Decision Festival Review – Management Hell, an epic night at the club and flamenco shows | Dance

eEach evening at Place’s Resolution Choreography Festival showcases new green shoots, and this special triple bill of bright, idea-driven dance is united by interesting concepts. Each piece is a consideration of situations between nations, the most unusual being “Exchange,” a solo work by Cyrian Griffiths. In a particularly bureaucratic purgatory, the recently deceased Michael is informed, via a quick-witted voice-over from Sam Booth, that he has some excess baggage to address. The only way to move forward is to reconsider the loves of his life, from his mother to flings.

The setting, with its slightly exaggerated version of administrative hell laced with muzak, prompts a dance that’s not quite exorcism but certainly catharsis as Michael spins through his past. The accelerating pace sometimes suggests the idea of ​​near-death from the events flashing before your eyes, with Griffith making graceful but mercurial transitions between bouts of contained agony that are strikingly well-acted and enhanced by his swirling compositions. Hip-hop styles are also feather-light, when they twirl in a headstand or practically levitate, their shadow like a chalk outline on the bottom.

It’s boldly done considering the weight we’re carrying, although the waiting area scenario and voiceover are strangely lacking. Like Michael, this piece contains some of its unfinished business.

The transitional state in Chinese choreographer Qi Song’s Archive/Flesh/Echoes is The Small Hours. Sound designer Sankey delivers an ethereal, increasingly vibrating score to a group of clubgoers gathering after sharing whispers and touches at a casual start. In the enslavement of the DJ, drawn to the golden allure of Sanli Lin Wang’s lighting, they are not so much lost in the music as they are intensely focused on it with as much concentration as another intense scene in which they are separately searching for sexual climax. One club suggests the pain of keeping up with the beats, while another is sent flying by them.

Whether in an undulating crowd or in solitude, the dancers pick up the thread of an epic night out, its momentum waxing and waning, as if a force is arising between them to ride until closing time. It is executed with gusto, although there are some generic fillers in the movement and need tightening to burn through like a moth that has flown to a rave, an attempt not unlike transcendence through techno.

Isadora D’Héloïsa is “between bodies” in Entrecuerpos and also between flamenco and fashion, styles she finds similar in her background of “marginalized histories and resistance”. Performing her choreography – accompanied by Brian Reyes (guitar), Ajo Hernandez (percussion) and Carlos de Luisa (cante) – she moves from stormy, yearning flamenco movements to the soaring bend of a duck walk and general excitement on the runway.

D’Héloïsa finds commonalities, including the frames of the arms, though she succeeds in isolating the hands more than the legs, while the flamenco percussion accentuates the jagged angle. Fusion never becomes more than the sum of its parts, but its delights include some inventive skirting, where ruffles transform into a cape and camouflage a piece that alternates between sheer splendor and inner conflict.