theParkMusicExperience & Brodie

First Night reviews





The Times October 10, 2006

Dance


Donald Hutera at Hextable Dance Centre, Kent




Don’t let the numerical title of the British choreographer Fin Walker and composer Ben Park’s latest work put you off. 5 2 10 simply refers to the five duets, two solos and ten instruments featured in the 70-minute production. Nor do you need to be unduly concerned that each section of dance corresponds to the seven chakras, an energy system of the body propagated by various Asian and New Age philosophies.



All you really need to know is that the performance, which tours until December 1, may be Walker and Park’s most accomplished collaboration to date. In an autumn crammed with dance from the UK and abroad, it already looks like one of the season’s highlights.

The designer John Napier fills the stage with bark chips, confining Park and his fellow musicians Jonathan Gibson and Constance Tanner to a small platform up at the back. Between each of seven scenes one or more of the four dancers appears and soberly sweeps a clean space in which to move. The threat of po-faced ceremony vanishes as soon as the monumental Lee Clayden launches into the opening dance, opposite Gibson on percussion. Flipping upon the floor as if he would dive into the earth’s core, Clayden is astonishing.

Catherine Bennett and Jason Keenan-Smith are scarcely less arresting in the jumpy, stop-start duet that follows. Clayden then returns opposite the petite but doughty Jenny Tattersall. Their initial bout of grappling shoves resolves into a series of contemplative weight exchanges. Tattersall’s ensuing solo is quirky and precise, Bennett’s odd yet ecstatic. Each “scene” conveys a particular mood and rhythm. Most of the dancing feels permeated by the tensions of contemporary life.

Beautifully disciplined yet wonderfully human, the dancers are all remarkable for their concentration and lack of vanity. Lucy Carter’s lambent lighting continually enhances the show, as do Jack Galloway’s body- hugging, colour-coded costumes. The real juice, however, is Park’s multilayered score. It percolates and soothes. 5 2 10 adds up to a rich, stringent and palate-cleansing experience that could leave you feeling both exhilarated and content.




- The Times October 10, 2006

Walker Dance Park Music

‘5 2 10’

November 2006
Manchester, Bruntwood Theatre

by Ian Palmer




© Ravi Deepres

'5 2 10' reviews

Tattersall in reviews

Clayden in reviews

recent Walker Dance reviews

Fin Walker reviews

more Ian Palmer reviews






The premise for Walker Dance Park Music is simple – Fin Walker provides the dance and Ben Park provides the music. The result is just what the doctor ordered for these darkening November nights: arresting, intelligent and musical contemporary dance. The direct collaboration between composer and choreographer is too little explored in these times, whether it be out of lack of resources or lack of interest; Balanchine understood the organic achievement of such collaboration and most recently Cathy Marston and her composer/collaborator Dave Maric have offered us fruitful works of inspired and musical gift, but too often music appears as an after thought, a means by which simply to prettify dance, to give it a sonic appeal rather than a vibrant stimulus. Happy then to report that Walker Dance Park Music’s new piece 5 2 10 (that is five duets, two solos and ten instruments), which is touring the country and made a brief stop-off to Manchester on Friday night, takes its music as the seed from which the dance grows and each movement is a response to the articulations of the score.
Ben Park’s music seems to find its roots in jazz and ethnic traditions. Scored for those ten instruments and played live by three musicians it is highly percussive and eminently danceable. The rhythmic patterns feed into the dancers’ muscular twitches, seeming to drive into them as muscular spasms. In the opening duet for dancer and percussion we see the beats of the drum, its highly complex rhythmical patternings, resolved in the body of the dancer; the one posing the questions, the other offering the answers. In a later solo the mournful wails of the saxophone provide a core around which the dancer winds her body, coiling and recoiling around a perfectly held developpe a la seconde. The final Movement, fashioned in white (the costumes designs of Jack Galloway are beautiful throughout) is extraordinarily tender and lyrical bringing with it a sense of visionary peace.
In seven sections, it proceeds as a visual and aural symphony, a stimulation to both eye and ear. In a programme note we are informed that each section represents a distinct Chakra (or energy system of the body) - so that it could be earth, the throat, the heart, the brain. None of these really matter, nor does little knowledge of Chakras really hinder enjoyment of the work. I found each section came as a response to a different inner feeling, so that it became a distinctly personal experience.

The four dancers are at the very top of their game – Catherine Bennett, Lee Clayden, Jason Keenan-Smith and Jenny Tattersall - and the versatility of the musicians is highly commendable: a shame therefore that the Bruntwood Theatre was so stingily populated for this enjoyable work. It ends up at the Linbury Theatre at the Royal Opera House (from whom it is a co-commission) and it deserves to be seen and heard.


- BalletMagazine‘5 2 10’ Manchester