| GATE |
| BREATHING IRREGULAR |
| ** |
| director CARRIE CRACKNELL choreographer JANE MASON décor HOLLY WADDINGTON music TOM MILLS dramatury JENNY WORTON lights LUCY CARTER sound EDWARD LEWIS with dancers TEMITOPE AJOSE-CUTTING, BRYONY HANNAH, BRENDAN HUGHES, EVA MAGYAR, MARY ERSKINE |
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| The aim of creating dance theatre at the Gate has been a particular premise of Cracknell. But in order to create such work you need a developed sense of dance plus a gift for choreography…not just dance movement. Pina Bausch achieved an art form. Pierre Rigal performing his work at the Gate reaches an art form. Carrie Cracknell has a long way to go to reach it. The Gate should be used to develop art forms but having seen the work for almost two years there seems to be such delayed progress. What a great dramatic potential to base a dance-theatre piece on the transcripts of real-life 999 calls under life-and-death emergency. But in order to achieve that heightened point there must be a dramatic plus coordinated progression that builds and builds in the choreography as well as the dialogue. The difficulty lies in sustaining that panic on varied levels. Despite all the different emergency calls there is no climatic build-up but rather repetition without coordination between the movement and dialogue. We have a vast range in those phone calls…. the confused child phoning for help for his dying mother repeating her name as ‘mummy’ when asked her name; the terrified neighbour finding the man next door with his arm cut off by a chainsaw; the fearful husband made helpless over his choking wife; the rescuing of a mother and son from a fire; the reassuring advice of the operator against the fearful sounds of ambulance and fire engines; the woman giving birth; the dad having a heart attack; all of this should have been able to stimulate escalation instead of resulting in a lack of urgency and uncoordinated fragmented structure. The set is intriguing with a tarpaulin tightened by ropes which resembles an abstracted circus tent conjuring a possible ‘gymnasium or emergency rescue equipment’ according to the designer’s very description. There are telephones on poles on either side of the stage adding marvellously to a sense of suspense and the most versatile lighting varying mood and place. The words are spoken on the same even keel, the movement constantly tortured. The sense of doom dominates the atmosphere with disaster entombed. The dancers are exceptionally illuminating with expressively fluid movements in complete control but the movement never being integrated with the speech remains on its own as movement but not choreography. Bryony Hannah stands out as she switches so easily as a dancer/actress from a comforting operator to a five-year old boy. One wonders at the end of the 50 minutes whether it is about disaster or survival and though the atmosphere is intense one is left uninvolved. No import or export. |
| January 28 – February 27/10 |
| 838 |