E-mail to a friend Find tickets

View From The Shore / Anamule Dance

Published Friday 19 January 2007 at 12:15 by Francesca Morrison

Jacky Lansley introduced her dancers to some of Cornwall’s rugged cliffs and coves when she was choreographing this new work, inspired by the county she has loved for many years. The trips were a way of helping them to help her translate the experience of sea and coastline into a theatrical event.

She succeeded. Premiered in Truro before heading off to London, the piece uses dance to deepen our sense of unity with the ebb and flow of tides within and without.

In a sense, the dancers themselves become the sea and its margin by shape-shifting to rocks, ripples, kelp, flotsam, starfish, waves, wind. A single movement may fuse many meanings from pulling a rope to fighting a current or leaving a lover.

No one could call this a narrative ballet. Subtle and understated, it slips under the wires of consciousness and flowers when you are least expecting it.

Which is probably why Lansley’s reputation as a pioneer in the British new dance movement is growing so fast and why Hall for Cornwall were so pleased she agreed to launch their tenth anniversary season with this haunting work.

The second half of the programme, Anamule Dance, uses original recordings by Jelly Roll Morton to conjure the atmosphere and intensity of 1900s New Orleans and the birth of jazz.

Echoing Morton’s combination of street vernacular with classical form, Lansley and the ensemble recreate the colourful neighbourhood of Storyville in a style that is highly disciplined.

E-mail to a friend Find tickets