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Review: East London Dance Currents 2010 - Two’s A Company

The second show in East London Dance’s Dance Currents season explore something often forgotten in street dance: duet.

Words: David Barros

Two's A Company - for too long street dance shows been stereotyped as entire crews on stage with no room for creativity.

That was until a few years ago, when the show's curator Hakeem Onibudo decided enough was enough, and to remove the clutter that fills so many stages.

Two's A Company was a night for people to enjoy the dignity of duet, where all but two people are on stage at once, exploring the ways in which duet can be interpreted.

Although I wasn’t in attendance of last year’s Two’s A Company, word got back to us about how choreographers thought outside the box to give some truly mind boggling pieces.

The show opened with a serious, downbeat contemporary routine from Renaud Wiser in three acts.

Set to a soundtrack with no distinguishable beat, the dancers were able to maintain their rhythm throughout and remained in sync with their tribal moves.

Boy Blue's duet was an interesting take on digital interaction open to interpretation. Their piece began with the two dancers hidden behind a box on stage extending their limbs, giving them the appearance they were stretched in the middle. The opening of the duet reminded me of additional material that might not have made it on to So You Think You Can Dance.

The dancers danced in sync, in canon, and to show Kenrick’s creative choreography even ventured into combined standing and floor work, with one dancer playing the role of shadow, doing the routine lying down.

Probably the most entertaining duet of the night was Daniela B Larsen and Robert Guy as a couple having a pillow fight.

Stood on stage with pillows held to their ears (thus in bed, upright), they spooned and tossed and turned and kept each other awake before getting so annoyed with each other and launching in to a contemporary battle to outwit each other and hit each other with a pillow.

It was comical, well choreographed, and importantly for a contemporary piece, very entertaining to watch.

Impact Dance, Hakeem's own group, kept Two’s A Company at a steady pace after the interval in a contemporary and street fusion piece with well thought out storyline, complete with the theatrical style he is known for, which includes elements of acting and specialised lighting effects.

The theatricals gave it a dramatic edge that pulled you in to the story it was telling, a mysterious tale of a second person, perhaps a ghost, trying to contact the main character?

Additional credit has to be given for using entire songs rather than short cuts from lots of tracks.

The only piece of spoken word on the night came from Katie Pearson’s piece about making decisions. While her monologue was read aloud, she mimed out the actions in an abstract fusion of contemporary and breaking footwork.

Closing the show was a duet known as Revolutionaries, two male dancers who are also in Flawless, although their piece was far from street dance.

Both dancers were like Roman statues stood in lycra unitards in a spotlight before beginning their routine, a combination of contemporary and acrobatics that were so accurate they were next to perfection - this was like power contemporary.

Although Two’s A Company only had six acts - I wish it could have been a little longer - all of the performances that night had their appeal, and the variety of ways duets was explored gave a fresh look at what can be done with the convention.

Best of all the contemporary pieces were enjoyable to watch without slowing down the pace of the running order - and we’ve sat through a few painfully bad contemporary performances before!

The next East London Dance Dance Currents show is Local International.

Read review >>

Two’s A Company acts:

Renaud Wiser

Boy Blue Entertainment

Daniela B Larsen and Robert Guy

Impact Dance

Katie P

Revolutionaries

We’re excited about... East London Dance Dance Currents Season

Review: East London Dance Blueprint 2010

Review: Sadler’s Wells Sampled 2010

Review: Sadler’s Wells Sampled 2009

Blogs topics:

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