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3 hours ago
7
There’s a particular look you see on dancers sometimes, as if taking a slow, deep inhalation of something expensive, unfixed gaze, slightly furrowed brow. It’s hard to describe – you know it when you see it – but what it signals is emotional gravitas. It’s often coupled with portentous or overtly emotive music. Both of these things appear in PCK Dance’s double bill Into the Light, along with other signifiers: dark and ominous atmosphere, even an overwritten blurb in the programme.
The thing is, choreographic duo James Pett and Travis Clausen-Knight don’t need this heavy-handed help, which can drown out the subtleties of the dance, because they are actually really good crafters of movement. The pair are former members of Company Wayne McGregor who’ve been picking up steam as choreographers, and you can see that pedigree in their strong, slick, finessed dancing (and the way their legs whip into the air at extreme angles). They have a talent for stringing together steps in fast but clear sequences packed with movement, like the chatter of a motoring brain. It’s made with fluency and attention to form.
Arguably what’s missing, or what’s getting clouded over, is the humanity at the core of it, plus something more overarching, a bigger reason to be here. In duet In the Absence, danced by the choreographers, you could make out closeness and disconnection, tension and almost tenderness, and loss. Sean Pett provides the music (with co-composer Greg Haines), sitting down to ruminate at the piano part-way through, which feels more intimate, if amorphous. Vessel has the added dimension of a third dancer, Isabelle Evans. She’s great, with her decisive movements and expressive hands, flexed wrists, each shape a declaration. Partnering is explored in various permutations. There’s a great sequence where Pett and Clausen-Knight are passing, nay throwing, Evans’ body between them in a flurry of fast-forwarded choreography.
Sean Pett plays the soundtrack live from a bank of tech in the corner of the stage, pitchless sounds and textures. It gives a joyless, end-of-days feel; a low-key apocalypse. The programme suggests the theme has something to do with surviving in an AI-driven future. In which case, surely all the more important to reveal what makes us human, and to strive to genuinely connect with the other humans in the room.
