The Times 21 de JULY de 2000
The Times
London, UK
21/JULY/2000
By Donald Hutera
STRONG ARM TACTICS
DANCE: Deborah Colker’s MIX of hyper-gymnastics at the Barbican ultimately offers more brawn than brain, says Donald Hutera
Hugely popular in her own country, Brazilian choreographer Deborah Colker’s eponymous troupe wowed London audiences last year with Rota. This engaging entertainment culminated with the dancers spinning like happy, handsome hamsters on a giant wheel.
Now they have returned to the UK in an earlier chunk of motion spectacle ? la Colker. Premiered in 1996, Mix plays at the Barbican Centre until tomorrow, as part of both the BITE.00 season and the Brasil:Brazil festival. It combines excerpts from two earlier Colker dances, Vulc?o and Velox.
The evening is divided into section with iconic titles such as Machines, Fashion Show and Passion. Initially dancers in white breastplates crawl and stride through precise group formations. A unit of women briefly cup their bosoms, then lay their faces in their hands. But the actions are mechanical, not emotional. A man (Rico Ozon) backflips with circular ease. Another (mischievous Jefferson Antonio, a stand-out in a muscularly attractive, highly skilled ensemble) goes robotic. The overriding tone is one of gymnastics, almost gladiatorial grace held in check.
The succeeding fashion show episode is doused with irony. Imagine a catwalk placed in Alice in Wonderland’s attic. Surrounded by three oversized chairs, a handful of dancers in black, hooped petticoats and flesh-baring, cross-hatched trousers pose and preen. Modish ennui and a come-hither sexuality play off hyper-gesticulations and fast-foot shuffles, skips or swaying hips. The effect is funny ha-ha and peculiar.
Next, the soundtrack switches from electronic samba to a channel-surfing medley of pop hits by the likes of Stevie Wonder, Donna Summer and Lou Reed. The stage is soaked in amber and ruby hues. The backdrop is an epic mussed sheet. Below it, couples rush in eddying runs, walk and jump on each other, tumble in and out of lifts and dizzying spins. Colker herself is carries onstage draped over Antonio’s shoulders, like a caveman’s pelt. But the women, steely strong in their flowing slips, dish out as good as they get.
Colker knowingly activates clich?s. Her pointedly OTT vision of heterosexual division and desire carries a clever charge. It’s not a battle-of-the-sexes argumentation. Haven’t most of us fools been dazed by a quick, hot kiss, or knocked sideways by tidal waves of feeling?
In part two, Colker further explores what she calls "the geometry and physics of movement". There is stillness and speed, careful balances, and an excess of good-humoured, everyday gesture peppered with frustration. The culmination is Mountaineering, in which the supremely agile cast scrambles and swings up, down and across a vast wall studded with grips.
Vividly imagistic, Mix contains no hidden corners or depths. Its identity is in its piecemeal juxtapositions. Colker packs in so much information that we notice more the odd moment when activity is reduced to basics. The performance is neither as whole, nor as wholly likeable, as Rota, nor does it elevate us to the same giddying heights.
Yet as a seedbed for later, more cohesive productions, Mix is plainly brainy beneath its shiny surfaces.
