The Business Times 21 de JUNE de 2000
The Business Times
Singapore, Singapore
21/JUNE/2000
By Felicia Yap
THE COMPANHIA DE DAN?A DEBORAH COLKER JUST TAKES YOUR BREATH AWAY, SAYS
Hot from the sunny shores of Rio de Janeiro, the Companhia de Dan?a Deborah Colker certainly bowled the Kallang Theatre crowd over with Rota, a visually spectacular blend on modern dance, gymnastics, and circus antics. As soon as the curtains rose, the audience was served an extremely athletic brew presented by a company of strong, flexible and disciplined dancers.
The eclectic vibrance of this crowd-pleaser reflects choreographer and artistic director Deborah Colker’s varied background. Formerly a pianist and professional volleyball player, she describes her piece, first performed in 1997, as "lines, circles, maps - the occupation and exploration of space". And this is exactly what Rota is about.
While the dancing was largely obscured by acrobatic feats, the magic lay in Rota’s accessibility. Act One kicked off with an eminently "dancey" score and a backdrop of an immense black-and-white dress pattern scrawled out in an intricate matrix.
Besides weaving in an abundance of cheerful mischief in this bouncy piece, Colker incorporates lost of gymnastics and keep fit drills into the space - rowing, tumbling, running and jumping - all of which were executed with great intricate movements. Respectively clad in casual suits and flowing dresses, the 16 men and women (including Colker herself) whipped through a series of rough-and-tumble manoeuvres that were adorably spliced with normal everyday gestures - hair smoothing, body scratching and even face slapping.
To audible gasps from the audience, Colker made three men lean forward in a precarious balance, held only by their feet, the allowed two women to circle round a male dancer’s feet, sending him stomping off with them still attached like oversized boots.
It soon became obvious tunes that Colker pays fleeting attention to music, quickly skipping through two centuries from Mozart to Aphex Twin and The Chemical Brothers. But to our disappointment, there was no change in the pulse of the dance, causing the first half to breeze by without an impact.
Inspired by the idea of weightless space walking, Gravity in Act Two proved to be a drastic change. The dancers, clad very simply in chic white costumes designed by Yam? Reis, floated slowly in a reverie, treading the blue haze around them in protracted motion. They also pushed their bodies to physical extremes, translating themselves into up-ended sculptures and balancing on heads almost effortlessly.
But none could have been more stunning than the final act - Wheel, inspired by entertainment parks and rotation of the earth, was a climax unlike any other. Framed by vertical ladders, Colker’s coup de theatre - an impressive 22 ft ferris wheel weighing 1.5 tonnes (straight from the hamster cage?) - provided the centrepiece around which the dancers romped about with the stylistic grace of trapeze artists.
Without any safety nets in the playground they rode the wheel with giddying momentum, skimming around it, twisting about its circumference and effortlessly counterweighting each other to halt its revolution They even leapt off the wheel at dizzying levels, landing on the ground with feline grace. At one point, the audience held its breath as a female dancer, held only by one foot, lowered herself horizontally from the rungs of a ladder at an alarming height.
Then came the finale - a jaw-dropping moment so tantalisingly hinted at by publicity photographs. Accompanied by an exhilarating passage from Johann Strauss, eight dancers dangled from a spinning catherine wheel in curled up positins, creating a more explosive effect than a full-scale pyrotechnic display.
Perhaps Colker meant to tease us; the curtains closed all too abruptly on the sight that lay before our eyes. Still, it was a breathtakingly visual end in a performance that brought parts of the cheering audience to their feet.
And only then could one breathe . . .
