Review- Yesterday
Date Reviewed: 28th October, 2008
Venue: The Lowry
Yesterday marks Jasmin Vardimon‘s 10th anniversary with a retrospective journey into the concept of the memory. If you are a fan, you get to meet characters from previous works including Justitia, Lullaby and Park.
This highly original dance piece works on many levels. Vardimon refuses to be pigeonholed and simply repeat herself, which gives the show a fresh appeal even for audience members who know her work. As Jasmin herself says: “There is no central narrative”- but this does not matter. Visually, this is absolutely stunning.
From the opening scene featuring a dancer fishing, stood on the soles of a colleague to the exhausting (for the dancers) and frantic finish, Yesterday restores your faith in dance as it stands out from the pack.
The great thing about Vardimon is that she inserts moments of calm alongside the most frenetic sections. YunKrung Song draws a house on her navel which is then projected onto enormous blinds, from which other dancers pop out, creating a warped vision, reminscent of Alice In Wonderland meets Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. It is beautifully rendered and the effect is utterly mesmerising.
Song is a brilliant performer, as she is so expressive; her face etched with pain. She, like all of the members of the company move with grace but also act beautifully, bringing genuine emotion to their section, when required.
Mafalda Deville and Luke Burrough are a dazzling double act; one of them plays a disease, whilst the other battles it out with words, followed by actions. Each thud on the stage, shows the audience how dangerous Vardimon’s dance can be. But, as a result it has an edgy quality which Matthew Bourne often lacks in his work.
At times, Yesterday is slightly self indulgent and therefore may not be to all tastes, but with multi media effects, athletic movement, great peformances, laughter, pain and highly original choreography, it should earn Vardimon the respect she deserves.
-Glenn Meads
March 6th, 2010 at 9:57 pm
On its release last year I couldn’t find much to fault Avatar on. But after watching Alice – the first serious CGI-dominated 3D film since James Cameron’s immersive motion picture – there’s now a glaring issue with it: the bar was set waaay too high. Previously the computer generated effects in Alice would have knocked your socks off, however in a post-Avatar world it significantly underwhelms. Not an overly fair statement for a film which has consistently beautiful and detailed images – take the awe-inspiring climactic clash which is set on a chess board-esquire battlefield for example – but you can thank Cameron for that. Once you get past the fact that Burton’s creation does not aim to achieve realistic environments or creatures and that the actors will never appear to be anywhere other than in front of a green screen, you are in good stead to enjoy the colourful animation for what it was intended for: pure, undemanding, trippy wonderment.