Coreo Cymru and Chapter Arts Centre invite everyone to a promising evening of five short contemporary dance works brought to you by artists from five very different countries, presenting their cultural backgrounds.
Dance Roads is a European network established to promote and support emerging creative-thinking choreographers selected from each partner country. It aims to provide artists with a great range of international performance opportunities and a chance to expand their professional network. This year Dance Roads is presenting choreographers and their original dance works from France, Italy, Netherlands, Romania and Wales.
Compagnie Adéquate proudly represents France with a 20-minute-long, expressive, comical at places, however intriguingly touching and inviting duet Nœuds (Knots). Extensively playing with gestures and facial expressions, it emphasises the shift between softness, fluidity and power and impetuosity in movements. The duet unravels a relationship, taking inspiration from the widely appreciated Antoine de Saint Exupéry‘s words “Man is solely a knot of relations. Relations only are important to man”.
Italian artist Claudia Catarzi conversely introduces the audience with an experimental solo performance that explores different aspects of the given moment “the here and now” or “Qui, ora” and focuses on the bodily responses they evoke.
A choreographer from the Netherlands, Jasper van Luijk offers the audience a chance to travel through time and experience momentary timelessness. His choreography Yonder questions the existence of time and its continuous cycles in human lives.
Continuing on the exploratory route, the Romanian choreographer and performer Cristina Lilienfeld offers an expressive performance that focuses on skin as an organ with its own life, able to transmit information, regenerate, hold memories and respond. With an interactive dialogue between her and the audience, Layers opens up to vulnerability and struggles for a way into the emotional body.
Last but not the least, is the choreographer from Wales, Gwyn Emberton, who presents his work Of the Earth, From Where I Came. Inspired by Dylan Thomas’ poem Fern Hill, his detailed and complex choreography emphasises the inseparable human connection to the Earth.
The evening promises to present a very diverse range of works, suitable for passionate dance lovers as much as those interested in other art forms. GUNDIJA ZANDERSONA
Dance Roads, Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, Tue 7+8 June. Tickets: £10-£12. Info: 029 2030 4400 / www.chapter.org