Slow Burn, Together | His Majesty’s Theatre | Until 14th March | ★ ★ ★ ★
Choreographer Emma Fishwick was brought together a diverse range of women for her latest work Slow Burn, Together. It’s a beautiful and meditative piece, visually stunning and filled with moments of rich artistry and rare stillness, but there are moments where peacefulness turns to languishing in listlessness.
The performance features dancers Ella-Rose Trew and Francesca Fenton, alongside an ensmble cast that includes Frances Barbe, Laura Boynes, Liz Cornish, Julie Doyle, Shona Erkine, Nannette Hassall, Ella Hethington, Rachel Arianne Ogle, Sue Peacock, Isabella Stone, Mariel-Muriel Toulcanon and Min Zhu.
The stage is revealed as a dark space where shadowy figures walk slowly across a fabric laden floor, their delicate footsteps making crunching sounds, slowly lighting highlights different people, but in the low light your brin in left to decipher what you’re seeing, is that one person or two? Is that person young or old? Before you can make determinations they fade into shadow and other visual conundrum comes to the fore.
The work moves slowly, glacial, deliberate and peacefully. I’m reminded of listening recently to Gorecki’s Symphony No 3. It’s so quiet at the beginning I often return to the CD player to double-check I turned it on. In a similar way to how the Polish composer’s notes eventually hit an audible level, Fishwick’s work slowly rises from a slumber.
The crunchy fabric is hoisted from the floor, it’s a giant piece of space blanket material, raised above the stage hanging like an artistic goon bag.It creates a curtain that we can’t see beyond, but there are no other materials draping the stage, the wings are gone, we can see backstage a view the performers as they quietly wait for their next moment, teasingly much of the action is on the periphery of our view, occupying the tiniest sliver of our field of vision.
Performers change costume into boldly coloured outfits, golden and emerald outfits that catch they eye and suggest a world where art and culture is dominant. The performers slowly move through a series of scenes, what they are about is not overtly obvious, you can make up your own magical narrative.
Objects are thrown across the stage, clothes, shoes, rock-melons. Different pieces of music come and go. At time the dance becomes energetic, but it’s rhythmic and repeated, and even though the dancers are exerting themselves, the effect on the audience is hypnotic due it’s steady motion and repetition.
While this show is not narrative driven, it creates a space for the audience to reflect, interpret and ponder. It moves slowly, a feeling that increasingly feels foreign in our hectic lives. You leave the theatre with lots to think about, and a remnant feeling of an overwhelming sense of beauty and timelessness.
Burn Slowly Together is part of the Perth Festival, tickets are on sale now.
Graeme Watson
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