There’s something magical about watching dance at a distance when everything seems effortless. But arguably it’s more interesting to experience dance up close, to see the beads of sweat, feel the endurance and the heat radiating from the dancers’ bodies as they push themselves on.
Jill Johnson’s new creation for Rambert, Analogue, presented in association with the Southbank Centre at Stone Nest, makes the most of that proximity. For those who remember the West End venue as the nightclub Limelight, there’s something of the same sense of movement stripping human motivation to its core, revealing intention in the lines of an encounter.
This switch from casual to meant is revealed from the start. The audience – grouped round four sides of a square dancefloor – watch the warmup before the lights change, David Poe’s richly varied score strikes up and the dancers start to stalk the church-like space, always watchful, somehow wary.
Their eyes never leave one another, forming bonds of interaction across the smoky air. Sometimes they move in parallel, ordered lines; at others they gather round a figure moving on the floor, or form pairs and quartets. Repeatedly, they tap their hands on their chests as if mimicking a beating heart. Sometimes they jump or make refined classical shapes, but other patterns are casual, everyday.
Johnson has worked with the choreographer William Forsythe as a dancer and stager, and the intricate texture of her movement owes something to his. But its theme is her own, questioning and searching – seeming to reach for connection in a world of separation. The piece sustains its interest and its mood over an unbroken 50 minutes. When they are not involved, the dancers sit or stand at the sides, their attention and concentration never breaking.
They are fabulous, revealed in all their power and precision, but also in all their humanity, a group of individuals seeking contact in an echoing space.
