REVIEW: FOOTPRINT DANCE FESTIVAL -Passenger

 

Barefoot

Footprint Dance Festival

Michaelis Theatre

University of Roehampton

14 May 2015

Review by Maya Pindar

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Ending Footprint Dance Festival’s Barefoot performances was a dazzling performance by Feet Off The Ground Dance. Having graduated from London Contemporary Dance School in 2013, the collective use their training in Contact Improvisation extensively in choreography. Passenger uses Contact Improvisation to explore notions of femininity and strength.

 

Assisted by a live musician onstage, four women seize the space, lunging, running, rolling and falling. The dancers support one another using juicy transfers of weight and making unpredictable changes of direction. Syrupy floorwork seamlessly shifts the women's weight from back, to shins, to hands as they slip across the space. Live music played by Ashley Molloy-South sets a strong sense of rhythm and pace, establishing the high energy of the work from the outset.

 

The dancers physically manipulate and alter one another’s movements, direction and speed, demonstrating the power of the individual and of the group. Catching dancer Sophie Thorpe, as she suspends and falls back, the group take her weight, drag her to the other side of the space and carefully lay her down. Passenger seems to be a manifestation of the coexistence of strength and support that exists within the relationships between women. While there are obvious moments of manipulation and control, there are also instances of group support that seem to thread throughout the work.

 

Effortless and athletic jumps, lifts and transfers of weight reveal the dancers’ first class training from London Contemporary Dance School. However, it is the dancers’ complete conviction and belief in the choreography that captures and draws the audience in from the moment it begins.

REVIEW: EMERGE FESTIVAL - 

Passenger

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Annie-Lunnette Deakin-Foster, Adam Towndrow/ C12 Dance Theatre

The Space

10-14 November 2015

Review by Rachel Elderkin

Click here for link to full review

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'... The highlight of the programme is Feet off the Ground Dance Collective with Passenger. A collective of professional dance artists, Feet off the Ground’s work is rooted in contact improvisation and partnering.

 

Passenger revolves around ideas of strength and support, a quality reflected in the way the four female dancers work together. Their fluid movement flits between solos and contact work but there is always a strong connection between them, whether that is the physical support of their bodies when dancing together or their constant attention to the details of one another’s movements.'