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From the Top

 
Stephanie Green Review by Stephanie Green 5 Published: 8 Aug 2019 Dance Base Show Dates: 2 Aug 2019-25 Aug 2019

A delight, witty but profound exploration of the power relationship between choreographer and dancers, From the Top, choreographed by Hong Kong-based Victor Fung, is a send-up of a dance rehearsal where anyone who has been to a class will recognise this expression. However it will appeal not only to dancers and choreographers, but members of the audience who have wondered what goes on inside a rehearsal studio or who have been mystified by pretentious programme notes. At a deeper level, the show also resonates with implications concerning other power relationships, whether personal or political.

A serious message underlies the humour.

The performance starts with two figures clothed in black, one with a hessian bag upside down on his head. Haze and sinister electronic music, composed by Ruth Chan, set a grim scene. (A victim and kidnapper? Prisoner and executioner?) The victim remains rigid as a mannekin however much he is moved from side to side by his captor. The lights go up, the victim takes off the bag and a voice-over starts suggesting improvements. The audience has been misled. We are in a rehearsal.

As the show progresses, the voice-over makes demands such as more abstraction or more risks. The dancers, Kenny Leung and Ronny Wong, politely listen and smile but their thoughts are displayed on a lit screen at the back. ‘What the f*k?!’, ‘You try it’. Even funnier are the thoughts that have nothing to do with choreography such as ‘Does my bum look big?’

Despite the frustration for the dancers having perfected a new version, the choreographer may then decide to stay with the original but the pair accept this gracefully. More and more complex lifts and manipulation, two of the main demands from male dancers, are seemingly effortlessly performed, only to be rejected again.

A fascinating glimpse into how choreography might be developped is then enacted as the dancers are asked again and again to be more extreme and we can see moves being pushed to almost impossible limits, requiring amazing agility and strength.The potential for backache or injury doing the splits becomes clear from the many expletives on the screen.

The third thing most asked of male dancers is that of being Superman or Spiderman. Hilarious, stereotypical poses follow. As the choreographer asks them to transform, imagining the iron filling their insides, or the dragon (a nice bit of fun from an Asian company) the dancers’ thoughts are rather more basic. No Method acting for them.

A short exquisite piece, (30 minutes) with depth. A serious message underlies the humour and reminds us of the importance of the dissenting voice.

Amir Nisi

Stephanie Green

Stephanie Green has reviewed Theatre and Dance in Edinburgh since 2011 but previously travelled widely, mainly in Eastern Europe and Russia, writing about puppetry. She also studied shadow puppetry and sacred dance in Bali. In the 1970s, she trained as a puppeteer at the Little Angel, London and later worked at the alternative In the Heart of the Beast Mask and Puppet Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A. After training at the Place, the London School of Contemporary Dance, in her 20s she then gave up dancing until starting again in her 60s just for fun. She has recently danced in a community group with Barrowland Ballet (at the Edinburgh Fringe, 2013), Oceanallover and at the South Bank, London as part of the Festival of the Silver Age. She is also a novelist, playwright and poet. www.stephaniegreen.org.uk/

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From the Top is a witty contemporary dance work that explores the power relations between performers and dance makers. The piece presents to the audience a fictional scenario based on the everyday life of dance artists and looks at the absurd nature of artistic integrity and what it means to make art. Action on stage is juxtaposed with voice-overs and surtitles to reveal the politics between the ever-demanding choreographer and dancers who continuously attempt to fulfil a choreographer’s artistic vision.
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