Swan Song

Title- Swan Song Dance
Animateur and Performer- Ivan Thorley
Music- Original Swan Lake Score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

In this short re-staging of Swan Lake, the Dying Swan is revisited by the Ugly duckling (and a unicorn in this version); part swan, part clown, part naked, there's something for everyone.
Swan Song was first developed at Culture Lab in Newcastle in 2007 during a motion capture workshop, then performed at Arnolfini in Bristol, The Bluecoat in Liverpool in 2008 and The International Student Puppet Festival at CSSD in London in 2009. Swan Song is a three mintue solo that has been specially extended for the Resolution Platform to 15mins.

Details: Date: 18 January 2010

Time(s): 8:00 pm
Venue: Robin Howard Dance Theatre The Place 17 Duke's Road London WC1H 9PY
Resolution Link- http://www.theplace.org.uk/3222/whats-on/resolution-programme-11.html

Company Overview- mrthorley.com
mrthorley is an interdisciplinary contemporary performance project that combines diverse mediums into utterly unpredictable, truly original art events. mrthorley exploits movement to link sound, objects and technology together. Infusing new performance projects with complexity and nuance, movement is used as a dialogue to create distinct choreographic languages and relationships. Employing the body or object as a dynamic entity to build form, the work is often unexpected and experimental.


Reviews

It's a brave soul who takes a stab at re-inventing Swan Lake - surely there are only so many ways to skin a cygnet - so it's a feather in Ivan Thorley's cap that, at the very least, Swan Song offered something different. Quite what that was proved hard to define as, played out over Tchaikovsky's immortal riffs, Thorley alternately took to the stage as grumpy gremlin (in nasty big underpants) and feather-stuffed unicorn, the action punctuated by an anonymous woman with dustpan and brush. Odd, and darkly endearing, Thorley's Swan Song was as impenetrable as a half-remembered dream.
Reviewer- Keith Watson

Dance always promises to be unpredictable, but last night's Swan Song truly was. In the most unique ode to Swan Lake that I've seen, the swan turned out to be a unicorn, who eventually came to his demise by having the feathers literally pulled out of him. Ivan Thorley's duckling was almost doe-like in his innocence and grace, rivalling the exquisite Odile. Cohesive ideas, constant surprises and good humour kept this piece together, and the audience eagerly awaited every twist.
Reviewer- Jobina Bardai

mrthorley 2010

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Ivan
• Thorley
• mrthorley
• swan
• song
• lake
• dance
• theatre
• puppetry
• unicorn
• object
• visual
• resolution
• london