THe won the inaugural Rose International Prize announced on Saturday night. The new biennial competition with a £ 40,000 bounty for Victor is initially guaranteed to run for 10 editions, where time is expected to be a par with booker or turner prizes, which boosts the dance profile accordingly. This is Greek choreographer Christos Papadopoulos who brought home honor (and a cool ES Devlin designed by the trophy) for his piece Larsen C, chosen by an eclectic judging panel, with Christopher Bannerman and Arlene Phillips from the world of dance, musician PJ Harvey and Poet Kartika Naïr. (There is also £ 15,000 awarded to an early career choreographer at the Bloom Prize, which won Stav Stav Struz Boutrous.)
Papadopoulos is a bit unknown in the UK, but a darling of the Greek dance scene that has widely circled Europe. Larsen C may be the most divided pieces in the contest. The title refers to an Antarctic ice shelf, and the dance actually moves with glacial speed, with a small, repeated motion that pushes some viewers into excitement (rarely hear a “boo” in a polite dance dance). It is inspired, the choreographer said, by how your understanding of something can be completely changed when the smallest element is changed. There is an element of illusion that does not help remember Papadopoulos’ countryman Dimitris Papaioannou, while bodies as if they were gliding without sound. There are good movements here, worthless feet such as tent tents, such as mysteriously as creatures in the depths of the Mariana Trench.
As the music grows from fuzzy white noise to asserted rhythm, rumbling subwoofer until thick drone, dancers gather in a moving mass with repeating inviting a type of trance state . It grows toward a coup de theater made of slippery haze and a hole light – when one hand penetrates its beam is like an arm from heaven coming to take a lost soul, a divine intervention probably . This is a wonderful effect. But after that the piece does not know what to do on its own and lose its way.
The three other works on the strong list, presented throughout the two weeks at Sadler’s Wells, is American choreographer Kyle Abraham is a non -love title, formerly seen in the UK at Edinburgh International Festival, Carcaça of Portuguese choreographer Marco da Silva Ferreira and Brazil Lia Rodrigues’s Encantado. Trying to judge art may seem like a futile exercise in some, but it’s an intriguing dance snapshot today. The pieces in the show do not attach to traditional formal methods and structures, which are more driven by vibes or viscerality. Three of the works, Larsen C, Carcaça and Encantado were built in long slow Crescendos; An non -love title, set in D’Angelo’s music, is episodic in nature, as if declining in the lives of the whole state. Abraham’s genius is in smooshing together different dance-class-class styles, contemporary, social and street-with ease, presenting a picture of the expanded family life with a dance in its heart.
Da Silva Ferreira is also concerned about dance as a social activity, club, street and native drawing in a unique but unobtrusive language. It is part of the sexy, military part, part of the stupid, strictly rhythmic, not in the phrases of the steps combined but the cells or riffs, something repeated -then move to the next. It is very 2020s with the gentle scary, androgynous cast, the catwalk and duck walks taken from the club culture, but it is also deep primal, developing the hypnotic effect, which can be mashed, stimulate or boost, depending In the viewer (personally, it can be my favorite piece of four). Then it takes an unexpected politics, called the bourgeoisie in a loud voice, which has become the dance of the people, using the power of bodies together, in escape, in happiness and in protest .
Lia Rodrigues has long acted in her politics, Encantado was created in Rio’s favelas in the middle of the pandemya. The veteran of this group, at 68, is also the most ident garde. Enough trust in his training in, for example, start his piece with an empty, quiet phase, and to keep that silence in a length of time some of the audience is clearly found to be uncomfortable ( the sound of stifled giggles and shifting to the chairs). Then his dancers walk naked and penis under the large sheet of cloth laid throughout the stage, the mountainous tumors covered with strong collaps of colors, florals and animal prints. But when the dancers are slowly starting to move, and to drape and twist and tie the fabrics around their bodies, they have changed into countless living characters, turbans and robes market, animals and animals and Raggy Monsters; All life suddenly, clearly appears to be nothing. Rodrigues became a grandmother during the making of pieces, and here is the magic of living materializing, with joy and effectiveness. An ode to the endless possibility of some bodies and a stage.
