In-be-tween @ Dance Base

Review by Stephanie Green | 18 Sep 2013

Beauty and pain: ever paired?

In-be-tween is not a dance piece; it's more like a 60s 'happening', and it comes out of performance art such as that by Marina Abramović, in which the body itself is used to explore issues of gender roles, sexuality and, in this case, masochism. There are no seats and as the audience enters we are left to explore fetishistic objects laid out on tables, such as nail pairings, and a tooth in a velvet-lined box, amongst other things. Elena Molinaro, nude except for red high heels, very slowly clips wooden pegs around her midriff until she appears to be wearing a tutu like a ballerina – but those clips must be very painful. 

The slowness of the piece at first challenges the audience's boredom threshold, but then as the self-inflicted pain gets worse, the meditative stillness forces the audience to confront what's going on: it's an uncomfortable experience and some may find it too strong and too sexually explicit.

 

Run ended http://www.dancebase.co.uk/