Dance / Reviews
Review: VENUS, Bristol Old Vic – ‘A bold, eclectic, exhilarating diversity of work’
With the city premiere of their new quadruple bill VENUS, Impermanence have proved their importance as a dance company within Bristol making remarkable, exciting, and nuanced work.
And it’s more political than you might expect, too. We open with Feral, the first of three pieces before the interval and the only film to feature in the evening (which is otherwise performed live).
Feral
The piece is more accurately billed in the show notes as an ‘audio-visual collaboration’, and rightly so. Based on the book: Feral, Rewilding the Land, Sea and Human Life by George Monbiot, it is stunningly arresting feat of shots overlaid on one another, merging together, appearing and disappearing, against a string and piano soundtrack of LSO musicians punctuated by an evocative soundscape of Foley effects and on-location field recordings.
is needed now More than ever
Against the fading light, it is an urgent hymn to a lost relationship with nature, pitching beauty against decay, set in a series of gloriously atmospheric wild settings.
In the ruins of Tintern Abbey, Impermanence co-founder Roseanna Anderson is holding space; her elegiac movement pointing to the fragility of what was once taken for granted.
Impermanence, Feral, performer George Monbiot – photo: Jake Duncan
As flocks of seagulls circle high over a rubbish dump, and a grubby-suited George Monbiot himself drags his canoe over a flooded plain, we see the repeated motif of finding human reconnection with the earth: bare feet sinking into the mud of the Bristol Channel; hands digging in the dirt.
Enemy of the Stars
Choreographed by Impermanence co-founder Joshua Ben-Tovim, this is a dance adaptation of Wyndham Lewis’ eponymous early modernist play 1914, set to a discordant jazz composition from Benjamin Oliver (based on an original version co-composed with Hollie Harding).
It’s not easy to listen to, but powerfully underscores the dizzying tension, magnetism and conflict between the two dancers (Kip Johnson and Kennedy Jr. Muntanga) who fluctuate between urgent, pulsing, staccato movements and gorgeous lyricism.
Kip Johnson and Kennedy Jr. Muntanga in Enemy of the Stars – photo: Jon Archdeacon
Their vociferous breathwork reveals a sense of pent up emotion, like the walking of a tightrope, refusing to hold, or to submit to being held.
The split-level stage heightens the intensity of the action, not least when the dancers descend the steps and are moving – seemingly – amongst the audience, so close they are to the stalls.
Kennedy Jr. Muntanga – photo: Jake Duncan
Cosmic Yoghurt
Striking an altogether different tone, an homage to British surrealist painter Leonora Carrington takes us up to the interval.
It’s sumptuous, warm, vibrant and absurdist throughout – a tone set, not least, by the clever use of lip sync, and the ever-changing costumes; from the worm-like creations enveloping the trio of dancers (Roseanna Anderson, Mayowa Ogunnaike and Oxana Panchenko) at the outset, to sequins, floaty layers and arms adorned with splashes of vivid colourful fabric.
Cosmic Yoghurt – photo: Jon Archdeacon
Set to a beautiful clarinet-filled composition from Nick Hart, it’s punctuated by fluttery hand gestures, animalistic motifs and would-be portrait poses, but, as the voice of Carrington echoes through the dancers, I’m reminded that “you’re trying to intellectualise something desperately, and you’re wasting your time”.
Venus
The second half of the night is taken up with the title performance, directed by Anderson and Ben-Tovim, co-created by Peter Clements and featuring seven dancers.
It takes its name from the Rokeby Venus painting at the National Gallery, vandalised in 1914 by the suffragette Mary Richardson in protest at the arrest of Emmeline Pankhurst – with a very contemporary resonance, seen through the lens of ever-increasing curbs on the right to protest.
Alessandro Marzotto-Levy – photo: Jon Archdeacon
Through an inventive dance/theatre exposition, and what Ben-Tovim acknowledges as a healthy dollop of “artistic license”, we follow Richardson’s morally problematic story from fervent campaigner against women’s suffrage to a disciple of Oswald Mosley, going on to lead the Women’s Section of the British Union of Fascists – a truth that she later omitted from her memoirs.
We get there with the help of a time travelling “futurist” cabaret, and a fine use of lip sync – as a scarf-draped Ben-Tovim gives us choice excerpts from the exiled Lady Mosley’s 1989 interview with Sue Lawley on Desert Island Discs (BBC Radio 4), along with a wry commentary (“stupid fucking question Sue!”).
It’s proper, powerful storytelling, and the menacing choreography of ‘the blackshirts’, as Richardson succumbs to the shadow of fascism, is incredible to watch.
Roseanna Anderson as Mary Richardson – photo: Jon Archdeacon
A touching would-be final duet between Richardson and Pankhurst, reaching out, mirroring movement, but not seeing or touching each other, speaks volumes of the different worlds in which they have found themselves.
And as Richardson lives out her days alone, attempting to rewrite her own history, we are reminded that actions speak louder than words.
Full ensemble, Venus – photo: Jon Archdeacon
As Ben-Tovim points out in his arch narration of Venus, “contemporary dance and narrative are not always the happiest of bedfellows”. Ultimately, what dance most often elicits in its fans is a feeling. But Impermanence have shown themselves to be pushing the boundaries of what the artform can achieve, and the audience is left thinking, too.
While it’s undoubtedly positive that they have found a home at the historic church, The Mount Without, and benefit from ongoing support from Bristol Old Vic, it’s regretful that the company has to invite audience members to contribute to their Patreon in order to raise the much needed funds it is so difficult to rely on Arts Council England funding to provide.
With such impressive, inventive and challenging genre-blurring work as this, they deserve a secure footing from which to gain momentum and build an exciting future for dance in Bristol and beyond.
Mayowa Ogunnaike as Emmeline Pankhurst – photo: Jon Archdeacon
VENUS is at Bristol Old Vic on May 3-4 at 7.30pm. Limited tickets are available at www.bristololdvic.org.uk.
All photos: Jon Archdeacon
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