A View From The Shore

On Friday I went to see chereographer Jacky Lansley's dance piece 'A view from the shore' at the Clore Studio at the Royal Opera House. It was quite pertinent to my own research, as it was a site-specific piece devised whilst on location on the Cornish coast, aiming to translate this experience to a theatrical space and audience. It was interesting to hear the chereographer and performers talk afterwards about the process. The performers stated that something of that original experience of playing on the rocks, wading in the sea, standing on the edge of a cliff, definitely stayed with them whilst performing. Lansley talked about the natural sense of play one has as a child, and about how she wishes to reinsert into through her dance pieces. I asked her why bring this originally site-specific piece indoors, and what is added to it by putting it in a theatrical space? She was keen to stress that she has done many outdoor site-specific pieces prior to this, but in this case, she wanted to hold the experience of an outdoor location close, internalize it through dance, and then share it in an urban environment, especially at this fragile time in our culture. This process is something that I am thinking about greatly. For me it is human experience of the outdoors that I am interested in - but do I want to perform this with the outdoors as the backdrop, or do I want to highlight it, hold it up in an indoor, theatrical environment? Something to be explored in workshops.
I feel there might be a place for dance in my piece, but with limits.... I think contemporary dance can often be far too long. However there is nothing quite like dance for expressing instinctive reactions to place and spaces. But I feel that often it is only a sequence of a few gestures or movements needed. Keep it simple and (hopefully) touching.
The lighting in this production was particularly beautiful. As well as lamps above, free standing lamps were positioned at the dancer's height and bathed them in a warm yellow as they danced against an intense blue backdrop. The projection behind was faded in and out tastefully, never detracting from the performers, however it was a little too mundane to be of much interest - a sea slowly lapping, but without much emotion or colour, or definition.