In 1930 Martha Graham made dance history with her solo Lamentation, her body encased in a dark jersey shroud, whose fabric stretched and twisted into shapes of grief-racked emotion as she moved. Good ideas stay around. And almost a century later, a near identical costuming device appears in a work by the young company Fuora Dance Project.
The Last Maiden, which is inspired by a Sicilian fairytale, has other links with Graham, especially its engagement with a world of archetypes and the supernatural. Two of the three women are dressed in black, and their folksy dance motifs root them in a workaday world; the third, in white, is a benign apparition, also doubling to become the figure in the shroud, the phantom sister from the underworld. The narrative thread in this piece is often, frankly, obscure. But the dancers have real presence, and between them they create an authentic stage world – convincingly specific to them and their material.
This trio is part of Resolution!, the Place’s annual platform for new dance, and it is followed by CieMUlator Dance’s Risk Forward, a quartet for musicians and dancers who interact in playful, goading bursts of activity. The opening half is fun and sharp – all split-second timing, ducks and feints – but as the dance pushes into more precariously off-balance moves, it becomes a more self-conscious – and much tamer – exercise.
Closing the programme is Konstantina Skalionta’s In the Likeness Of … , a duet that explores the bond between mother and daughter, in which a voluminous skirt becomes both womb and cage, and the dancers veer between territorial spats and a tender mirroring of each other’s moves. There’s strong, vivid imagery here that doesn’t quite cohere into theatre. But that’s the beauty and point of Resolution! It offers choreographers that much-needed transition between studio and stage.
• Until 21 February. Box office: 020-7121 110. Venue: The Place, London.
