Bagofti @ Dance Base

Bagofti begins with a lone figure in mask and suit who drifts from the shelter of an umbrella into the atmosphere of a mellow, smoky piano bar. The dancer seems to flow across the stage like liquid rubber, an elastic piece of continuous gum with his every gesture merging into the next. 

As the piece progresses, customs of greeting and leave taking are explored as though by an anthropologist or an artist or some other outside observer. What emerges in these soft movements are the social games and the consumer culture that permeate everyday life, culminating in a vision of a very modern meltdown.

When the dancer unmasks, another mask is revealed, and the mood and music becomes more atonal and insidious, and the gestures less easy to place. The piece is inspired by the personal life and work of Francis Bacon, and dancer Gavin Coward and choreographer Gary Clarke pack a lot of these punches into a very short piece. Coward shifts easily from a grotesque, crucifix-bearing devil, to a sympathetic figure, frustrated, oppressed and searching for a way out.

The movement is supported throughout by the direction, which matches old-world pipe music to primordial, pre-human movement, and meets images of suffering and horror with well chosen words about those who lose faith in love and life. The result is something which can be austere, tortured and at times graphic, but which at every turn captures something of the beauty and ambiguity of Bacon's work.