SPRING LOADED

Diverse new dance works from up-andcoming choreographers make for intriguing viewing and Spring Loaded at The Place is dance at the very edge of the avant-garde. The evening opened with I Just Close My Eyes: Here Are The Devils – a dance duet by two women enacting a pair of faded, wannabe divas. One in a red dress, one in green, Amy Bell and Valentina Golfieri sported enormous blonde wigs emphasising their ludicrous posturing and rivalry.

Visually striking, there was a moment when one attached a long beard to her chin and rotated her head so far it seemed to twist right round. But the dancing divas failed to develop and the finale, where one tried unsuccessfully to speak into the microphone, was inconclusive.

In the second piece, Softer Swells, a lone woman, Aoife McAtamney, dressed in trousers and a vest top, danced without music for 15 minutes. Her movement came from her own breath and pauses and eventually she began to speak – snippets of a lost Irish love, some of it audible, some not. She enunciated days of the week – clearly at first, then gradually distorting the vowels so that they were barely intelligible. McAtamney’s performance was committed but the piece was heavily self-involved.

The final piece, Cameo Cookie, choreographed by Gary Clarke, raised the stakes with the drama of its story. The tale of honey-voiced American singer and beauty queen, Anita Bryant, who campaigned in the 1970s to crush the gay rights movement in America, opened with impact. In front of a microphone, Eleanor Perry stood motionless as the stage lit up to the sound of the American national anthem. Perry’s facial expressions were outstanding as she grimaced, pouted and guffawed to a soundtrack of modern and classical music, interspersed with Bryant’s own speeches denouncing homosexuality. Frenzied hysteria was never far from the surface as Perry tried to keep a lid on Bryant’s nearreligious fervour.

The finale burst into life as four young men ran on to the stage wearing small swimming trunks and waving flags. Hoisting Perry on to their shoulders to Young Hearts Run Free the five performed a dazzling dance routine showing the power of youth and transformation. Ironically, here Bryant is a gay icon.

Spring Loaded continues on 31 May, 5, 7, 11, 14 and 22 June at The Place, 17 Duke’s Road, London, WC1: 020-7121 1100, www.theplace.org.uk