In this triple bill at DanceEast, the London-based choreographer James Cousins revisits Within Her Eyes – his 2012 breakthrough work for two dancers that earned him a place on the GCSE dance syllabus, no less – and adds depth to his exploration of the duet form.
Within Her Eyes stands the test of time as a smart little piece. Its conceit – the woman never touches the ground, for 17 whole minutes – may verge on the contrived, but is saved by the power and rightness of the simple embraces that break up the acrobatics necessary to keep one person ingeniously supported by another. These embraces give the work – a meditation on the unknowability of another’s feelings – its heart. There is such piercing emotional truth in a lovers’ clasp of hands, or the quiet pressing of cheek to cheek at just the right moment.
The evening’s new works, a pair of interwoven duets – In Between Us Is Me (for two men) and The Secret of Having It All (two women) – show Cousins exploring new territory, both in terms of emotional range and the techniques he uses.
In Between Us Is Me opens as if it were a companion piece to Within Her Eyes, with a close, flowing duet in which Georges Hann and Rhys Dennis never actually touch. When the men do finally make contact, we are plunged into a different atmosphere. This is the private world of one character’s mental space – a glaring box, like a prison cell (clever lighting design by Jackie Shemesh), against whose “walls” he hurls himself in a frenzy of self-doubt that makes all too clear the difficulties this couple will face in being and staying together.
In The Secret of Having It All, Jemima Brown and George Frampton take to the brightly lit stage for a high-octane, synchronised romp that is a testament to their stamina. An interlude where the dancers put on comic disguises suggests their private relationship is different from its dynamic public face. A voiceover by the poet Sabrina Mahfouz says: “I am married to a friend,” then, “We’re not getting any younger.”
In a double denouement, the female couple engage in a tender reverse striptease, while the male couple’s pugnacious duetting is reduced to a slow, companionable two-step. The peace to be found in relationships that have weathered bad times is not just a pleasingly mature subject for dance (often more concerned with the gyrations of youthful romance) but also a neat riposte to the apparent breakup that ends Within Her Eyes.
There is more than an echo in these pieces of the work of the Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite, not least in the exuberant tap-dance routine that unexpectedly closes the show. Cousins, who was mentored for a year by Matthew Bourne and performed in the New York run of his Swan Lake, is an artist who shares Pite’s ability to make contemporary dance that tells stories that matter, and combine emotional profundity with formal and technical creativity. While he puts these skills to excellent use at smaller venues with his boutique-size company, a larger audience deserves to enjoy his work. Commissioners, take note.
• At Lakeside Arts, Nottingham, 19 February. Then touring until 2 May
