Diversions, the national dance company of Wales, is celebrating its 25th anniversary by touring a programme of work from two hotshot American choreographers. The pieces are smartly paired, each allowing the company’s ten eager dancers to sink their collective teeth into fluid, full-bodied movement.
The springboard for Sugarwater, a 2007 commission by the Netherlands-based Stephen Shropshire, is Handel’s Water Music. Anne Parlevliet, however, has reworked the latter into new compositions featuring fractured breathy sounds, held chords and only fragments of the original music. As with Handel, the dance is split into three sections that, in their wriggling, stretchy extremity, reminded me favourably of the work of Shropshire’s high-profile fellow American expatriate, William Forsythe. With its streaks of lyricism, Shropshire’s choreography may not pose as scintillating a challenge, but this classy piece makes Diversions’ dancers look distinctly capable.
Contemporary but operating from a classical base, the action is lit with stark sensitivity by Otto Eggersgluess. In ensemble passages the dancers shift easily between twisty sculptural poses and long, low descents to the bare white floor. A few company members are well showcased. The lean, tousle-haired Cris Tandy oozes his way through an early solo. Later Wayne Parsons and Jennifer White cantilever around each other in an attentively crafted love duet that is striking in its stylised intimacy.
The temperature rises several degrees in two sections from Stephen Petronio’s edgy 2000 opus, Strange Attractors. The opening, called Prelude and set to a track by Placebo and David Bowie, has eight dancers in loose black tops convulsing through a chain of druggy, orgasmic motion all in a row downstage. At times they behave like a single, and singularly sexualised, organism.
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The group breaks out in Part II. Here the soundtrack is a barrage of clang, twang and beats by James Lavelle. This exhilarating racket is the cue for a slippery stream of hell-bent movement. In black polo-necks, and with dark smudges beneath their eyes, the dancers stagger, stride and punch the air like a gang of criminal urban warriors determined to tear up the town.
Touring information at www.diversionsdance.co.uk