/ 22 September 1995

Gin and tonic without the bite

DANCE: Stanley Peskin

PACT Dance Company’s Horizons is essentially South African in its landscape, in its use of choreographers and in its subject-matter.

In Candice Johnstone’s Link, her use of six dancers as man-apes does not touch a sensitive chord. I was more aware of devolution than evolution in the ballet’s structure: perhaps this was Johnstone’s intention. In contrast, Mandla Mcunu’s Idle Winds is entirely relaxed and pleasing to watch as the dancers move in harmony with Ahmad Jamal’s music.

The middle three ballets form a group in which energy is not translated into matter and where precise detail is not frozen into moving architecture. Timothy le Roux’s If You Should Fall was incomprehensible to me. Quite fetching to look at, it seems to be saying something about the media and androgyny. In her exploration of men’s locker-room mentality, Gin and Tonic, Johnstone finds something of the latter but loses the bite of the former. Susan Abraham’s Bloodsport is a pas de deux built on animosity: one tender moment is a prelude to a killing. Now, as in the past, I do not find the treatment of gender issues and racial tensions convincing.

A Hat is Not a Definite Envelope for a Head has Robyn Orlin offering three variations for a solo dancer on a song called Nobody Knows sung by artists as various as Louis Armstrong, Paul Robeson and Mahalia Jackson. Although each variation forces a fresh response from the viewer, the overall mood is one of extraordinary pathos. Orlin makes interesting use of hands in ballet pumps and of lighting. This dance/theatre experiment is lit by two stage hands carrying arc lamps, a device which gives a curious intensity to the work. Warren Human is particularly effective in the drag solo.

In Bolero, devised by Alfred Hinkel and Jazz Art Company, the stamping of gumboots, the rattling of beads and beating of drums imitate and comment on the rhythms of Ravel’s music. This work, with its amorous tribal games and insistent, albeit seductive, music, alternates between the electric and the mundane. It is never quite the heady experience it could be, but it does provide a rousing end to the evening’s entertainment by a company which works well together both as individuals and as a group.

Pact Dance Company performs Horizons as part of the Dance ’95 festival at the Dance Factory in Newtown at 3pm and 8pm on September 29 and 30