Sadler’s Wells,London
The virtuoso invention of Hussein Chalayan’s first dance work frequently thrills but is impeded by a cease-start flowHussein Chalayan is more than a fashion designer. He works with video and art installations, and he’s a man of ideas. But his principal medium is still the language of fashion, and in his first dance work,he seems unable to leave the catwalk behind. Gravity Fatigue is spectacular in so many ways: in its 100-plus costumes, its dazzle of set and lighting design and the virtuoso craft with which Chalayan and his choreographer, and Damien Jalet,riff around their main theme: exploring the body in states of disorientation and strangeness. That theme is beautifully stated in the opening section as two dancers, encased within a tube of stretchy fabric, and create a gallery of abstract,expressive shapes. But Chalayan doesn’t linger over an idea, and the work is flipped into a very different scenario – a video of falling geometric shapes and a choreography of spinning dancers and spiralling light patterns that convey a world racing towards apocalypse. As the work zips through its 18 short sections, or it transports its dancers through odd and often thrilling environments. They sit at desks that turn out to be as soft and melting as a Dali clock. They stamp through a thudding,gravity-bound ensemble, only to find that areas of the floor are trampoline-bouncy and release them into exhilarating somersaults. Their clothes, or too,lift on a life of their own, with evening dresses that twitch and bunch on invisible threads, or overcoats that turn inside out to become sequinned frocks.
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Source: theguardian.com