Tag Archives: Tom Visser

ASSEMBLY HALL

★★★★★

Edinburgh International Festival

ASSEMBLY HALL at the Edinburgh International Festival

★★★★★

“The dancers lose themselves among a host of ambiguous landscapes. It’s all mesmerizing to watch, and to listen to.”

Fans of Kidd Pivot’s work will delight in Assembly Hall. This piece has all the hallmarks of choreographer Crystal Pite and playwright Jonathon Young’s earlier work in Resizor— a reimagination of Gogol’s Government Inspector—which I reviewed in early March 2020 at Sadler’s Wells. Assembly Hall isn’t based on another play, although it is about the way we create dramas. This piece is a dance/drama about a group of medieval re-enactors who are desperately trying to remain in the game. Presented as part of the 2024 Edinburgh International Festival at Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre, Assembly Hall is another aptly chosen production for this year’s festival slogan, “Rituals that Unite Us.”

The show begins in a shabby and dilapidated assembly hall as the title suggests, at the group’s annual general meeting. If that doesn’t sound too promising a beginning, stick with it. What Kidd Pivot do with this mundane situation literally propels us into different spaces, different times. They do it with a highly original fusion of words and movement, set in a space that is always many places at once. There are times when we are not quite sure when we are, or where, in this ever changing narrative about a never ending game.

On one level, Assembly Hall is a dance about the well meaning fanaticism of cosplayers and re-enactors who go to extraordinary lengths to maintain a game in a world that isn’t real. Even when they have to hold annual general meetings that include voting whether the group can continue. There are already disturbing hints of past violence at the beginning of the show, which opens with the body of a man sprawled on an overturned chair. Is he asleep? Dead? The ambiguity that infuses all of Kidd Pivot’s work is alive and well in Assembly Hall. The meeting is accompanied with a sound design that incorporates both realistic dialogue and distorted sounds. (Composition and sound design by Owen Belton, Alessandro Juliani and Meg Roe). The dancers mime the words while their bodies take on an increasingly stylized interpretation of board members at a mundane meeting that is anything but. As the group gets increasingly fractious, the sounds and the movements fracture into a fight between medieval knights, equipped with armour, weapons and banners. Snatches of classical music emerge to accompany all this violence. It’s extraordinary to see performers literally transform from people in everyday clothing into medieval warriors. The Kidd Pivot company dance their way through all these transformations as though it were perfectly normal to go from nerdy looking committee members with glasses, to faceless warriors moving from one stylized battle scene to another. (Lovely costume design by Nancy Bryant.) We are forced to awareness of the choreography of the battlefield. It is paradoxically both beautiful to look at, and horrifying in its implications. While the game has become real for the re-enactors, the dancers lose themselves among a host of ambiguous landscapes. It’s all mesmerizing to watch, and to listen to.

Another feature of Pite and Young’s work is that when you think everything is about to reach some kind of dramatic conclusion, it both does, and doesn’t. We watch the story in which Assembly Hall begins its descent into violence, and we see, at various points, how the participants reappear to try to continue their meeting and force a vote. Do they continue as medieval re-enactors, or do they dissolve? It all comes down to one vote—a vote from the player we saw lying inert on stage at the beginning of the show. Does he vote yes or no? No one can decide. It is a fitting end to the piece because regardless of how these players decide in their own time, the dance of medieval re-enactors is, in some sense, eternal. Even the audience ends the show so caught up in the dance that Kidd Pivot has created, that we ourselves cannot decide whether it is over. We wish it could continue forever. But we clap enthusiastically, gather up our coats and belongings, take ourselves out of the past, and into our futures, mundane or otherwise. The return to reality is both saddening, and oddly comforting.

 

ASSEMBLY HALL at the Edinburgh International Festival – Festival Hall

Reviewed on 22nd August 2024

by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Michael Slobodian

 

 


ASSEMBLY HALL

ASSEMBLY HALL

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FROM ENGLAND WITH LOVE

★★★½

Southbank Centre

FROM ENGLAND WITH LOVE at the Southbank Centre

★★★½

“the choreography excels – subtly, not in caricature, allowing the dancer’s skills to shine”

The latest work from Hofesh Schecter, From England with Love, is exactly what you might expect from the title. An exploration through dance of England; its long, storied history and how its people use or rebel against it in their search for meaning.

It is an odd quirk that ‘outsiders’ are often most incisive in understanding a place and its people. Schecter was born and grew up in Israel, but moved to the UK in 2002 and has been based here since – nearly half his life and the majority of his adult life. The potential insights this unique perspective could bring filled me with hope for a daring and soul searching performance; particularly on learning that the piece was first performed by Nederlands Dans Theatre 1 in the Hague barely a year after the UK left the EU. Could this be deeply political as well as beautiful?

For its UK premiere at the Southbank Centre, the piece is performed by new recruits to Schecter II, Hofesh Schecter Company’s paid professional development programme for 18-25 years this year drawn from the UK but also Italy, Belgium and even Iceland. As well as choreographing the piece, the multi-talented Schecter has also composed the score including works from English composers – Elgar, Tallis, Monk and Purcell (after whom one of the Southbank Centre rooms is named) – spliced with rock and electronic.

It’s a strong start, with the dancers inconspicuously dressed in school uniforms performing a ports de bras in unison. As the movements are so small and intentional, it’s the dancers faces you focus on – each telling a story of hope and anticipation that slowly turns to steel as if hardened by the world.

Rainfall interrupts the scene, and movements become bigger and more chaotic, with the group forming a swirling squall. Choral music begins, and we are transported to the playground where hops and skips abound. These early moments are impressive both for the quality of the movements and the way in which dancers use the space. Hofesh Schecter’s choreography draws your eye from one side of the stage to the other, following a dancer or two, before being captured by another and taken off again in another direction. Again the facial expressions set the dancers apart with Holly Brennan’s innocent school girl demeanour transformed to loud-mouthed lout particularly delightful. It’s lively staging and a luxuriant use of space enhanced by wonderful lighting by Tom Visser.

But the piece loses its way in the middle. A series of vignettes serving as clumsy exposition took it from subtle to stereotype. Can England really just be reduced to violence, yobs and hooliganism? Juxtaposed with cups of tea, the royal wave and a few feeble keepy-uppys (Come on En-ger-land)? The longer it went on the more meaningless these motifs became.

We end where we began, in form and in spirit. The dancers drift from side to side, unmoored and unburdened – directionless. Without the soundtrack of England’s illustrious history where will they go? It’s through exploration of themes in this way that the choreography excels – subtly, not in caricature, allowing the dancer’s skills to shine.


FROM ENGLAND WITH LOVE at the Southbank Centre

Reviewed on 18th April 2024

by Amber Woodward

Photography by Tom Visser

 

 

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

REUBEN KAYE: THE BUTCH IS BACK | ★★★★ | December 2023
THE PARADIS FILES | ★★★★ | April 2022

FROM ENGLAND WITH LOVE

FROM ENGLAND WITH LOVE

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