Review: LANDSCAPES at Sadler's Wells East

AFTERLIGHT — A lone dancer Daniel Proietto turns slowly, arching his back, contained within the spill of an overhead projection light. He turns as the floor assumes the guise of an undulating mass akin to the effect of milk poured into inky water. To the strains of Erik Satie’s Gnossiennes 1-4, he spins, writhes and continues to explore the ever widening murkiness which surrounds him, until once again his landscape diminishes, containing and restricting him. It’s part meditative and introspective movement and part homage to the stylings of Nijinsky, having originally formed part of the In the Spirit of Diaghilev commission from 2009. But why?

The same question competed for my attention throughout the second, unimaginatively titled and equally underwhelming piece TWO, during which a nearby patron shifted frequently in his rustling nylon jacket until the moment his phone screen lit-up and loudly proclaimed a GPS co-ordinate for all to hear. To her credit, Alina Cojocaru didn’t bat an eyelid from within her even more constrained, starkly down-lit performance square, on stage. She contrived to produce the requisite sharp elbows and shoulders, acute angles and poise, but by now, the wife of the man who’s phone could have taxied a Boeing 747, was busily rummaging in a bag and I felt my attention waning.

After a short interval, during which I watched a succession of slightly bemused middle-aged expressions disappear into (and re-emerge from) the onsite facilities, we reconvened for the final piece. Maliphant being Maliphant, he saved the best ‘til last and performed IN A LANDSCAPE himself. Aided by the lighting of Panagiotis Tomaras’, he moves and undulates causing multiple shadows of his body to be projected onto a series of draped cloth screens, confusing the eyes of those watching. As a finale, the swathe of material which at one point looked like a giant’s nappy on a washing line (or perhaps Viacom’s dangling logo - you decide) assumed an alien-like, almost jelly-fish appearance as he caused it to billow repeatedly, eventually widening out on an overhead pulley to catch cross-stage light beams in the most effective and mesmerising visual moment of the evening.

As I left the auditorium and made my way home, I concluded that it wasn’t vintage Maliphant, nor did I get a sense that the tenuous Landscapes theme gelled beyond the superficial environmental changes in state. More particularly, I pondered whether the man with a searchlight beam for a phone had gotten over his embarrassment sufficiently to enjoy the evening and whether his wife had finally found whatever the hell it was she had been rummaging for in that bag. Ahhh, the joys of live high art performance, I mused. Especially when delivered before the uninitiated and under prepared within an unfamiliar… landscape! Perhaps that was what Maliphant was striving to get us to think about all along?