Queen Elizabeth Hall,London
The fleet-footed outsiders in Holly Blakey’s subversive unique piece subvert the cowboy tropeStyled by the Vivienne Westwood studio and throwing shapes to the thrash and shimmer of Mica Levi’s electronic score, the eight cowpunchers of Holly Blakeys unique work look as though they’d be more at domestic in the pages of Dazed magazine than in the wild west. Blakey has honorable reason for using Cowpuncher – the not-so-gender-specific variant on cowboy” – as the title for her piece. Although she’s taken the rogue, or rootless outlaw of cowboy legend as her basic inspiration,she’s used that image to celebrate a far more generalised world of outsiders, especially those who live on the fringes of sexual definition.
Her dancers – five women and three men – are costumed by Andreas Kronthaler across a free-floating spectrum of possibilities. Some of the women might be dressed as raunchy barmaids or western belles, or unambiguously girly in laced-up bodices,flounces and chintz. But one of the men wears a flowered tea frock and has his hair in a plait, while another sports the challenging combination of cowboy boots and Lurex-spangled loincloth.
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Source: guardian.co.uk