Fast Portraits

Project Arts Centre

REX LEVITATES' new show Fast Portraitsbrings together three discrete dance pieces, linked by a desire to capture the relationship between emotion and movement.

These Two People, which cites abstract inspiration from Sam Shepherd's Paris Texas, presents the casual intimacies and complacencies of human touch. Performed by eight dancers, Liz Roche's choreography plays with uniformity and difference, creating moving tableaux in which the dancers' movements are slightly out of time or recomposed with small difference. It is a moving, meditative piece, enhanced greatly by Denis Roche's filmic score.

The central presentation is Solo Portrait, a short film juxtaposed against a live performance enacted in the stage's shadows.

Performed and choreographed by Roche, the film is a close-up study of the dancer in rehearsal. On film, we hear the heavy breathing of her exertions, see her muscles elongate to straddle the chair that serves as central prop, and witness the encouraging affirmations she murmurs to herself. On stage, meanwhile, we see the dancer aestheticised; with her back to us, absorbed in the choreography, she is at one remove from the audience. Solo Portraitpresents a fascinating study of contrasts: an intimate portrayal of the dancer's inner life and a reminder that she remains unknowable.

The last piece, Fast Portraits, is the most playful and least coherent. Six dancers re-enact the rituals of performance (from improvisation to ovation), occasionally pausing to embody familiar compositions from religious paintings. Both intention and aesthetic seem a bit confused, particularly in comparison to the clear emotional and physical direction of the earlier two pieces.

However, Denis Roche’s score, with its curious silences, rescues it from total perplexity. It proves once again critical for creating the resonant emotional power that lingers long after the fine showcase of new work ends.

Until Saturday .