Straight after the footwear asssault was a piece of American dance heritage – a company with a strong African-American founding who portrayed several works that ranged from the classic Americana to contemporary dance via the modern (the problem with assigning labels like modern, classic and contemporary is that at some point the meaning is going to be lost …)
As we seem to find with the US companies when they come over, it was heavily crewed and there was a very distinct ‘this is my job and that is your job’ attitude amongst the entire company. This isn’t a personal attack on any of them but while I do support the need for specialists, that doesn’t mean that I don’t think they should muck in if they can help. The skill level was high amongst the crew but there were several times where the house crew really noticed that a department would be waiting on another to finish their tasks before they commenced.
[Shop Talk]
Technically, there isn’t a huge amount to say on this show – lighting was appropriate to the demands of the individual pieces – bright and breezy for the Americana and full of shadows, saturated hues and sharp angles for the modern pieces. Lighting was controlled from an Eos in the wings and the rig was toured generics. Sound toured their own front end desk which tied into the house EAW system.
Set was black box with or without a cyc for all pieces with the companies own sprung floor and marley.
[/shop talk]
The dancing was of a high standard, the pieces were well received and the whole environment was fairly stress free, which was a good respite from the previous show …
