Finnish dancer and choreographer Ima Iduozee’s 30-minute solo piece This Is the Title (2012) contains flashes of coruscating energy and crystalline technique. Plainly dressed in grey top and trousers, the sock-shod Iduozee slinks and swoops across the bare, white stage with a scuttling elegance, uniting the grounded fluidity of contemporary form with the fizzing flare of street dance.
He pivots on his head with insouciant ease. One moment he’s in casual repose on the floor, looking earthbound and ordinary, the next he has weightlessly transitioned into a b-boy freeze, suspending his bodyweight on one arm, his legs knotted above his head or split like compass needles.
Moments like these are exhilarating to behold, but the thrill soon subsides. For all Iduozee’s obvious facility, his feats of spiralling speed and precision are overshadowed by a frustrating tendency to crouch in the corner, occasionally flicking beads of sweat off his pate into the footlights. He may well be generating profound thoughts at this point, but it doesn’t really translate. An unfortunate sense of self-indulgence settles over proceedings (the piece’s grandiosely meta name doesn’t help matters).
The fitfulness of the physicality is exacerbated by the weirdly patchy nature of the sound design. Initial bursts of thrumming electronica and crackling feedback have the awkward, glitchy quality of a school PA system on the blink, so it’s a relief when clacking typewriter keys and watery gushing sounds take over. Iduozee can easily impress and compel, but he needs less ponderous fare than this.
- At Dance Base, Edinburgh, until 19 August. Box office: 0131-226 0000.
