BLUE
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR: |Debbie Turner
CAST: Cape Dance Company
VENUE: Artscape Theatre
UNTIL: Saturday
RATING: ****
CAPE Dance Company have put together a huge programme for this year’s showcase, celebrating their 20th year in existence.
Blue drips with power and elegance, oozes sensuality and even every now and then with a shot of whimsy and parody, much like the company really.
The lighting design for the entire evening was beautiful – especially for the beginning of In the Mirror of Her Mind and the whole of Blue and The State In-Between – though the placement of some of the spotlights was irritating to anyone sitting in the dead centre of the audience since it was blinding at times.
Two intervals turn the evening into three parts. The first part is an excellent snapshot of where the company is at the moment. They open with Bradley Shelver’s Scenes, a challenging piece which was choreographed for them in 2012, inspired by the process of creativity, with the four movements mimicking the process of choreographing a piece of dance.
James Bradley and Elzanne Crause delivered a tender duet in the third movement of Scenes and the whole company’s timing was spot on for the fourth.
With the quirky The State In-Between, guest artists Simone Muller-Lotz and Mbulelo Ndabeni showed us the polish they picked up working overseas. The soundtrack of people explaining the meaning of Yiddish words and Yiddish jazz music alludes to times gone by, while the move-ment draws on everything from elegant ballroom to expressive physical work from her in the beginning and a commanding presence from him.
His combination of lyricism and authority is appealing, and that also stood him in very good stead in Blue.
Fadeout.Five gave the new generation a chance to show off their influences. The four male dancers also provide the voices in the soundtrack, allowing us a glimpse into their motivation to dance, as well as their abilities. The one female dancer, Londiwe Khoza, in contrast, is voiceless, though her expressive face and limber movements are her voice.
The second part of the programme is striking new choreography by CDC favourite choreographer, Christopher Huggins, and dancer Cara-May Marcus. She impressed with her muscular control in the short solo dance piece Obscure Sorrows.
Elzanne Crause also impressed with her en pointe work for Huggins’ In The Mirror of Her Mind.
Alluding to the female character dreaming of three different men, each of the male dancers brought a different energy to the piece, but they worked well as a unit for some effortless and remarkable lifts. Crause floated, grounded by the men and her prowess was more than up to the task.
The big kudos go to the guys this year around though – who received some very positive responses from the audience in Blue.
The male dancers really brought the house down with this Huggins piece which was originally created for the Philadelphia Dance Company. A piece in three parts that exuded raw power and maleness, danced by nine dancers, it starts off with a dreamy sequence, goes into an aggressively masculine display and then ends on a testosterone high.
Though the third part of the programme included Huggins’ sensual take on Ravel’s Bolero, always a showstopper, it could actually have been left out and the entire evening would still have been an amazing success.
Bolero was preceded by the CDCII Repertory Ensemble dancing a newly choreographed piece by dancer Mthuthuzeli November. The kids were cute, but in comparison to the professionals, they looked liked… well… children. Calligraphy is probably better suited to the Bittersweet Reloaded programme presented by Capa.
By the time Bolero rolled around, almost two hours into the night, the dancers were more enthusiastic than necessarily energetic.
If they had finished with the powerful Blue it would have been on an extremely high note.