Reviews

Desert Crossings (tour – Watford, Palace Theatre)

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12 May 2012

Five black-swathed figures emerge into fractured light as a storm rages. They seem to whip themselves into a parallel violence, all fast slashing movements but impassive faces. That’s how Desert Crossings begins. The four women and one man are tokens – of any time or region you care to think of where geological, spiritual or political turbulence displaces people and wrecks their lives.

Gregory Maqoma’s choreography sustains this intensity throughout the hour. Declan Randall’s stark design suspends two shimmering round plates above the stage, at one point representing the sun which both nurtures life and withers it and the moon shining cold upon rocks, water and sand, misleading the wanderer with its flattening light. At one point first one then later all the dancers are burdened with sacks; at another they coalesce to become a many-armed deity. It’s a marvellous effect.

The solitary male dancer Jerome Wilks is tall, but flexible; Maqoma has given him extended leg and arm movements as well as a series of tours en l’air. His pas de deux with Grace Hann has elements of both seduction and succouring; this sense of apparent contradiction pervades the whole work. Keisha Grant, Vanessa Guevara and Laura Flanagan are the other performers. All are given chances (which they take) to make an impression.

Music comes from Steve Marshall’s score, which draws on melody and rhythm from many folk cultures. The syncopated foot stamping of the dancers, the sound of torrential rain and suggestions of howling winds swirling over inaccessible places add to the soundscape. State of Emergency links the West Country’s Jurassic Coast with Namibia’s Skeleton Coast in its programme notes. I’m not quite sure about the meaning of “dance ecology”; I do know that this production is well worth seeing.