Theatre / dan canham
Mayfest 2015 review: Of Riders and Running Horses
It is bloody cold and windy for a May evening, up here on the roof deck of the NCP car park just round the corner from Bristol Old Vic: but at least it’s dry.
We’re hunkered down on little camping stools around the four sides of a quadrangle marked out with parking spaces, waiting for the show to start and wishing one of those St Bernard dogs with a brandy barrel round its neck would amble by.
Instead, a tiny girl aged about two toddles into the centre of the performance space carrying her stool, unfolds it and sits down. She stares solemnly at the audience, swinging her legs, until everyone breaks into spontaneous applause and her dad tiptoes over to gently retrieve her.
is needed now More than ever
Sam Halmarack’s otherworldly voice floats out over the speakers, the young drummer cranks up the beat and the music takes off with passion and fire. Five young female dancers stream into the space, beautiful lithe urban fairies who seem to have turned up a month early for an illicit midsummer night’s rave on the rooftops of the inner city.
The steps and style are eclectic and hard to pin down: something of tap and soft-shoe shuffle, a galloping lindy hop with the rhythm and footwork of Morris (or at least a nod to the East Anglian version, the Molly dance) – whatever its roots or provenance, the dance is infectiously catchy, exuberant and joyful. The dancers fragment to perform solos with strongly individual styles, and then herd together again for syncopated ensemble sets – by turns muscular and powerful, and light as thistledown on the wind.
Dan Canham and Laura Dannequin’s superb choreography beautifully accentuates the fluidity of a dancer’s body, the wave of motion passing up from the feet into the trunk and out through the arms and hands – this was particularly so with Still House’s acclaimed Ours Was the Fen Country, where the dancers seemed to sink and float dreamlike in fen water. But unlike that show, Of Riders and Running Horses has no narrative through-line or dialogue, leaving the onlooker free to immerse him/herself purely in the wildness of the dance.
The final ensemble piece is an irresistible fanfare, with the dancers galloping round the edges of the space like horses charging round a circus ring. And finally the dancers grab people out of the audience and soon everyone’s dancing in a spontaneous rave, till we’re all feeling warm again, inside and out.
MAYK has been wise to foster the burgeoning talent of Still House, and this year’s Mayfest comes of age with a veritable explosion of brilliant new work across the city that even manages to enliven a bleak, Brutalist multi-storey car park.
Of Riders and Running Horses concludes on Monday, May 18. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.mayfestbristol.co.uk/mayfest2015/of-riders-and-running-horses
Photos by Paul Blakemore