Creators and Directors: Anna Holmes and Sam Ford
Upstage there’s a shed. It has twelve windows that can be covered by three blinds, there’s a couch and a potted plant in the shed, a modicum of space downstage, and a handy wall on which to project text and images. The blinds are sometimes up, sometimes half up, sometimes closed. Four dancers, two men and two women, dance inside and occasionally outside, alone or in pairs. This is the setting for this group of Leeds-based dancers, Northern Rascals, to present their new dance piece Shed.
Their movements are partial, obscured. No whole bodies, no easy fluent movements. The recorded music and the sound design are bell-clear. The projected text and the video scenography (created by Aaron Howell) are impressively easy to read. It’s only the dancers that are impossible to see whole.
The programme talks of three pieces of narrative “each giving a different insight into the stories that make us…” but those narratives are partial. The dance that can only be glimpsed is consistent with that idea. It is unsatisfying. It creates a longing for the dancers to exit their shed and stretch out on the fore-stage, and that frustration and yearning is probably the point, but that doesn’t stop it from being frustrating.
There is a growing tendency for dance pieces to rely on the spoken word, or the projected text, more than articulate movement. That does place quite a burden on a writer to tell the story, and in this instance, the words fail. A few telling images, some intriguing voice-over stories about childhood, but nothing to hang on to, nothing to make an audience care. It’s the danger of alienation; an alienated audience cares less and invests less in the stories they are being told. It’s a needle that Northern Rascals doesn’t quite thread, though not for want of trying. There’s lots of talent on display and there’s a powerful drive to tell stories that matter, perhaps they need to use obscurity in the prose or obscurity in the staging, but not both.
A more objective eye on the script might have found the balance between poetic allusion and narrative clarity, and let this talented young company make their voices easier to comprehend.
Reviewed on 28 October 2023 and continues to tour
