ANGLIA TO BRIGHTON
CREDITS
CHOREOGRAPHERS | DANCERS
Davide Terlingo | Nick Mortimore
COMPOSERS
Bernhard Loibner | Ged Barry
PREMIERE
January 2000
The Place Theatre, London
Review by Carole Kew
Nick Mortimore and Davide Terlingo appeared sporting industrial workwear
(complete with boots). Against a factory powerhouse score, they locked
into obsessive-compulsive communication patterns, both convincing and
engrossing.
Terlingo harangued the audience like a demagogue (I make the rules) while
Mortimore cloned his movement. Fluid, off-balance spins clicked into jagged
robotic thrusts before stillness with arms outstretched like antennae.
Building to a contained frenzy, they suddenly switched to off-work mode,
Mortimore singing a monotune whilst Terlingo loosened into a casually
intricate folk dance.
Without making contact, these two resonated with a deep internal co-processing
of material to compelling effect. Here were beings on the edge of sanity
with a touch of genius.
Review by Steve Winnery
This is barriedale operahouse stripped of their usual high tech, using
the bare essentials of a few spots and three mikes on stands; dance, music
and spoken text. Choreographed by the performers themselves we get to
see what this exciting company are capable of. Dance and performed with
great individual style and surety by Davide Terlingo and Nick Mortimore,
we are taken on a journey to uncertainty, vague suspicions and grand pronouncements,
a kind of danced 'waiting for godot'.
Mortimore is a kind of spastic kabuki, all finely wrought ticks, twitches
and spins, a hen toed geisha: Terlingo a sombre and comic presence, his
movement more urban tai chi, detached, quirky and strangely elegant, especially
when he comes to the mike to deliver his text what i need is time he tell
us that is all i need details are very important, especially when there
is this guy turning round to look at Mortimore pacing behind with a caged
energy and twitching like a bomb waiting to explode.
The piece, mounted on an industrial soundtrack that heaved and spattered,
was a dance of uncertainty, verbal and physical explosions, casual walks
and barely contained rages of incomprehension. Dance that was not so much
dance as a preparation for some as yet unknown challenge, as Terlingo
says for whatever is about to happen. We are guided down, like Persephone,
into a world of unease, perplexity, a place of pitfalls and blind alleys,
both physical and mental.
A truly contemporary and challenging piece, a company that gives us not
quaint and easy certainty but uncomfortable questions, no finalities,
no full stops, we are left waiting expectantly for what will happen next.