What was I doing on an irritatingly hard-to-find London car park rooftop just before dusk in mid-October? Watching a performance organised by Dance Umbrella for its 37th city-wide autumn festival, an event increasingly associated with the presentation of dance in unconventional locations.
Conceived and directed by Dan Canham (with Laura Dannequin) for his multidisciplinary and highly collaborative company Still House, this outdoor production was billed as a “communal animation of urban space”. A programme note also referenced the “collective joy” that is possible when dance — in this case a blend of street, contemporary and especially folk-based movement performed by a female quintet — occurs in the open air.
For about 45 minutes several dozen audience members, many bundled up against a chilly breeze, stood or sat on three sides of an invisible square completed by a small white marquee. The latter was home base for the musicians Sam Halmarack and Luke Harney (aka Typesun), practitioners of an enticingly varied brand of electro-pop that was lent an additional edge by Halmarack’s strikingly plaintive vocals.
According to Still House’s website, the live soundtrack “is a rider and we are running horses”. I’d say it was the reverse, with the five competent dancers riding on the back of the music. The women began by catching moves from each other in a light, easygoing and improvisatory manner that towards the end segued into kick-hop unison steps. They seemed to be having fun, but for the most part the dancing lacked the precision, poetry or juicy abandon that might have taken the work to a higher level.
Their efforts were reasonably watchable and sometimes pleasant, but, unlike Halmarack and Harney’s score, unexceptional. The best part in Of Riders was when the public readily accepted an invitation to get up and get down with the cast — a belated glimpse of the kind of collective joy to which this show aspired but rarely achieved.
Dance Umbrella runs to Oct 31; danceumbrella.co.uk