complex but lacked the magic of either intellect or virtuoso. As an interpretation of swarm Wicked Fish was the most interesting and for the purely visual aesthetic Beckoning shone.
The Surrogate Twin