By Fiona Gardner
ADT has been under the Artistic Direction of Garry Stewart for the last decade. The company is renowned for the choreographic physical abilities and athleticism that the dancers are required to carry. Garry’s work possesses a post modernism structure; drawing upon his dancers’ capabilities and creativity to collaborate within the work. Two dancers that I find to touch me personally in a creative aspect are; Tara Soh and Kialea – Nadine Williams.
With the use of film, Garry Stewart’s work Proximity creates a multi dimension of choreographic aspects, with a diversity of perception allowing an alternating experience as an audience member.
In parts, Proximity use’s pre-recorded film. The technical standard of the piece is astonishing by French video engineer Thomas Pachoud. The projection is on to three large screens, which creates an intimate viewing experience.
Unlike HELD, Proximity tends to draw you more into the images on the screen rather than the live dancers. One section capturing a close up of Jessica Hesketh face, where the camera capture’s a 5-second snippet of film, allowing a change of characters, which is then projected onto the large screens, this creating an out of body schizophrenic experience.
I believe that the older generation are falling away from such productions as ADT due to the sound, although the Y generation are moving towards the work due to the multi dimensional effects and the vibrancy of Garry’s Stewarts artistic ideas.
For the dancing as a whole, solo sections tend to be the dancers’ strongest choreographically. In a group formation, the dancers perform synchronistic movement with intrinsic detail which tends to lose the choreographic impact.
I believe in dance it can be difficult to create a clear dialogue and meaning for the audience. After viewing pieces in Switzerland, I found their dance works tends to incorporate much more of a theatrical setting through speech. Movement tends to be generated with more organic meaning, rather than traditional lines. Garry Stewart style still sticks to the traditional difficult manoeuvres with head spins, strong technique, falls and floor work.
Overall I miss the passion that Larissa McGowan projected when she dominated her presence with the audience. ADT dancers are a majority of young dancers, being guided by a renowned choreographer Garry Stewart; let’s see if Garry Stewarts direction will lead ADT into the next decade.
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