Choreographer: Soa Ratsifandrihana
Soa Ratsifandrihana mines eclectic music styles and performance approaches in her 45-minute solo piece g r oo v e showing at Sadler’s Wells Lilian Baylis Studio as part of the Van Cleef & Arpels Dance Reflections season. It is a dance that starts infuriatingly in the dark with no music but explodes into an engaging, if unstructured, collage of styles that uses repetition and momentum to create engagement.
Opening with no light, can a dancer be dancing if you cannot see them? But g r oo v e is a slow opener as Ratsifandrihana moves deliberately around the four sides of the square performance space, unhurriedly presenting the same collection of stretches and held shapes in all corners of the room. It is a teasing segment that shifts the light around to each of the sides as the dancer visits the four segments of the audience in turn, all in dim-lit shadow that feels slow to lift.
But the middle and concluding passages are far more lively, particularly a lengthy electronic sequence that starts with blips and clicks, with some dashes of white static, but evolves into a shuddery choreography that draws on techno and drill in its mechanical, robotic styles, all played with drama and intensity. Ratsifandrihana’s fast-paced hip and ankle movements begin to fill the central space as the piece comes alive with the addition of Sylvian Darrifourcq and Alban Murenzi’s composition.
A similar energy infects the final stage of the dance which, within the building energy of the show, has greater flow and openness, a carnival feel as Ratsifandrihana adopts a twisting motion in hips and feet and arms that is sometimes expansive and at others, compresses into far smaller steps as the pace slows. The melody here is built on funk that mellows out, while Marie-Christine Soma’s lighting is celebratory, warm and enthused.
Across all of this, the choreographer-performer references Madagascan styles. A particular hand move from ground to belly to mouth and out again is stitched through the show as is the kneeling backstretch that runs within and between the different phases of the dance. g r oo v e certainly feels intimate, the dancer performing these movements with a sensuousness that feels consistent while, at one point, she dances with allure as though waiting for a partner to join her.
What is missing is the connecting rods between these enjoyable pieces of the puzzle and Soa Ratsifandrihana should consider what the meeting points for her different influences and styles have to be and how to reach between them in order to g r oo v e together.
Runs until 20 March 2025
