Place Resolution 2025 - works by Blue Ka Wing, Orla Hardie and Lily Kind
My last visit to the Place Resolution festival and all three works brought something memorable or special to the party…
The Place’s generic picture for this show. Photo © The Place.
Place Resolution festival
Blue Ka Wing: re-do re-do
Orla Hardie: LoonHeads: sketched
Lily Kind: Until the Real Thing
★★★✰✰
25 Jan 2025
London, The Place
theplace.org.uk
Resolution is The Place’s annual festival of new choreography and performance works by emerging artists. This review was originally commissioned by The Place as part of Resolution Review, where established dance writers are paired with new writers (interested in writing about dance) to cover each night of the festival. The original review on this page (and its companion review) can be found at: https://theplace.org.uk/blogs-stories/sat-25-jan-2
An unusual night, as all three pieces brought something memorable or special to the party; if for various reasons, none went on to join all the dots and fully win me over.
Blue Ka Wing’s re-do re-do was notionally about the routines of everyday life and how they might change. In reality, this was routine shown through a family of three that becomes four with a live birth on stage; memorably and cleverly done. To classical/opera music, the dynamics and jealousies within the family are played out in emotionally resonating dance detail, using fine dancers. And the repetition of routines comes with the initial work being reprised twice with little adjustments, the second time to Pink Floyd’s Echoes (yeah!) and lastly in silence. Sadly, these replays were not so clearly differentiated. I felt I was racing to try and think what was added/ missing/ indicated rather than basking in re-do’s interesting clarity.
The really special thing about the second piece was the faceless alien look of its dancers (the LoonHeads in the title), the work of Neil Rose, emphasised by Sam Robinson’s darkly ominous electronic score, all drawing you into Orla Hardie’s very different cartoon animation world. LoonHeads: sketched, for Hardie and two others, certainly has the right ingredients, if presented as a series of disconnected sketches, only some of which landed. It could be glacially slow at times, and the freeze-frame action hard to follow, but I loved a spooky section where one LoonHead crept up on another, and it was stunning when the three twisted, swooped and play-fought together. Unfortunately, the lighting at the end was really too dark to be sure of what was intended.
From a pared-back alien world to a loveably daft one, where it looked like four dance-trained friends were having fun, Lily Kind’s Until the Real Thing nominally seemed to be about the cack-handed (and occasionally serious) way we present ourselves to others and had some nice observations of human nature. I’m not sure about the real-time consumption of bowls of breakfast cereal for cheap laughs, and the lengthy ending droned on too long. But the special thing here was Kind’s very idiosyncratic dance mix, taking in vaudeville, jazz, waacking and contemporary, all to a catchy song mix. It’s a life-affirming combo, and I want to see more of what it can achieve.