The Stage

Renditions - The Hangman, In Translation, Imperfect Storm

Published Monday 18 October 2010 at 11:40 by Kevin Berry

Launched at the Lowry earlier in the year, this triple bill from Candoco is the result of asking three internationally known choreographers to show how they see the company’s dancers.

Annie Hanauer and Bettina Carpi in The Hangman, part of Renditions Photo: Tristram Kenton

Candoco brings together disabled and non-disabled dancers. Next year will see Candoco’s 20th anniversary, so there is a mood of reflection in the air.

Sarah Michelson’s The Hangman opens the programme and it is a stark, almost regimented piece with an overly dramatic atmosphere and a disconcertingly loud score. The dancers are striving and straining to live up to a punishing ideal. Bettina Carpi makes her efforts look agonising. Moments of silence are welcome and seem welcomed by the dancers. It needs patience and some exposition. Knowing that The Hangman referred to is the Hanged Man Tarot card might have helped.

Watching In Translation is more of a pleasure. Emanuel Gat has the dancers twisting into knots and unravelling, pulling tight and breaking away. Again there are silences, but this time the music is heavenly Bach.

The mood lightens even more with Imperfect Storm, from Wendy Houston. Dancers are gathered around a mic stand discussing a production of The Tempest. Victoria Malin and Annie Hanauer are utterly cool and there is beguiling movement and sparky humour. They will not perform the play but will use Shakespeare’s exits and entrances instead, showing that they feel unable to tackle The Tempest. That the dancers have hitherto, in The Hangman, been striving to perform to an ideal, might be seen as a theme - if so, it is not pursued.