Greenwich Visitor THE
Spellbinding CoLaboration
COLAB/THOMAS BOWES
PUSHING the envelope is at the heart of Trinity Laban’s ethos and it was given free rein again this year during the annual fortnight of music and dance that is CoLab.
The festival, enjoying its seventh outing, attracts some of the world’s finest artists who travel to the conserva- toire’s campus in the Old Royal Naval College to mentor, teach and collaborate with both stu- dents and staff. And the re- sults are invariably spellbinding.
March 2017 Page 18 MILES HEDLEY REVIEWS AXECELLENT! LIZZIE
This year was no different, with extraordinary events such as a musical version of the classic British film comedy The Ladykillers, dance creations overseen by superstar chore- ographers like Theo Clinkard, vaudeville evenings and genre-crossing works per- formed by young performers from across the globe. The finale, held in the Laban building, included a work in- spired by Marco Ferreri’s 1973 cult gross-out film La Grande Bouffe, a performance of Nino Roti’s theme for Fellini’s classic La Strada, a promenade based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest and an after-party at legend- ary Deptford music venue The Duke. The spirit of adventure of CoLab 2017 was epitomised by Sei Solo, an astonishing recital of JS Bach’s violin sona- tas by internationally ac- claimed player Thomas Bowes. The programme was punc- tuated with pieces inspired by Bach’s masterworks which had been written by Trinity com- position students and played by student violinists Asma Ben Miriem, Isabella Fleming, Helena Moore, Borys Myszkowski and Melisande Yavuz, guitarist Jonathan Parkin, harpist Imogen Garnett and pianist Jialin Feng.
Bowes’ performance was wonderful and perfectly cap- tured the heartbreaking beau- ty of the sonatas and partitas Bach created in the aftermath of his wife’s death.
But in an inspired move, he and his composer wife Eleanor Alberga, who had jointly men- tored the project, separated the pieces with compositions by students Fintan O’Hare and Callum Stephens.
SMASH HIT: Cast of Lizzie
IT’S hard to imagine I’ll see four better singers this year than the quartet who made up the cast of smash hit rock musi- cal Lizzie, which had its UK premiere at
Greenwich Theatre. Bjorg Gamst was nothing short of sensa- tional in the title role of Lizzie Borden who hacked to death her abusive father and wicked stepmother in New England at the end of the 19th century. Her voice simply supercharged the songs and tunes of Steven Cheslik- DeMeyer, Alan Stevens Hewitt and Tim Maner and had a sell- out audience whooping and hollering with joy.
Eden Espinosa was electric as her sister Emma, especially when they were singing close- harmony duets, while Bleu Woodward added real emotion as her neighbour and lover Alice.
relief into the gory goings-on, beaming and singing with mischievous glee as she surveyed the stage spattered with the victims’ blood- soaked brains. A live six-piece band – keyboardist Martin
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And Jodie Jacobs as the Borden family maid Bridget brilliantly injected some light
Bergman Konge, guitarists Steffen Schakinger and Jens Kokholm, bassist Allan Nagel, drum- mer Lars Daugaard and cellist Jess Cox – were just as barnstorming as the singers, leading them through a thunderous score that included such stand-out tunes as Gotta Get Out Of Here, Shattercane And Velvet Grass, WTF Now, Lizzie and 13 Days In Taunton.
And as if that were not enough, the mood of gothic darkness was enhanced even further by Martin
Jensen’s lighting and the set designed by Jens Frausing and Anders D Jensen.
Director Victoria Bussert’s production was pretty much as good as it gets – and the audi- ence gave a huge standing ovation. Lizzie is at Greenwich until March 12.
PIGMENT OF THE IMAGINATION TRACING GESTURES
O’Hare wrote Afterimage and, best of all, Unwind, which took a melodic figure from the G minor sonata and developed it in a simple but lovely ar- rangement for guitar, harp and violin. Stephens in turn gave us two interludes, one for five vio- lins and one for the full en- semble. Both showed great sensitivity, artistic maturity and terrific potential.
It was exactly the sort of concert that makes CoLab not
THERE were any number of reasons to rave about Stephanie Schober’s new work Tracing Gestures – the extraordinary choreography, the site-specific staging for the Borough Hall pre- miere, the skill of the four dancers, the clever set using huge sheets of paper to divide the audito- rium into four discrete areas between which we, the audience, could move as the mood took us. But what made this so much more intense was that it was done in silence, the soundtrack re- placed by the performers replicating their move- ments with wax crayons on the paper to create mainly monochrome patterns of slashes and swirls that were eerily reminiscent of the spirit paintings of the pioneering abstract artist Hilma af Klint, images which were in turn projected in negative on to screens above the dancefloor to underline
the cyclical and adaptive nature of experience and existence. In a further brilliant touch, acutely angled lighting by Jackie Shemesh created sil- houettes that looked like Anthony Gormley Event Horizon figures shadowing dancers Richard Court, Owen Ridley-DeMonick, Jack Sergison and Stephen Moynihan as they explored the set- ting designed by visual artist Juan Guerra. By the end the dancers were so caked with pigment they had become crayons themselves as they traced every gesture and step on the floor. It could, I suppose, have been all too literal in lesser hands. But thanks to the vision of Schober and her team, this was an artistic tour de force – and the latest triumph in the Greenwich Dance/ Trinity Laban Partnership’s ongoing Compass Commissions series.
