Browse reviews

Brighton Fringe 2016

BackStories

Beautiful Confusion Collective

Genre: Dance, Dance and Movement Theatre, Experimental Art, Physical Theatre, Solo Show, Storytelling

Venue: The Warren

Festival:


Low Down

A bar stool. An office chair. An apartment. Muscle memory and tension, present and past.

Physical theatre meets contemporary dance in a solo performance viewed from behind.
Beautiful Confusion Collective’s BackStories invites you to consider what you hide behind you and what you reveal when you walk away.

Beautiful Confusion Collective makes international, interdisciplinary, performer-driven work in which physical expression is the primary carrier of meaning. We draw inspiration from the body and the socio-cultural terrains through which it moves.

Becka McFadde, performer

Scheherazaad Cooper, artistic directors

 

Review

Backstories is a dance/theater performance put on stage by Beautiful Confusion. You are part of a very strong body language story, with a well chosen music that brings you to different time and places. Throughout the whole show the public can see only the back of the performer. Minutes after the beginning of the story, you actually forget that you are looking at a person. Without looking at the face of the performer, you know that there is a lady, since she is having a white dress and you are not in rush to see her. You perceive the expressions and feelings through her back. The audience is invited to take part in a history, in a body language story, made up from many images, music and sounds. We are travelling in time, the dancer/performer opens up different questions about life, stories in the past, about what we have felt and what we remember after time that tries to erase everything from our memories.

There are a talented dancer, a bar stool, an office chair, a couple of lamps on the stage. Poor in scenography, but it is totally sufficient to make us travel. I appreciated the special effects and the interaction between the dancer, video and music effects. A nice piece of video is projected onto the wall. We can see the projections on the performer’s back, on her white dress. These were my favourite moments in the show.

My advice is to read the programme before the beginning of the show, for then you will be more aware of what to look for. The show develops very slowly and when you expect the climax it comes to an end. It is thirty minutes long, filled with different emotions and physical motions expressed through the action of the performer.

I felt that this show is still in development There were a lot of beautiful images and pleasing feelings, but it was like improvisation, it felt like a process of searching. I didn’t feel that this was the result of what the team was looking for, but there were absolutely on the right path of artistic development for this piece.

So, read the leaflet before you watch, so that you will be well prepared for the show from the very beginning. I recommend that show, because it is different. This show deserves its place in Brighton Fringe since there are not so many innovative, physical theatre dance performances.

Published