“Electric! Brilliant! Liminality! Anguish! Metamorphosis! Reckoning!” Audience members called out one-word responses after each performance at Dance Base’s Autumn Scratch Night on Friday.
The night featured the works-in-progress of four leading Black dance artists from the African and Caribbean Diaspora; Michael Arowolo, MC Laffitte, and Kiki Oladapo and Gaia Silvan. Organised by Dance Base artistic director, Tony Mills, and Project X, each work embodied a sense of rhythm, intensity, and culture that made for an engaging performance.
Sacrilege by Arowolo was inspired by the Bàtá dance of Nigeria’s Yoruba Tribe. The piece featured traditional costumes, movement, and drumming, each a homage to Yoruba heritage. The dancers started with sporadic, grounded, rhythmic footwork, incorporating vocal callouts that broke the fourth wall and brought the audience into the piece. Throughout the work, the two dancers drifted in and out of synchrony, gradually increasing the energy until the audience was clapping along. The camaraderie created in this take on Bàtá seamlessly transformed the room into a community, encapsulating what the tradition is about.
Clear by Laffitte was a stunning solo work that took on the struggle of mental health and mundanity of everyday life. Laffitte began the piece by strutting and surveying the room, commanding the space and bringing the audience into her world. A washed light flooded the stage as she joyfully and casually grooved and traveled across the space. Her movement was consistently responsive to the music and as it slowed, she became ‘stuck’ in a spotlight in an upstage corner of the stage.Trapped here for a satisfyingly uncomfortable amount of time, she engaged in a series of repeating gestural movements that swelled until her sweat and shaking muscles were visible. When the spotlight changed position, the gestures transformed into phrases that traveled across the space and mirrored the beginning of the piece. Taking the audience through a range of emotions and demonstrating brilliant stage-presence and athleticism, Clear was the standout piece of the night.
Lost Tongues by Oladapo and Silvan blended the contemporary and hip-hop movement styles to create a duet that was constantly shape-shifting. An effort to bring Nigerian and Greek mythological characters to the space, the piece opened with a series of vocals, as the two dancers lied on the floor opposite each other. Throughout the work, Oladapo and Silvan incorporated a chair and two shining pieces of fabric into their choreography, delineating different scenes in their story as they shifted. The cyclical element of the piece was its most captivating feature — they ended as they began, speaking lying opposite each other, allowing the audience to reflect on the arch of the piece.
The audience at Dance Base was alive and eager to give praise and constructive feedback to these dancers. The energy onstage brought the room to life and made for a wonderful night of sharing art.
Image of Lafitte in Clear by Sally Jubb provided to The Student as Press Material
