R and J

Take the star-crossed lovers, Shakespeare’s eternal themes of Passion, Romance and Devotion and Natalie Weir’s imaginative choreography, and you have a piece of contemporary dance theatre that both thrills and surprises.

Six dancers, supported at times by a corps de danse, and moving to the evocative music of composer John Babbage, take the audience to the heights of emotion and the depths of despair in three intricate and sensuous performances that capture, not just the essence of young love and forbidden love, but the contentment and familiarity of lasting love.

Passionis set in “pulsing nightspots of a modern city where passion and desire erupt in a tragic love triangle”. Here, dancers Jack Ziesing and Elise May meet across the heat and crush of a dance floor. They flee, and consummate their attraction in evocative choreography that sends them pulsing through incredibly controlled but sometimes frenzied movement that is sensual and erotic - until they are confronted by ex-lover Thomas Gundry Greenfield. The symbolic tug-of-war and eventual doom that follows is so carefully contrived, and so demanding of the dancers, that at times it leaves one gasping.

The curtain opens on Act Two – Romance – with crossing spots highlighting “Two households, both alike in dignity”. Set in an earlier age, these lovers, depicted by Michelle Barnett and Benjamin Chapman, try to reach to each other again and again as they are lifted by the dancers below. Alone, at last, they approach each other through a series of tentative connections that express initial inexperience and wonder. As they become more confident of their emotion, so the choreography transports them into more evocative movement – until, Fate, depicted once more by Thomas Gundry Greenfield, strikes again.

In the final Act, Devotion, dancers Riannon McLean and Jack Ziesing express the familiarity of a married couple blissfully relaxed and comfortable in their love. They tease each other in a series of playful routines that express the infinite depth of their trust, and their contentment with the happy routine of their life together. In this segment a battered brief case becomes a very symbolic prop.

Natalie Weir has woven Shakespeare’s themes into three beautifully evocative interludes, which these very talented – and physically dexterous – members of the Expressions Dance Company execute with sensitive precision and seductive poise.

Carol Wimmer