Lewis Major: Triptych review – intense movers trip the light fantastic

Assembly @ Dance Base, Edinburgh
The Australian choreographer revels in bodies sculpted by light but the impressive staging creates a chilly distance from these strong performers

The light show is incredible. In Australian choreographer Lewis Major’s piece Unfolding, a strip projected on to the floor makes it appear as if dancer Clementine Benson is balanced on a beam rotating around the stage. Elsewhere there are bubbles moving beneath the dancers’ feet, or what looks like a giant petri dish of ultra-magnified organisms that swell and recede across their bodies.

Major has been mentored by the British dance-maker Russell Maliphant and his award-winning lighting designer Michael Hulls. You can clearly see the influence – beyond the fact the programme starts with one of Maliphant’s own pieces, Two x Three, a masterclass in purity of line and idea. Like Maliphant, Major revels in bodies sculpted by light, whether that’s the sharp contrasts of bright and shadow defining formal shapes or a maelstrom of bodies and projections merging into something chimerical. He’s also learned the art of taking a simple geometrical idea and expanding on it, as in the repeating circles of Benson’s solo in Epilogue, where she appears statuesque, covered in white powder that plumes from her hair and falls to the floor for her to draw curving paths with her feet.

The dancers are strong. Stefaan Morrow gets a great solo in Epilogue where his long limbs lick the air like a giant tiger’s tongue; he’s got some prowling big cat energy about him. But across what’s really four pieces (Epilogue comes in two parts) the mood is mostly sombre, intense; there’s a sense of distance between audience and stunning visuals.

At Assembly @ Dance Base, Edinburgh, until 25 August

Continue reading…

Please follow and like us: