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Cool Beat Rhythm Sweet - 2013
Videos from Jonty Gray's Media
Review
COOL AND SWEET TRIUMPH
It was more than just a showcase of (impressive) local talent. In ‘Cool Beat, Rhythm Sweet’, Nikki Northover’s Bridport Youth Dance pushed the boundaries again this year.
Jo Fox’s set – like the giant dilapidated fence and flowerbed of a mysterious garden – created the backdrop for a bittersweet journey of dance and music exploring shifting moods and broken beauty.
It was not just the young ‘Bridport Boys Dance’ group blazing a trail out of the ‘Boys can’t dance’ straightjacket with their expressive arm movements and body percussion. It was not just the Tapistory Tap Dance Ensemble (Emily Meech, Harry Poole, Annie Pownall, Kia Rait-McDonald and Marina Renee-Cemmick) performing with their usual immaculate skill and timing. It was not only Nikki Northover’s joyous razamataz jazz and tap choreographies, including crisp and confident dance from the Middle Tap group promising well for the future. It was not even the variety of shifting moods from the lyrical and magical ‘Rhythm of Water’ to the humour of Matt Flint’s eccentric commuters dancing on a tube train.
Most of all it was the exploration of unusual interactions between sound and movement that gave this year’s show its edge.
In ‘Cataboom’ it was the dancers’ own feet and hands that created the rhythm. In ‘Preparing’, the audience were showered with paper leaves at the culmination of a sort of crazed playground game. In ‘Pick me up’, Andrew Dickson’ original composition, performed live on stage, was a playful response to the dancers’ riffs on themes of breath and beauty.
In ‘No, Mine, Nobody’ the rattling of teacups and spoons underscored a surreal subversion of tea-drinking rituals with staring, shoving, status clashes and a threatening trolley… In ‘Captured Dreams’ there was a sharp synchrony between Matt Benjamin’s cello and the moves and drama of the dance as a small, cardboard Pandora’s box released different moods from love and fear to madness among the performers Rory Armstrong, Julio Guarita, Ccely Halkes-Wellstead, Annie Pownall, Marina Renee-Cemmick and Lizi Shaw.
‘Quartet Moments’ featured four chairs, four musicians and four dancers, each of whom started in duet with one of the musicians – one dancer to each instrument – and then all moved and played together, weaving patterns of sound and movement, improvised differently each performance. Where there was such a consistently high quality of performance, and several strong, vigorous solos, it is hard to single out one, but the audience was enthralled by the sheer charm and off-the-wall brilliance of the music/dance conversation between Marina Renee-Cemmick’s solo tap and an other-worldly sound track composed by Rob Lee.
It was more than just a showcase of (impressive) local talent. In ‘Cool Beat, Rhythm Sweet’, Nikki Northover’s Bridport Youth Dance pushed the boundaries again this year.
Jo Fox’s set – like the giant dilapidated fence and flowerbed of a mysterious garden – created the backdrop for a bittersweet journey of dance and music exploring shifting moods and broken beauty.
It was not just the young ‘Bridport Boys Dance’ group blazing a trail out of the ‘Boys can’t dance’ straightjacket with their expressive arm movements and body percussion. It was not just the Tapistory Tap Dance Ensemble (Emily Meech, Harry Poole, Annie Pownall, Kia Rait-McDonald and Marina Renee-Cemmick) performing with their usual immaculate skill and timing. It was not only Nikki Northover’s joyous razamataz jazz and tap choreographies, including crisp and confident dance from the Middle Tap group promising well for the future. It was not even the variety of shifting moods from the lyrical and magical ‘Rhythm of Water’ to the humour of Matt Flint’s eccentric commuters dancing on a tube train.
Most of all it was the exploration of unusual interactions between sound and movement that gave this year’s show its edge.
In ‘Cataboom’ it was the dancers’ own feet and hands that created the rhythm. In ‘Preparing’, the audience were showered with paper leaves at the culmination of a sort of crazed playground game. In ‘Pick me up’, Andrew Dickson’ original composition, performed live on stage, was a playful response to the dancers’ riffs on themes of breath and beauty.
In ‘No, Mine, Nobody’ the rattling of teacups and spoons underscored a surreal subversion of tea-drinking rituals with staring, shoving, status clashes and a threatening trolley… In ‘Captured Dreams’ there was a sharp synchrony between Matt Benjamin’s cello and the moves and drama of the dance as a small, cardboard Pandora’s box released different moods from love and fear to madness among the performers Rory Armstrong, Julio Guarita, Ccely Halkes-Wellstead, Annie Pownall, Marina Renee-Cemmick and Lizi Shaw.
‘Quartet Moments’ featured four chairs, four musicians and four dancers, each of whom started in duet with one of the musicians – one dancer to each instrument – and then all moved and played together, weaving patterns of sound and movement, improvised differently each performance. Where there was such a consistently high quality of performance, and several strong, vigorous solos, it is hard to single out one, but the audience was enthralled by the sheer charm and off-the-wall brilliance of the music/dance conversation between Marina Renee-Cemmick’s solo tap and an other-worldly sound track composed by Rob Lee.
