INTRODANS BRINGS TECHNO-DANS TO JOMBA!
By Alexandru (Sasha) Bora
Blue Journey(2020) uses shadows and silhouettes on a screen, accompanying the dancers in their journey of self-discovery and finding their identity. Most of the shadows are grey, lacking in individual features, but one blue silhouette appears, jumping and turning, and stands out from the others. The performers run and twist along the shapes behind them, creating duets that follow in canons. The synchronisation between the lead female dancer and the blue shadow, the cause-effect relationship between their arms extensions, their turns and winged feet, this is almost surreal. Blue Journey is a great example of dance interacting with animation in a live setting and enhances the concept of belonging as depicted in the duets, and furthermore the loneliness and isolation of the female dancer.
Wereldleirder (World Leaders) (2020) involves two male dancers exploring the theme of power. They push each other, create distance and tension between each other, but they also attract and come face-to-face, chest-to-chest, making themselves dependent on each other; all this while behind them bodies are dropping onto and lying on the stage floor. Throughout this piece there is an underlying suspense, almost like a horror film, and we wait for the outcome of these fighting bodies, their pulls, their pointed fingers and their long stretched limbs. This fierce competition and strength ends as the dancers fall together to the ground, neither side victorious, reminding me about how ‘World Leaders’ also seem to be in deadlock so involved with their own power struggle oblivious to how their actions devastate and damage the lives of others.
Face Machine (2020) invites the audience, through the use of various cameras placed on the stage, to notice how dancers stretch, twist and react to a person’s face; to a ‘selfie’. The dancers shake, twist and avoid the tongue of the person on the big screen in a playful way. There is energy flowing throughout this piece, as hips move like dominoes, bodies are blown away and eyes jump out in this fascinating, multi-dimensional piece that takes inspiration from the physicality of the human face.
Swingle Sisters (2016) finds three female dancers sitting at a red table coughing in an exaggerated manner. Their coughing becomes the rhythm to which they travel across the stage with the table, all the time maintaining some sense of comedy bending and arching while coughing. In this piece, there is egg smashing against the body, eating and spitting up of the chewed food around the stage and it culminates with a milk bath. This piece is creative and amusing inviting the audience to experience another dimension.
