High fives
Giannandrea Poesio
Bare Bones: The 5 Man Show Linbury Theatre, ROH2 There is no doubt that BareBones’ The 5 Man Show will stay vividly in the memory of any dance-goer — and for a long time, too. This fizzy, moving, hilarious, corrosive triple bill is an ideal celebration of the company’s fifth year. Its five artists — numerologists would have a field day with such a recurrence of ‘fives’ hypnotise the audience from their very first appearance, taking each viewer through a cogently formulated rollercoaster of emotions and vibrating theatre images. More significantly, the whole programme restores the long-lost faith in contemporary dance, physical theatre and dance theatre, showing that somewhere art, whether it be with or without a capital ‘a’, is still vibrantly in the making.
Performed in the round, the show starts with a kaleidoscopic series of filmed images projected on the dance platform. Intended as a celebration of the company’s work, the film, by Neil Nisbet, is a more than fitting overture to Arthur Pita’s ... And Then Gone, an equally captivating and mesmerising work that draws intelligently and creatively upon the latest theatre dance and physical-theatre formulae. Clad in impeccable tuxedos, and all sporting matching shining shoes, the five interpreters appear one by one on the performing space in the first part of the work, entitled ‘the play’. Once there, and after having exchanged greetings, they start a pan tomime game of seduction with the audience, a game that addresses cleverly and humorously a number of disparate issues, such as representation of masculinity, sexuality, male eroticism, homoeroticism, etc.
Being a collaborative effort — the performer’s individual contributions are acknowledged in the programme — the work stands out immediately for the way each dancer achieves full ownership of the set movements. The audience is thus confronted by completely different ways of performing similar movements, sometimes in unison, sometimes not.
In the second part, referred to as ‘the dance’, the men reappear wearing only skimpy underwear, socks and garters, and the shiny shoes mentioned above. Although they all retain a high degree of individual distinctiveness, their actions are more in unison than in the first part and contribute to the creation of an intense dance sequence, in which strength and prowess blend and mingle with hints of erotic, or homoerotic, lyricism. The contrast between the two sections is indeed the winning ingredient of the work which, in my view, highlights Pita’s thought-provoking creative skills.
Lyricism is also the core component of the second item of the programme, With The Company We Keep, signed by David Massingham, Bare Bones’ artistic director. The work, a splendidly fluid and profoundly moving dance sequence, has also been conceived as a collaborative one, in which the performed content stemmed, more or less unpredictably, from the personal engagement and response of the dancers. The result is indeed mesmerising and at times even disturbing, for the intensity of the personal narratives that came into play during the creative process remains palpable. Massingham’s concept remains essentially focused on powerful movement and images that generate seamlessly one to another.
With Crazy Gary, the performance goes back to the theatre dance/physical theatre genre and to brassier and jazzier tones. Woven around an old-fashioned recording of the educational programme How Babies Are Born, Crazy Gary addresses issues relating to sexual behaviour or, more appropriately, misbehaviour. What starts as an abrasively comic piece complete with strong language soon becomes a tragic investigation into today’s habits, biases and misconceptions relating to sex and sexmaking. Indeed, the subtle move from one narrative mode to the other is, arguably, the winning component of this work, which leaves the viewer both electrified and embittered at human stupidity.
These days it has become increasingly difficult to attend a triple bill in which all the items are on the same level, in terms of artistry, creativity and entertainment. The 5 Man Show is thus a very welcome exception, which benefits from obviously enlightened artistic choices. Yet the per formance as a whole is also memorable because of the five dancers, Ned Abbott, River Carmalt, Andrew Cowan, Omar Gordon and John Thompson. These five guys are everything one would like modern dancers to be. They have charisma, stamina, skills and a unique sense of theatre. And if it is excellent dance and good theatre you are after, do not miss this chance.
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