Black and White
Black and White – Netherlands Dance Theatre – Choreography by Jiri Kylia – Music by Steve Reich
I decided just to look at this work. My background is in contemporary dance with a degree in Performance Art and twenty years teaching and performing and dance. I know very little about the dance company and nothing about the choreographer. The piece worked in different phrases of whole group work, solo work and small group work. The dancers were all women dressed the same in a simple black close-fitting vest/ leotard costume finishing as tight shorts. Having watched the piece to music, I turned off the music to focus on movement and pattern as well as the movements made. The work was very gestural, with the hands, head, feet and arms reflecting simple feelings. The lighting, costume the gesture and setting made it very difficult to see individual facial expressions, except when the camera focused on a particular expression.
The feelings expressed were seen through the gesture as a counterpoint to the body movement. The body movement, steps or text/ language of the piece, was very fluid. This fluidity made the body loose and liquid in shape, flowing from one position to another without pause. The movement language was not based around a single textural style such as ballet, jazz, Cunningham etc., but on movement based in including all the above. The style of dress was reminiscent of class uniform of leotard socks and ballet shoes, which accentuated the dancers performing as a unit not individuals. This is a dance basic, the corps de ballet, the group or chorus dancers who perform in exact routine creating pattern. This was a technique used in films by Busby Berkley to great effect. Black and White also displays the use of pattern with the dancers creating lines, shapes and pattern, in three-dimensions whilst also continuing to repeat an endlessly learnt pattern of steps.
There are repeated patterns such as the checkerboard of light and shade of squares on the floor, and the dancers repeating the same sequence of movement in their individual light square. The piece is very witty with shapes and patterns that made me smile. It was also very fast with the performers moving at very great speed without giving any feeling of effort or exhaustion.
Is this piece trying to tell us something or give us a message? For me the piece is about the pure joy of movement in space. Called ‘Fallen Angels” there might be something that the choreographer wants to communicate that I am missing but it has not stopped me enjoying the piece and celebrating it. As a dancer it makes my body move, I celebrate the body gesture and movement, it is fun, exhilarating and fun. Dance of this style accentuates the movement that every ‘body’ does every minute of the day. Taking out the pausing and sitting down in natural daily movement, pushing the movement faster it relates more to normal movement which ballet does not in the same way.
Black & White