Ours was the Fen Country @ Dance Base

Review by Stephanie Green | 18 Sep 2013

Poetic, intensely moving and beautifully melding oral history, film stills and physical theatre/dance, this is both a celebratory and elegiac piece about the strange, flat (very flat, they reiterate), bleak and isolated Fen Country, its independent-minded people and a dying way of life.

Intensive agriculture is depopulating the land, and the drained marshes and shrinking peat that created the soil of 'black gold' means that the land is sinking further below sea level each year and is in danger of returning to water. But this depressing scenario is enlivened with much humour, wonderful, atmospheric music, and even the haunting call of the curlew.

There is very little dance/physical movement, so audiences expecting more might be disappointed; but what there is is superb, intriguing and evocative. A stamped routine reminiscent of clog-dancing or other traditional dance, performed in a tight group, enacts the society's cohesion. In contrast, at the end the group is widely spaced, but each individual is entrapped in angular, constrained movements, suggesting their torn emotions. It is rare to find such an imaginative piece of mixed media, where all the elements contribute to the whole. Congratulations to this talented company. 

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