A group of 17 brilliant dancers storm the stage with highly physical dance,
bordering on gymnastics and acrobatics, praising the beauty of the moving human
body.
Mix is composed of six consecutive, non-related short
pieces.
This is a format that worked for decades for many modern dance
companies and that still prevails in the USA, but dwindled in Europe, where
priority was given to full evening creations of contemporary dance, with
aspirations for higher complexity and intellectual depth. This structure is
perceived as somewhat dated, and is often found in dance which aims to
entertain, and Mix was certainly entertaining.
Colker (52) is enormously
energetic and fit, and her perception of dance is tightly connected with
physical manifestation, the way sport is. The grace of the dancers, their
obvious strong training and discipline did justice to the choreography which
often relied on unison execution, and brought out the detailed specific
esthetics of the dance.
The company’s exclusive sponsor is a large oil
company and their funding enabled different set for each section. They say that
money talks, but the three oversize wooden chairs that almost blocked the space
in one section didn’t, and the choreography around them didn’t clarify their
presence either.
The cherry on the cake, and the most intriguing set, was
the huge climbing wall, a terrific playground for the fearless dancers, which
supplied a unique dynamics and an original movement lexicon which was great fun.
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