VINCENT DANCE THEATRE
On The House

Nuffield Theatre
Wednesday 15th October
£7.50, £4.50 conc.
Video installation 1pm – 5pm (free)

Reviewed by

On The House is a looped video and sound installation, which incorporates a live performance by Vincent Dance Theatre's Artistic Associate TC Howard and Polish dancer Janusz Orlik (Let The Mountains Lead You To Love) and VDT's 35mm film Glasshouse.
Choreography by Charlotte Vincent.

We sat on the floor amid piles of dead leaves. A film was projected on the wall and the floor. A glass house raised on legs in the middle of a moor. A woman hanging by the waist, spinning in helpless circles. A man going in climbing thru the structure of the house. Rain, and the woman's clothes getting very clingy with a tendency to fall off. The man chucking her about a fair bit. Things getting a bit nasty. Him stripping her off and getting her into a frock. Her going all wounded and foetal on the floor, then fretting on the moor, with a bad headache. Him looking a bit wasted. Then she leaves. Duh. I felt a bit disturbed and resentful about it, the movements were exciting, the house structure and environment were innovative - the relationship and gender stuff was a cliche. I thought, oh well, here we go - then the room burst into movement as two dancers sprang in in real time, running round the real glass house here in front of us.

The relationship between the couple was, to me, a bit niaive all the way thru - she was a cutely feral woman-child, all expression and impulse, he was a strong-to-rigid man-father - watching, supportive, sometimes entranced, sometimes impatient, sometimes just tired and frustrated by the endless hysteria. Whatever turns you on. If it was about power - and in the discussion after there was some talk about that - how his character made her character do things, stay in the house etc, really she had it all. Sometimes he was still, waiting while she did her thing. Never the other way round. The truth is in the limelight. Victims just don't have that kind of muscle tone either. The tremendous strength of the work is in its execution and the very original choreography in which these traits and dynamics were expressed. There were telling moments - after carrying her through a succesion of more complex lifts, at one point he dropped her - a choreographed moment. Her disappointment in his inability to be everything, perfect, was almost trauma - she went huddling on the floor in a pout. He went to her, drew her out, like a father with a tired child as much as a lover.

While these choreographed relationship moments informed the piece - whether they were irritating or, as we shall see, touching, we stayed hooked, completely seduced by the dancing, which was, simply incredible. I hardly knew people could move so - so - fluidly? The work itself is 3-dimensional, using the structure of the house like a climbing frame. The dance is acrobatic, extreme, beautiful lifts, melting into and around each other, at height, with real danger, but they seem so controlled. Sometimes there is an element of circus - almost falls, planned in, to raise the excitement, the fascination of the piece. The music is gentle, and on the wall and floor, a projection of the same dancers in the same house, going through other, beautiful, similar moves.

At one point they fold, merge into the softest, warmest hug - and the intimacy and gentleness of it had a poignancy that touched the whole room - and almost made me forget it was happening a metre above ground, suspended between window frames. So beautiful. I hope they come back soon.