Choreographer: Fin Walker
Composer: Ben Park
Musical Director: Ben Park
Dancers:
Catherine Bennett, Lee Clayden, Theo Clinkard, Jacob Dorff-Petersen
Antonia Grove, Scott Smith, Jenny Tattersall
Park Music Ensemble:
Rebecca Jordan - cello; Stephen Gibson -- percussion; Connie Tanner - bassoon; plus guests
Lighting Design: Lucy Carter
Costume Design: Ben Maher
Technical Producer: Adam Hooper
Lighting Technician: Richard Garfield
Silence of the Soul is a full-length piece performed by 7 dancers and 7 musicians. It takes us through an energy driven process in three movements.
The stage plays host to an uncompromising reality that cuts to the quick with power, grace and beauty rolled into one. Questioning, challenging and ultimately rewarding. It leaves a lasting impression, a visceral memory.
Intensely demanding of its performers, Silence of the Soul is a test of will and concentration. There is no doubt that physically it pushes them to extreme limits, but this is beautifully balanced by sequences of serene stillness. The combination of performers as totally mutually reliant team members and yet idiosyncratic individuals makes this piece a fascinating work to watch for dance enthusiasts or any body who wants a key element of a night out to be, put simply, excitement. Audience members leave this show feeling exhilarated and energised.
The company's first full evening --length work, it is certainly the company's most ambitious to date. Walker and Park are a duo in demand as the prestigious list of commissions (see company background) illustrates and Silence of the Soul promises to bring them to their own company the profile and recognition it has long deserved.
'Things really took off when Park's vibrant cacophony of a score gelled into syncopation with the dancers' antics.. The Three of Us, blessed by his exquisite Schoenberg-like score for tenor, percussion and bass, explores the ménage a trios.. Here Walker's tight, razor-sharp movement grows more painterly in its composition, structured by a series of freeze-frame tableaux that cut through the rhythm and space with exciting theatricality... the thrill of the evening was the final male trio, helped in spirit by Lucy Carter's ecstatically crimson red floods of backlighting..' Catherine Hale, Ballet Magazine on The Three of Us
'. a seamless bond. Contemporary Dance and contemporary music cut from the same cloth.' The Scotsman
'The sextet Shadow underlines how exceptionally attuned the dancers are to each other, and how on track is the choreographer Fin Walker. Walker's grasp of the interlocked dynamics of intimacy reveals itself especially in a clinging, climbing duet... but everybody performs with a fierce honesty, enhanced by Ben Park's reedy percussive score, played live.' Donald Hutera, The Times on Shadow for CandoCo
'Sensitive to the effective and beautiful score, and working within what seem to be strictly defined parameters of vocabulary, walker produces intensely memorable work of high artistic integrity' Mike Dixon Ballettanz on The Self.
(less info)
