The Stage

No Stronger Than A Flower/Forty Minutes

Published Monday 20 February 2006 at 11:10 by Thom Dibdin

Arrows showering across the stage only to turn into flowers; male dancers in dirty-old-man raincoats with little stools strapped onto their bottoms; and a set by Phyllis Byrne in which everything has at least two sides and possibly a third if you count its shadow. In its video backdrop, costumes and scenery, No Stronger Than A Flower certainly knows how to play with the surreal.

Jan de Schynkel draws inspiration from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 65 - “how with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, whose action is no stronger than a flower” - to create a world of muscular, physically aggressive choreography. The female dancers, provocative in tight black PVC trousers and clinging black vest tops, rule with a sinuous reality. The males are reduced to clunky observers.

De Schynkel finds his interaction between the genders in a domestic setting as a stage flat is wheeled round to reveal two dancers pinned to its back. Tricksy, it might be, particularly when the couple start blowing up balloons beneath each other’s costumes. But such a sense of showmanship keeps the audience enthralled while trading in deep and sometimes murky metaphors.

It sits well with the opener of this double bill, Janet Smith’s Forty Minutes. Although this earlier work betrays a chink in the SDT armour when the dancers, so mesmerising to watch while performing her flowing choreography, fail to find a demanding static point. No Stronger Than A Flower is a welcome addition to the company’s repertoire, which will easily sustain several viewings.