On the 21st March 2023 I took myself off to London for another Dance Performance. This one was a little different in my execution.. I was not staying the night this time, due to the timing and location of the event I was able to get the train there, see the performance get the train back the same night. Arriving back in Liverpool after midnight, but that was a small price to pay and I like traveling at night / in the dark anyway. I was lucky to make the train down to London however as three minutes later and I would have missed it and with that I would have missed a stunning performance. I am so glad I made it. – This is a long one!
The event was held at The Place. This is a venue I’ve had my eyes on visiting for many, many years at this point. I’ve known about The Place as a venue since around 2015 but I’d never (yet) had the opportunity to visit it to see a performance. The reason why the timing worked out for a same-day return trip was that it is located approximately a five minute walk from Euston Train Station. So no tubing across London to a hotel then rushing back to the venue in time to see a performance this time. The venue itself is housed inside a lovely building literally just off of Euston Road on Duke’s Road. This is the home of the Theatre, Bar / Cafe and Box Office. There is another building literally around the corner which is the main building for the London Contemporary Dance Company and it’s training courses.
I can best describe the venue as being very much like Unity with the bleacher-block style seating but around twice the size if not larger in terms of seating capacity. Similar also to Lilian Baylis Studio at Sadlers Wells but again at least twice as many seats available. I had a great seat in the fourth row back from the front, row D seat 1. I was right on the end on the right, but was still afforded a great view of the whole of the stage. Again with hindsight you get to know the layout of these venues so I wouldn’t hesitate to book another performance at The Place and perhaps go for the front row towards the center if possible. The stage itself (which I usually photograph prior to a performance), was in darkness when we were allowed into the house, so a photograph of that here wouldn’t work, so here’s the seating block instead.
The performance was from a company called the Tom Dale Dance Company and originally it was billed as a Double Bill featuring Sub:Version and Surge, however unbeknownst to me, till I got to the venue and sat in the house, there was a third performance which had been added to the schedule. a so-called ‘Curtain Raiser’ called Sync by Scatter Dance Company. The Scatter Dance Company is one of three resident Dance Companies owned and run by The Place itself and is for adults who have had previous dance experience. The company meets weekly during the autumn and spring terms, taking part in a class with company Rehearsal Director James Kay. They have performed previously at The Place, Innovate Dance Festival and Bloomsbury Festival. – This was an interesting little bonus performance. When I made my initial notes about this performance I did so too harshly as I did not know this was an entirely separate piece of work by a different Dance Company, now I know that, here are some thoughts on their performance piece, Sync.
Sync was a short dance of around five minutes in duration, no longer than ten minutes and featured a full stage of dancers who started and ended the piece in a tight group at center stage. They spread out during the performance to all have their own small piece of the stage in which to dance within. They did a good job of not crowding each other and allowing each other room to move, particularly when you consider the stage is only around fifteen meters wide with a depth of just twelve meters. A relatively small performance space, particularly for such a large group of dancers. I thought perhaps.. there was too many dancers on the stage for this piece, but I guess the piece called for it. There was too many to watch them individually, so defocusing on the individuals and viewing the piece as a unit moving together, it was easier to watch. The dance was modern in nature and was in sync with the soundtrack which was also modern, electronic. I thought the soundscape could have been distributed more evenly but that might have been due to a speaker stack being flown almost directly in line with the right and left of the seats. Thankfully the balance seemed to improve with the Tom Dale Dance Company performances. Interestingly, when Sync was finished the dancers exited the stage via the audience seats. I guess they could have sat and watched the show behind somewhere.
There was a short interval of no more than five minutes or so before the lights dimmed again and the first of the Double Bill: Surge. First thing to say about this one is: Wow! Surge is what you get when you combine Dance, Music, Art & Design – A beautiful, Sublime Experience. Tom Dale is one of an increasing number of artists who have a fascination with the use of technology within the Dance space, and I am glad that that interest is a shared one. One of his core beliefs is that we share our planet with a new life force: Technology. Surge as a performance is not a new one, I believe it was first choreographed back in 2019 and performed then at The Place too. Regardless, this is my first time seeing it and experiencing it and just simply Wow! Surge is a duet with a solo dancer on the stage and her duet partner is that of projected light from above.
