Dance: Finding your feet

Cunningham Forever
Beach Birds and Biped
Lyon Opera Ballet
choreography Merce Cunningham

dancers Yuya Aoki, Jacqueline Baby, Kristina Bentz, Eleonora Campello, Jeshua Costa, Katrin de Bakker, Tyler Galster, Livia Gil, Paul Gregoire, Jackson Haywood, Mikio Kato, Amanda Lana, Eline Larrory, Almudena Maldonado, Eline Malegue, Albert Nikolli, Amanda Peet, Leoannis Pupo, Roylan Ramos, Anna Romanova, Gianmarco Romano, Marta Rueda, Emily Slawski, Ryo Shimizu, Giacomo Todeschi, Alejandro Vargas, Kaine Ward
music John Cage, Gavin Bryars
costumes Marsha Skinner, Suzanne Gallo
lighting Aaron Copp
Sadler's Wells, London • 19-20.Mar.25 ★★★

Part of the Van Cleef & Arpels' Dance Reflections festival, this programme features two pieces choreographed by Merce Cunningham. These are strikingly physical dances, demanding a lot of strength from the performers as they strike broad poses that are often balanced on one foot. Interaction is varied, with solos, duets and group numbers that swirl through a variety of shapes, occasionally finding a sense of group synchronicity. This individuality is clearly deliberate in both pieces, which makes the storytelling difficult to follow. As a result, the emotional impact is somewhat muted. These are pieces that are admired rather than strongly felt.

Beach Birds was created in 1991 in partnership with composer John Cage. Eleven dancers move around the stage on their own, arms outspread, sometimes partnering to create little scenes as pairs or trios. This allows each performer to infuse their work with some personality, which swells up when they flock together into a larger movement. Music is minimal, with single piano notes alongside some strings and rain sticks. Costumes are lovely, two-toned bodysuits in black and white. And the stage is bare, with only shifting colours in the backdrop.

Created in 1999, just after Cunningham's 80th birthday, Biped focusses on the human body, as the title suggests, playing on how weight is distributed between two feet. There are some 15 dancers coming on and off the stage behind a scrim, onto which gorgeous images are projected, both abstract shapes and gigantic dancing figures who seem to swirl around the performers the stage floor, which is marked in shifting patterns of light. The result is visually dazzling, with a surging live musical score and various groupings of dancers in apparently random groupings that are edgy and vibrant. Their shimmering costumes add to the striking visual effect.

There's a sense that Cunningham's challenging choreography is almost spoofing elite art performance, forcing the audience to continually question why seemingly inexplicable things happen on-stage. This is perhaps because, while there's a clear intentionality to all of it, the wider audience feels somewhat left in the dark regarding the meaning. We can admire the skill of the dancers, especially their endurance in such intense physicality, and the staging itself is beautiful. All of which makes it a wonderful celebration of the human form.

For details, SADLER'S WELLS >

photos by Agathe Poupeney • 20.Mar.25

Critical Week(s): A girl's best friend

The week of the London critics' awards, I only had two screenings, so I'm rolling that into this past week here. Films at the moment are mainly arthouse movies, because I've seen all of the big ticket movies either at festivals or during awards-voting periods last year. Then this week we had 2020's first big title, the DC Comics' action romp Birds of Prey. To be honest, I was dreading it, because I'm not the biggest fan of 2016's Suicide Squad. But director Cathy Yan rights everything David Ayer did wrong with that film: this one has deeper characters, coherent action, a plot that actually develops the situations and people in interesting directions. Margot Robbie is still over-the-top as Harley Quinn, but she has layers of interest this time, and is never sexualised. In other words, the film is a refreshing blast of bonkers energy.

There were also two powerfully involving low-key independent dramas. From Ireland, Calm With Horses is a dark and punchy drama about a hulking young ex-boxer (the terrific Cosmo Jarvis) struggling to balance his work as a henchman with his love for his young autistic son. And from England, County Lines is a pointed, often harrowing drama about a 14-year-old (astonishing newcomer Conrad Khan) groomed into a life of crime by a charismatic stranger (Harris Dickinson). Two Scandinavian movies were unnerving for very different reasons: The Icelandic drama A White, White Day is a slow, moving exploration of grief, while the Swedish horror Koko-Di Koko-Da is surreal, unhinged and breathtakingly original. And then there was the 3D documentary Cunningham, which inventively chronicles the career of groundbreaking dancer-choreographer Merce Cunningham.

This coming week's screenings include Jim Carrey in Sonic the Hedgehog, Anya Taylor-Joy in Emma, Tiffany Haddish in Like a Boss, Keira Knightley in Misbehaviour and the British thriller Rose Plays Julie.

And in the wake of the always rather predictable Baftas last weekend, which were as usual broadcast in the UK heavily edited and several hours after they took place, I'll be staying up all night on Sunday to watch the Oscars handed out live. In the UK the show starts at 1am. I'll take a nap beforehand...