Gesualdo Passione Review – Six singers and four dancers deliver a mysteriously tingling mix | platform

TCombining music and dance is an indefatigable exploration. There are countless ways to combine or play between the two, especially when musicians and dancers physically share the stage.

In the UK’s premiere of the Dance Umbrella Festival, here is a 400-year-old piece, Carlos Gesualdo’s Tenebrae Responsoria, and six singers from the Baroque ensemble Les Arts Florissants intertwined with four dancers choreographed by Senegalese-born, France-based Amala Dianor. They’re not obvious partners – a Muslim choreographer got his start in hip-hop, alongside the sacred vocal music of The Passion of Christ from 1611 – and this unlikely pairing brings both harmony and dissonance.

Initially the performers move as a unit, with the singers and dancers together in a slow procession. They are all dressed in black except for Jesus Damiano Bigi in white. The musicians have an agile voice, measured by movement, and their voice never loses its purity even when they are called upon, for example, to sing lying on the floor.

Deanor leans toward symbolic images: the kiss of Judas, the crucifixion, and the body of Jesus cradled by soprano Miriam Allan, Mary’s vicar. There are some great moments. The verses are repeated, so when they first sing of Christ’s last breaths, the singers kneel around Jesus’ folded body. When the phrase is repeated, the singers return to their places, but the body has disappeared, and a mysterious trembling hangs in the air.

The dancers, when separated from the group, have heavy human bodies, not heavenly ones. There is urgency in controlled spasms. But dance doesn’t always bow to the music; He follows his own unsentimental style and is rhythmically independent, especially when the dancers begin to stomp their feet in a pulsating pattern, breaking into the broad resonance of the music.

As the singers line up along the front of the stage and face the audience, there is comfort in being able to focus on the movement of the particular music, to know who is singing each part, bringing clarity to the ever-changing harmonies. Meanwhile, Xavier Lazarini’s lighting turns the dancers into silhouettes, like shadow puppets. It also makes shafts of light flash like glowing torches, creating a sacred space for Holy Week music. But when it comes to choreography, perhaps passion is the missing link.