The first thing I noticed personally was the wardrobe choice. The performer Jemima Brown is dressed all in white. A sort of body suit with holes above the knee and below the chest, also around the shoulders front and back. Jemima has a white line painted on her face too up into her hair which is a platinum colour (almost white). The second thing I noticed is that not only is this solo artist dancing, but for the first and last part of the performance she is wearing a microphone. – She’s actually singing lyrics too! The stage for this performance was made up of a white rectangle covering most of the stage. This Dance floor and it’s colour would become more important and apparent later on.
SURGE gives life to a future human on the boarder between the digital and organic worlds. A character pushed to their limits to ‘feel’, to ‘sense’, to ‘exist’. An immersive, audio-visual, genre-breaking performance, SURGE showcases exclusive new music from British music producer ITAL TEK, featuring live vocals from performer Jemima Brown.
The other performer in this performance was the lighting. First it starts from a single light source above the stage, shining directly down on to the stage and starts off slowly with sweeping, deliberate movements. All extremely smooth, then as the music picks up tempo there look to be two additional light sources at rear left and right of the stage, pointed forward towards the audience. There is a slight amount of haze in the air too. Not enough to be distracted by it, but enough for it to add to the effect generated. The three sources of light, above, left and right create a sort of triangular shaped box inside which Jemima is performing slow, sweeping movements, occasionally poking arms or legs or more of herself out of the box of light and haze as if emerging out towards the audience. The movement of the lights, particularly at this stage those at the rear right and left of the stage I thought felt very much like the kind of motion that one can get from using lasers. But they were definitely lights. I wonder if they were mirrors and the light source came from elsewhere (as can be achieved with lasers too). However it is done, the effect is subliminal but perhaps even foreboding for what is to come next. At the start and up to this point, all of the light is pure white also, which combined with the wardrobe makes for an interesting spectacle. The lights are purposefully bounced into the audience while sweeping the stage which further adds to the building feeling of intensity as when you’re vision is temporally blinded by the lights sweeping across, the performer would move to a different part of the stage, hidden away till the lights swiped the stage again. This effect was repeated and used throughout, and would also be put to much more direct use within the second performance of the evening.
The dance is made up of different tracks from British music producer ITAL TEK with lyrics performed by Jemima Brown during the dancing. There are small pauses between each of the tracks, but minimal, seconds. The first I think allowed for the microphone to be removed and a few other breaks throughout. These are really natural breaks in the music however, not intervals. When the music starts to really ramp up into an electronic concoction of sound (which is balanced across the speakers much better than the first performance of the night), the lighting ramps up too. The center, downward firing white light starts to add in colour… Vibrant colour and patterns on to the floor. Jemima’s choreography and kinetic movement ramp up to match the intensity of the music too of course, more on that later, i’m still mesmerized by the lighting… and that’s when it hits you.. Its not a light. Its live digital projection. Of course it is… or is it? The patterns thrown on the floor throughout – from this single ‘light source’ are vibrant and outstanding. It has to be digital projection.. 3D digital projection. The photos that I’ll post below show some of the shapes it throws, but they really don’t do it enough justice at all. The movement is fast and robotic in places. – This is a dance between kinetic movement and technology after all. Jemima moves with such control and fluidity across the stage that it looks like at times something or someone is dragging her around. So clean. After a while, you lose focus on the lighting as an individual element and experience the performance as a whole. It’s mind-blowing. – I say that a lot in these reviews I know, but simply put, every time I see something, my mind seems to be blown further away by what I see.
