Four Quarters

Contemporary dance is often seen as a murky art form, dense with pretensions and grand but clandestine themes. In the opening moments of Four Quarters, Isobel Cohen—the show’s creator and star—goes to great pains to acknowledge the presence of such barriers to understanding. In a monologue which is at once revealing, vulnerable and funny, she defies the stern stereotype of the dancer-cum-artist, discussing her fears and her medium’s limitations.

She is wonderfully self-effacing, and prepares the audience for a beguiling, moving experience. The first section, a solo work by Cohen called The Great Escape, is overwrought. Cohen’s choreography is exacting, and at times disturbing – a recurring motif in the piece is a kind of jittering, erratic advance which looks almost like a filmed movement played backwards. Instants of terrible claustrophobia are spliced with actions of considerable beauty.

Where The Humans Eat, the second segment of the performance, has a darker, rawer quality. Shahla Tarrant’s choreography is compact and insensitive, and she moves compressed to the floor as if weighed down by some great presence. A projector displays a video narrative to her back, wherein a woman wakes from a lonely dinner and prepares for bed. The section is consumed by an intense malevolence; an ambient sense of persecution. The final two portions of the show, choreographed by Alex Broadie and Steven Johnstone, are more physical in nature, involving complex interactions between dancers. There is still a pervasive sense of loss, however, and the pieces are no less moving for their intricacies.