Latitude Festival 2009 - Saturday: Part I

“She’s fit. She’s not attractive, but she’s fit.” “It’s a bit like Britain’s Got Talent gone weird.” “Hello, is this the bingo?” “Nope, this is too weird for me. I can’t do this.”

Many of the dance companies at Latitude will be trying to discover precious new audiences. It’s practically the first statement that choreographers make these days in press releases and grant applications. It leads contemporary dancers to make pieces about the anguish of existence to chart hits and has Live Art popping up at street corner carnivals. As my selection of overheard comments makes clear, this new audience brings a new critical process with it.

It might just have been the residual alcohol, but I didn’t expect Hofesh Shechter to reduce me to tears before lunch. Shechter has been prowling around the contemporary dance world for a while- his work has been taken up by Scottish Dance Theatre, the Brighton Festival and Sadler’s Wells- but I had no idea how good his choreography is. The Art of Not Looking Back has a male voice discussing his relationship with his mother, the sense of loss and absence that she left with me (“like a bucket with a hole, it can never be filled,” he repeats and repeats), while six dancers shake, roll and twist like a primitive hunting party recreating a failed raid. Or, Like Britain’s Got Talent Gone Weird.

So powerful that it overshadows the subsequent iconic pas de deux from Swan Lake, The Art of Not Looking Back plugs into the European tradition of bodies stretched to limits, repetition and ritualistic gesture. Painful and anguished, it is all the more remarkable for capturing a dark, claustrophobic atmosphere in the brightest English sunlight.

Then there was the pas de deux itself, one of the most recognisable duets in ballet- sexy and elegant, here performed on a real lake. The two dancers from the English National Ballet gave it a stolid going-over, not really capturing the nuance of Petipa’s suave choreography but giving a solid matinee showing.

After Sadler’s Wells’ selection came the Royal Opera House. Ballet Black- one of the more prosaic names for a modern company- floated around harmlessly, flicking off effortless arabesques and grand jetes, illustrating Ravel’s Sonata without ever threatening to say anything. The Seekers was, as another New Audience member pointed out so astutely “two people in their underpants doing odd things” and Laila Diallo’s Imprint was a solid and short solo on identity construction.

Fortunately, the set finished with BF-F: originally for two male dancers, this version saw two women (one being fit but not attractive, apparently) fight and challenge and withdraw and scramble and hurl each other around. The humans, ironically through a sophisticated language of movement, are reduced to competing animals, testing and competing for status.While I am not necessarily pleased about the reflection this might make on my gender- the piece is billed as exploring “the issues of male bodies interacting” in that charming modern dance jargon- it had that frightening ring of abstract truth that only contemporary dance can deliver for me.