MINOR FLAWS...BUT AIDS PLAY IS IMPORTANT NEW PIECE
THERE have been many stageworks over the years about the impact of the Aids epi- demic on the gay community in the 1980s but We Raise Our Hands In The Sanctuary is the first I recall about black homosexuals. This new play by Daniel Fulvio and Martin Moriarty, which made its debut at the Albany, followed DJ Michael (Jahvel Hall) and lighting ace Joseph (Oseloka Obi) as they looked for love, friendship, solace and se- curity in London’s burgeoning dance clubs as all the while the threat of AIDS towered over them. But this was no exercise in doom-laden bleakness. The writers suffused
WE RAISE OUR HANDS IN THE SANCTUARY
their protagonists with a never-say-die determination to enjoy the moment, a phi- losophy encapsulated by the play’s best character, a drag queen called Brandi with a taste for pink faux fur culottes. Brandi, brilliantly performed by Carl
the form of dancers Jordan Acadia and Shawn Willis, whose sinuous, intimate cho- reography (by Mina Adoo) added an extra lair of depth to the play.
Mullaney, gets all the funniest and most poignant lines which serve to give the work real soul. There was also fine support from Dean Graham as priapic but ultimately tragic club-owner Paul. And in a neat touch, the writers introduced a sort of Greek chorus in
Two minor gripes: The music, which should have had the packed house dancing in their seats, felt oddly muted. And the writing didn’t quite capture the almost apocalyptic feeling that gripped the world when Aids was first identified.
fine – and important – new piece. Fulvio and Moriarty, who also produced and directed, deserve all the plaudits that will surely come.
That said, this was a fine production of a Take a trip to the year 2050
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Wednesday March 1 MUSICAL Lizzie Greenwich Theatre 7.30 PERFORMANCE Celebration, Florida Albany 7.30 MUSIC Kaiser Chiefs O2 TALK Boris Rumney Blackheath Halls 8 PLAY Dracula London Theatre 8 MUSIC Icarus Club Mycenae House 8 Thursday 2 TALK Infamous Life Of Emma Hamilton NMM 11.30 MUSIC Sinfonia Wind St Alfege 1.05 MUSICAL Lizzie Greenwich Theatre 7.30 PERFORMANCE Celebration, Florida Albany 7.30 PLAY Dracula London Theatre 8 Friday 3 MUSIC Clare Tunney Soprano Charlton Hs 1 MUSIC Trinity Laban Pianists ORNC chapel 1.05 ASTRONOMY An Evening With The Stars Royal Observatory from 5.25 MUSICAL Lizzie Greenwich Theatre 7.30 TRIBUTE Absolute Bowie Brooklyn Bowl PERFORMANCE Celebration, Florida Albany 7.30 PLAY Dracula London Theatre 8 COMEDY Carl Donnelly, Tom Toal, Rik Carranza, Ben Van Der Velde Up The Creek Saturday 4 FAMILY Women Making Waves Cutty Sark 11.30, 2 TOUR Benjamin West & Royal Hospital ORNC 12 MUSICAL Lizzie Greenwich Theatre 2.30, 7.30 MUSIC Once Upon A Teatime Mycenae House 4 ASTRONOMY An Evening With The Stars Royal Observatory from 5.25 BOXING David Haye v Tony Bellew O2 MUSIC Tragedy Brooklyn Bowl TRIBUTE Ben Portsmouth Is Elvis Indig02 MUSIC Guys & Dolls Concert Blackheath Halls 7.30 DISCO Haven’t Stopped Dancing Yet! Greenwich Tavern 7.30 Info: 07967 163247 MUSIC Trading With Craig Folk evening. St Margaret’s, Lee 7.30 PLAY Dracula London Theatre 8 MUSIC Jazz Jamaica Albany 8 COMEDY Johnny Cochrane, Alistair Barrie, Michael Fabbri, Jeff Innocent Up The Creek Sunday 5 MUSIC Trio Isimsiz Blackheath Halls 11 FAMILY Women Making Waves Cutty Sark 11.30, 2 FAMILY Fairtrade Fortnight Fair Global Fusion Music & Arts. Children’s workshops. 1-3 Free but tickets only 020 8858 9497 KIDS Tom Thumb Albany 1, 3 MUSIC GMT Soul Quartet Prince of Greenwich 2 VALUATION Eric Knowles Blackheath Halls 2.30 MUSICAL Lizzie Greenwich Theatre 4 PLAY Dracula London Theatre 5
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