dance/physical theatre review
Norman
Brighton Festival/Lemieux.pilon 4d art
This foray into the fantastical 'rabbit hole' of an artist's imagination achieves a mesmerising composite of the live dancing body and film. The works of Norman McLaren are projected on screens upon the stage, enabling the single male dancer to balletically explore the image and the life of the filmmaker through an expressive simulation, as if inside the film. Ideas of communication, war, and growth are explored, and become poignant as they play with the smaller dancing figure who moves to bridge the space between these records and a more immediate time. This abstract blending combines with a more didactic commentary on Norman's work, but it's the dancer weaving, lightly touching in mid-air, squiggled lines scratched by Norman onto film, that's most magical. The audience was rapt.
Theatre Royal, 6 - 10 May, 8:00pm (9:30pm), £20.00 (£10.00), fpp 2
tw rating: 4/5
published: Aug-2008
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