Cast No Shadow
A word has been echoing round my head since about 8.50pm last night when I watched a series of film footage of people falling down and up stairs.
Bumpetty bumpetty bumpetty.
The oddness of my head that it should take this away when there were so many other moments it could dwell on…
Cast No Shadow is visually spectacular. A collaboration between Isaac Julien (an artist who creates film installations) and Russell Maliphant (a choreographer who, in my mind, can do no wrong since I fell in love with his style in Push).
I was there with my boss, it was the premiere, we were in the 1st circle and there was champagne. All in all, it was a very unusual Sadler’s Wells experience for me. I have only ever sat in the top circle before - I can practically find my way to 2nd circle rows B and C blind-folded - so it was odd to see the stage at a different angle. I hope that realising how much bigger it actually is won’t detract from my future experiences!
There is a trilogy of films shown in the performance, the first is set in Africa, the second in the Arctic and the third (after the interval) around the sea. The first two were amazing films but the incorporation of live dance in conjunction with the second one felt slightly unnatural, slightly ‘tacked on’.
The thing that kept jarring with me was that the dance movements were very evocative of capoeira (a martial art/dance form) which is synonymous with heat - it originates in Brazil and I once heard a capoeirista (had to check the spelling of that!!) say that it can never be performed properly on a stage or floor, that sand is its natural ground. To set such heat in the Arctic therefore felt odd to me. However the fluid capoeira movement contrasts with the more classical ballet body forms so perhaps the ultimate aim was to create an impression of contrast. If so, then I think that worked.
There was no live dancing during the first film. Perhaps some Russian-style ballet would have been a good contrast to the African scenes - I always associate pure classical ballet with ice and cold. (And I’ve never even seen Les Patineurs!)
Given that things didn’t quite feel ‘meshed’, I wasn’t surprised when I read in the programme afterwards that the first two films had been recorded as stand alone pieces, without thought given at the time to inclusion of dance. I wonder if perhaps the project might have been slightly better if the collaboration had been from the beginning. Certainly Julien’s third film, Small Boats, - which was conceived once the project with Maliphant had already begun - worked much better as a fusion of the two art forms. It was a stunning ending. And the dancing felt much more fitting in the water context, with the dancers swirling and crashing like the tides and waves of the sea.
And falling down the stairs. And falling up the stairs.
Bumpetty bumpetty bumpetty.
Oh dear, I am a philistine. Still, perhaps it’s better than humming the inevitable Oasis song as I heard three separate people doing on their way out of the theatre!
