This show, part of the freshly forged New Annual festival, was a collaborative work involving Skip Willcox and Allie Graham, LoveDavid (David Lobb) and e4444e (Romy Church) contributing dance, visual and audio respectively.
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As a work of multidisciplinary collaboration, the expectations of coming contrasts and cohesions built the keen atmosphere that would sustain the performances' about-to-be gyrations. Stoic solitary leaps, difficult togetherness, emulsion, separation, mounting confusion, and sudden affirmation. As is the nature of strong collaborations, each artist's part, rather than propping up another's bulk, was vehicle and propulsion for the whole work itself; they were themselves complete while continuing with one another in the flow of larger forces.
Skip and Allie's compositions were striking and fluid. The young but already seasoned performers traversed through all manner of variation - from frightening to affectionate, from wrenching transformation to happy-breathed contentment. All this was set within e4444e's sonic workings. Building and breaking, each of his movements tested rigorously, no sooner had structure been arranged than it was taken apart. Intrepid in a sparseness, at times unduly stretched, but always guided by the force which brought it to such precarious positions - the star persists!
Below e4444e's shadowed figure was a plinth of piled up earth seamed with mist and above him floated a huge triptych, blaring with an ever-evolving array of animation. All this was the work of LoveDavid. While David's bright and dexterous visuals dance with an almost alien energy, spontaneous and exciting, even the most fantastic of them hung tight to an earthen thread - remained connected with our worldly process, with decay and with growth.
The night was a proper display of all four artists' strength of vision and a show of powerful execution. All aspects combined to present the scale-transcendent cycle of crystallisation and dissolution. Change permeating all forms, concreteness shirked in favour of flux - leaving, rather than analytics and theorem, full and crude attention as the only appropriate faculty while observing.