The Wayside / Riff : joint review

The Wayside and Riff are very different solos: Laila Diallo quietly reflects on departure; Matthias Sperling melts down sequences from three choreographers into a single, startling synthesis. Paired together, they illuminate each other, while retaining their essential singularity.

For The Wayside, Diallo is melancholic, slow and gentle, her gradual progress around the stage evoking an unwanted journey. Soundtracked by the aching voice of Lhasa de Sela, it is heartfelt and nuanced. Even a gesture as simple as tying her shoes or pulling on an overcoat becomes loaded with poignancy, and the final fade into darkness has a tragic wistfulness. Framed in the spotlight, her solo captures the loneliness of travel, a metaphor for those events that cast us back on the road after apparent stability.

Sperling actually sets a sequence from an earlier Diallo piece against Scanner's gurgling soundtrack for Riff. A more formal experiment, Riff samples Diallo's Out of Sight in the Direction of My Body, Forsythe's Solo and Jeyasingh's Transtep.

He begins by demonstrating the three samples. Where Diallo's style is soft and sad, Forsythe is looser and more aggressive; Jeyasingh displays an ornate Indian classicism. Having clearly laid out the pieces, Speling begins to juxtapose them, an eloquent Diallo sweep morphing into a Forsythe thrust and back into stillness.

The connection between the three become closer, until the pieces begin to merge: Forsythe failing arms match taut Indian postures, the distinct paces merge as the music increases in rythmic force. Speling's own energy compels Riff onwards, until a new style emeges from the bricolage: owing to all three originals, it has its own personality.

The Wayside is the more moving: Riff remains technically masterful, but is an exercise in method and a cerebral comment on the construction of individuality that can't help but feel cold against The Wayside's lacrimose subtletly. Yet this harms neither piece, as it allows them to claim their own voices more clearly.
The works clearly stand up by themselves, but as a double-bill, their respective strengths are emphasised. The technique and energy of both dancers is undeniably refined: as relatively new choreographers, they are searching in different ways to find their personal voice. It is a positive sign for the future of contemporary dance that it is producing such diversity.