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Dance Review: Janice Claxton--Chaos and Contingency

Lorna Irvine reviews a new dance piece that's 'hypnotic and kaleidoscopically lovely to watch'.

Some of the most beautiful art is best understood from standing back, the better to appreciate the smallest detail and nuance; so it is with choreographer Janice Claxton's latest dance piece, performed appropriately in the main hall of the Kelvingrove art gallery.

Eight cerise/purple robed dancers, comprising four women and four men, walk into the main space. They split into varying forms, groups of three, three and two and then solo off or cluster together, depending on the points in the beautiful glitchy score, especially composed by Philip Pinsky. From up on the balcony, they look like Zen figurines, creating shapes. Close up, they are elegant and can be scrutinised more easily as doing rigid, disciplined dance steps which then turn in on themselves. The repeated steps are then performed backwards, the form reduced right down to the last dancer. Each angle brings a new experience of the piece, so lucid is its structure. Their limb movements are in keeping with the fractal theme, precise even as they fall to the floor, roll or swap positions. Dance as mathematical form, or visual poetry.

It is hypnotic and kaleidoscopically lovely to watch, transformative and wonderful to see a free event which is as complex as it is ambitious

Tags: dance

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