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Brighton Fringe 2010

Slanted Views

'Us'

Venue: The Old Courtroom

Festival:


Low Down

Here we literally have ‘Slanted Views’ – a physical expression of our different orientations towards movement and life itself. Created from an artistic collaboration,  three dancers pose the questions:  How do the characters interact with each other? How are they perceived? Two performers in wheelchairs, one not, also film and soundscape are part of this engaging production at the Old Courtroom.

Review

In an sometimes unnerving, and always engaging mix of film and live performance, this if an often powerful and intelligently devised attempt to capture other modes of consciousness on film and in sound-wash and through movement.

The soundscape has been created with precision and laces well into the live movement, which is part of the strength of this very physical performance.
 
Two performers are  in wheelchairs, one not, none of them artistically limited in any way.
 
This is not worthy interpretation, but there is much of worth in it. We
can all move from whatever centre we have, We are in each others’
orbits, with our own unique slant on reality; yet we are also planets
with our own cores around which others orbit. These slants are sometimes fluent and pleasing, sometimes they cause us pain and frustration. This production explores that territory well, though some aspects are better realised than others, some parts more tightly choreographed.
 
Natasha Wood in Rolling with Laughter showed how to act with a
wheelchair rather than in one at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2008, and
these performers also achieve this mostly throughout this piece.
 
The integration between sound, film and live movement sometimes feels a bit clunky but there’s a lot of inventiveness here, grace and disturbance. 
 
The piece is often very sculptural and it’s in the many archetypal
movements that one often feels most moved.
 
Stillness. Movement. Struggle and strive; conection, closeness and
vicinity: rush to movement, silence and stillness. It’s all here. An impressive collaboration that deserves a wider audience.

Published