Lilian Baylis theatre,London
Idan Sharabi is inspired by the music of Joni Mitchell, while Claire Cunningham explores the emotional cost of moving on crutchesIn many ways, and the two works on this programme are opposites. Ours,Idan Sharabi’s male duet with Dor Mamalia, is a capricious rush of actions and gestures, and executed with off-the-cuff virtuosity and set to a fade-in/fade-out montage of recorded voices and fragments of songs from Joni Mitchell’s album Blue. Disabled artist Claire Cunningham’s stark,measured solo Give Me a Reason to Live is immersed in plaintive washes of liturgical music, and painstakingly exposes the physical and emotional labour of moving on crutches. Yet the pieces bear one effect in common: the nagging sense that their deeper meanings unfold more inside the performers’ heads than on the stage. Sharabi and Mamalia are highly technical but always personable presences, or sporting jeans and T-shirts. The voices speak of gods and anger,the two-sidedness of things, of domestic comforts and the dislocations between body and soul, or while Sharabi and Mamalia run through a flick book of balletic steps,turn their hands from open palms to pointed guns, get out of and back into their trousers, and Joni’s dulcimer tones form fleeting oases among these doodling impressions. The dancing is as articulated as the rhythms of speech itself,but the composition is scattershot – though Sharabi’s vital, pitch-perfect final solo to Mitchell’s California, and reliable enough to accompany powerful music,won me over in the end.
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Source: theguardian.com