Shift

Published Tuesday 22 April 2008 at 18:40 by Liz Arratoon

Mish Weaver’s set of scaffolding frame, wooden raft, sandbags, rigging, and some sand and gravel-filled panels has a white perimeter line that the audience must not cross. They are invited, though, to “utilise the space” as, for some unknown reason, this is a promenade performance. But most people plonk themselves down on the floor and stay put.

Shift is a triple bill by four choreographers, but all the pieces seem to blend. At times the idea of space-type weightless flight becomes real and the occasional hanging-bat poses look fun.

When Lindsey Butcher, attached to a lunge, dangles about and interacts with a floating plank of wood, what must have been intended to be hypnotic becomes soporific, because the same revolving moves just go on and on and on and on.

More interesting is the following pas de deux, Guy Adams on the ground and Jenny Paterson suspended from a lunge by which she is periodically hoisted balletically above him.

There is an interlude where the raft of planks is dismantled, which leads into an athletic pas de deux on a bench, backed by Palace Brothers tracks.

The deconstruction of the set continues. Counterweights hit the ground with a thud, planks of wood fall with a thwack and clips are undone and refastened. This develops into Stomp duo Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas’ sequence of percussive noise, as objects - manipulated in reverse campanology by the cast above - collide. It all gets too much for some onlookers, who utilise the space between their seats and the exit.