Dancing On Your Grave

Published Monday 7 July 2008 at 10:20 by Chris High

By concentrating on the minutiae of movement and extenuating the detail, choreographer and director Lea Anderson has forged a reputation cast in gold. Now, with Dancing On Your Grave, she has taken that reputation and made it ever more solid, delivering a show that is richly entertaining, warm and thoughtful, with a cast that clearly enjoys everything they have been asked to do.

Dressed as the dead, the five members of the troupe walk on to stage, with Blake and Burch armed with a ukulele and a banjo respectively, and immediately set about rewriting the expectations of those in attendance. No ordinary dance outing this, we are instead treated to a one-off exhibition of controlled movement and heightened skills set to music and light-hearted song that accentuate perfectly how it might feel to be cast in purgatory. Let’s be fair, how often do you hear songs referring to the pancreatic tract that make you laugh rather than cringe, whilst watching movement of the most divine, effective simplicity being performed in the background?

At times, the piece, made up of ten songs with each performed by the ensemble as a whole or as solo pieces by Blake and Burch, becomes a little disturbing and no time more so than when Maho Ihara illustrates beautifully - if that’s the right word - a countless number of ways to commit suicide.

Yet with lighting that is subtle and effective and costumes that are simple but thought provoking, Dancing On Your Grave is a delight from first to last and fits perfectly into Lea Anderson’s ever-growing pantheon of triumphs.