Known for their profound pieces laden with metaphor and meaning, Moveo Dance Company’s Emergence, at the University, Valletta Campus, had a primarily educational function. The mixed bill, which consisted of five very different pieces by five upcoming choreographers, is the first step in a two-year choreographic process, serving as a platform of sorts to launch new choreographers.
After this initial showcase, the choreographers will now be able to continue developing the pieces and evolving them further. It was extremely gratifying to note that, despite the fact that the choreographers were described as being up-and-coming, all the pieces were executed beautifully and choreographed flowingly.
When it comes to dance, there are few things which are able to move the viewer more than the voyage of discovery and self-discovery between two people. The evening started with choreographer Gaby Davies’ Fool’s Paradise. Opening in darkness, the piece brought to life a flurry of emotion which saw the male and female protagonists discovering and then losing themselves in each other.
Tossing, turning and tumbling over each other, they started out as being uniquely themselves and as the relationship progressed they became more and more one single unit till the male protagonist pulled away.
Mirroring the pain and confusion of loss of identity, the temporary detachment led to the dancers coming together again at the end of the short piece, indicating something of a fresh start where the male counterpart is more comfortable with his rediscovered and evolved identity.
Identity and the crises that can sometimes come with it were clearly very central to the ‘emergence’ theme as the issue of fragmentation was brought to life in the self-explanatory Fragmented Mind, choreographed by Silvia Scalici.
Requiring the greatest number of dancers for the night, we meet another male protagonist who is going through and coming to terms with change.
Helpless in the hands of fate and circumstance, his mind goes from trying to follow meaning and order to trying to make order out of the chaos that life actually does throw at him. This piece was particularly intriguing in the way that the young dancers’ bodies were used as symbols for the protagonist’s thoughts that desperately needed to be put into order.
The male protagonist tried to re-shuffle and re-organise his fragmented thoughts into a linear thread and fight the confusion, portraying the impermanence of his state. Much like life with its ebbs and flows and ups and downs, the male protagonist went from a position of strength, to a position of chaotic confusion to strength again. Although the cast of this piece were decidedly young, their piece was sharp and concise.
Creating a somewhat spiritual aura around themselves, they performed together as one
Equally dramatic was Kranju by Patrick Laera which was one of my favourite pieces of the night. Opening with three cloaked figures, three female dancers came out of the shadows in unison like Macbeth’s three weird sisters, or the three Fates of Greek mythology. Creating a somewhat spiritual aura around themselves, they performed together as one in an almost hypnotic way and appeared to take care of the seemingly weak figure that had almost crawled onto the stage to lay alone at the corner.
Positioning their billowing head garments as if they were rocks around the man, there appeared to be an almost Christ-like significance to the way he rose from the ground. The ending where the light shone on his solitary figure at the centre of the stage was particularly haunting and beautiful.
In a solo piece which was both colourful and vibrant, we saw Estelle Bonello Sant’s piece Buscando el Duende. Starting the piece by reciting an emotive piece by Maltese poet Achille Mizzi, Bonello Sant sought to take the audience on a heightened emotional journey of duende. Through the poetry, she was able to express her own search for flamenco duende within herself and her dancing and then share this with the audience in a riveting and powerful dance. The imagery used was so vivid that the audience were able to be part of the dancer’s journey of struggle and self-discovery.
The final piece of the night and possibly the most surreal of the five, was Aunt Who? which was a piece based on the traditional construct of a family in an old school play. Despite the fact that the family consisted of a mother, father, their two children and even a family dog, the first subversion of the traditional construct came in the form of the fact that they were meerkats.
Much like humans, meerkats live in large communities where they each have a specific role. The beginning of the piece saw the family happily bumbling along till an intrusion from an outsider which saw the mother leave the family to frolic and be with another.
Apart from serving as a break out of the mould of tradition, this subversion was able to demonstrate the fragility of the family construct as commonly understood in contemporary society and that, much like other animals, human beings can never truly be divorced from their instincts. The mother is eventually forcibly restored to her family by the father and all is forgotten. It was interesting to see Marie Kelser-Nielsen’s unorthodox use of animals in order to be able to reveal deeper truths about ourselves.
Bringing together five very different flavours, Emergence proved to be a somewhat enlightening experience which was able to shine its spotlight on various facets of the human condition. At times light and playful and at others dark and soul-searching, the Emergence project provides a valid platform to aspiring choreographers, while involving audiences in an ongoing creative process and allowing them to experience and monitor the evolution of choreography within an established troupe, and more importantly, the creative mind.