In this ground breaking performance, evolutionary connections we share with our nearest animal relatives are revealed in a visually stunning, riveting display of human behaviour. The company’s acclaimed lightness and earthy beauty take on a whole new dimension as this intricately crafted choreographic journey speaks to us in a way that other primates never could. While we share 98% DNA with our nearest relatives the chimpanzees, both our connections and our differences are vast. In Humanimalia, Janis Claxton Dance take the audience on an ancestral trail that goes so far back we are left wondering whatever happened to that 2%? Read more …
With a commanding sound score and a visually arresting set, an all female cast of international dancers inhabit an atmospheric and highly charged world of movement that is both revealing and familiar. Through a powerful and evocative performance we are exposed to the intrinsic evolutionary complicity between humans* and other primates.
Humanimalia is inspired by Claxton’s on-going primate research and the company’s critically acclaimed work Enclosure 44 – Humans which was performed in an animal enclosure at Edinburgh Zoo and received a Herald Angel Award and was shortlisted for a Total Theatre Award.
This thought provoking new work portrays universal themes that are inherent in all primates through a fascinating journey of submission, dominance, repression and revelation.
Janis Claxton Dance is an award winning contemporary dance company based in Edinburgh. Founded by prolific dancer, choreographer and teacher Janis Claxton; the company’s work possesses an inherent lightness and ease alongside an earthy and energetic physicality, highlighted by a musical clarity and sensuosity.
Claxton and her four female dancers are in unremittingly strong form. The prowess is fierce, but less might have revealed more. Watching meticulously rehearsed risk-taking sadly doesn’t guarantee you see either its purpose or relevance.
Claxton's choreography cleverly switches between fluid movement, brushed with the subtlest of ape-like touches, to full-on primate activity in the enclosures. Rarely losing eye contact, the dancers are always in relationship with each other, running the gamut of emotions from fear and frustration to happiness and love.
Brilliant, profound and inspiring, this near-perfect production could only be bettered by bolder staging of its final defining moment.
Janis Claxton on Humanimalia
Choreographer Janis Claxton on Humanimalia
On Tour, from Friday March 4, 2011, until Thursday April 14, 2011.
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