Maliphantworks3
The Coronet Theatre
06–22 Feb 2020
The three pieces performance Maliphantworks3 was an intimate conversation between dance, sound, and light, in which the duet, performed by Russell Malliphant and Dana Fouras, were fusing, disjoining, soaring, and floating through the meditative ’ritual’ of movement.
From the first glimmer of light, as covered by an illuminated, quivering veil, the stage arrested sight, breath, and heartbeat in a continuous trip through an organic landscape, in which watery blinking projection ‘overflowed’ the surrounding, ‘dressing’ the two twisted bodies, slowly revealed on the floor.
In a sequence where light erases any features of personification, promising to last forever, the dancers were thoroughly transformed into two trembling ‘objects’ – dissolved in an elusive set, looking like they were melting into light and space when their appearance evolved in motion. An immersive, endevouring effect of 3D wrapping delusion, which, undoubtfully, would not be achieved without the brilliant light design of the video artist Panagiotis Tomaras. Of course, brought to life by the liquid, ephemeral impression of movement, which, despite the familiar choreography, was magnificent - renouncing gravity and ‘lifting’ the dancing couple 'in the air'.
The compilation was divided by two intervals, which forcibly took the enchanted audience out of the magical daze. The second part, comprising of two video screenings, was detached from the stylistic line of the first. Yet, it won appraisal revealing enriched form of the dance genre, showing in solo works Maliphant circling, entrapped in an elastic aerial swing, crossing the boundary of dance and performance, and Dana, modelling the space, throwing, twisting, ‘flirting’ with a cloak - evoking the feminine touch of the piece.
In the third part, ‘the unity’ was restored in a duet choreography, a traditional scene of a dancing pair, which, however, was fueled with astonishing physical energy that made the audience feel both grace and tension as if the couple was set just inches before them. The simplicity, the clearness, the polished sharpness of the movement declared almost painful synchrony, but not between gestures and turns, but between souls, fluidity, and limit.
A verification, sealed in the finale, that Malifhantworks 3 is a story of two, fading into one another in devotion.