What more can I say about Surge.. It really does have to be experienced more than anything. There’s so much more to mention… The digital projection was designed by Barret Hodgson of Vent Media, a Nottingham based, award-winning design artist who specilises in digital visual media for live performances and art installations. He is an Associate Artist of the Tom Dale Dance Company and has worked on previous works including ‘I Infinite’, ‘Digitopia’ and ‘Refugees of the Septic Heart’. The music for Surge was created by British music Producer ITAL TEK who releases music on the Planet Mu Label. His trademark sound is hypnotic, with injections of dubstep, ambient and more. He created a five-track concept album entitled ‘Surge’ in close collaboration with both Jemima Brown and Tom Dale. (And now he has a new fan in me). Jemima Brown has performed in several previous works by the Tom Dale Dance Company including ‘I Infinite’ and ‘Step Sonic’ and in ‘Epilogues’, and her name is one that I will be looking out for in both past and future performances. A stunning talent.
Usually when I see these performances, they tend to be either one off performances of choreography that might never be seen again. Very rare is it that there is video that exists but in this case there is. I will link to it below, but for now enjoy some of the production images taken from Surge. Below also is a trailer for Surge. The BBC 4 Dance on Film adaptation of Surge is available to view too.. If you cannot get to see it tour this year, (there are five dates left) watch this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0bl84zd.
© Alice Underwood.
Moving on to the second performance from the Tom Dale Dance Company in the evening double-bill, Sub:Version. This performance was conceptualized and choreographed by Tom Dale with it’s lighting being designed by Andrew Ellis. The lighting is a lot simpler for this piece, but it does follow similar tropes to Surge. There is no digital projection in this performance but it is still an impressive design and was executed to perfection. The dance itself is an elegant selection of ten dance ‘sketches’ that together weave a hypnotic journey through electronic music sub-genres using WEN’s album EPHEM:ERA. I’ve not heard of this artist before either, but I will be looking for this music now, it is very much up my street in terms of its sound. The pleasure of moving to music with delicate-like melodies which are both dissonant and weightless, giving the dancers the compulsion to move, which in turn adds another experimental collaboration between the kinetic and music.
The piece is performed by four dances this time out, they were: Dan Baines, Jemima Brown, Tom O’Gorman, & Meghan Stevens (I think). Each ‘sketch’ was a couple of minutes in length before the next one switched itself in. The lighting design in this piece made clever use of the angle and beams just like Surge, with moving gobo’s, playing with the size and shape of barn doors electronically in time & rhythm with the music. The aiming of the lights into the audience was utilized also as the first dancer who appeared on the stage, Dan Baines seemed to appear literally out of nowhere. There were pieces within the ten sketches where the dance seemed to be led by the lighting design, were the dancers would only move when the light was shining on them, and be in darkness for the time when the light was focused on the others. There was a good level of switching in and out of the four dancers too. Each seemed to get a ‘scene’ to themselves before the rest of the dancers joined in.
I was perhaps.. less impressed with Sub:Version than I was with Surge, but that shouldn’t take anything away from it as a performance piece itself. I just don’t feel it was quite as polished as a piece as Surge was. That said however, Surge has been around for longer and I would imagine performed more times too. I think my head was just still filled with the digital projection and the inspirational possibilities that come with that. The thing is however, it was last on the playbill tonight, and I believe it is a new piece of work as it has come after Surge, so it still has time to grow into itself over its forthcoming future performances. – I did feel more of the ‘focus’ of the night was on Surge. I wish there had been a question & answer session after this performance, or even if the artists had been available to speak with afterwards. It’s a strange thing sometimes, because it’s not a normal occurrence to have such access to these talented artists, but you miss it when it’s not available to you.
Some photos from Sub:Version follow below:
© Alice Underwood.
In summary.. a fantastic night of superb performances from Scatter Dance Company and Tom Dale Dance Company at The Place. A venue I’d seek to go to again sometime for something special and a few new dancers and artists to add to the inspiration & research folders. I believe that at least one of the dancers I saw performing tonight will be in a Russell Maliphant Dance Company performance I am due to see a little later on this year. Can’t wait. I’ll leave you with quote about what constitutes Dance in modern times:
Dance and choreography are about anything that moves from bodies, lights, projections, space, aura, energy, flow, the space between things, on both a macro and micro scale and everything in between.
– Tom Dale.
