I managed to double up the awesome this Friday by travelling to Lincoln to see both my Dad, and Retina’s latest piece, Antipode.  Having been lucky enough to work with Filip (company director) on a couple of different occasions in Derby it was great to see him in the Q&A afterwards as well – bonus!

The piece consists of four male dancers and a double bass player.  Whilst the guys are doing their thing on stage, the musician is playing, recording and mixing loops of his music, percussion and other clever tricks real time – an absolute treat for the audience (and probably the dancers too).

The dancing itself was mostly gorgeous to watch, and pretty full on for the whole hour.  Cue sweat patterns – all part of being a male dancer though, at least we don’t have to pretend that we don’t sweat.  There were the odd times when the unison wasn’t together, I caught a couple of moments where someone stopped to wait for the others to catch up and so on, but my Dad never saw any of that so maybe I’m being too picky.

The lifts were great fun, and even managed to perplex me as to how it was done on a couple – wonderful and frustrating at the same time.  The duets in general were excellent fun to watch and you could see the smiles on the dancers’ faces.  They even admitted afterwards that part of that was having to egg each other to keep going as energy levels started to flag.

Having 4 guys dance together was brilliant for me, as I got to see the differences between them and how, whilst I might not have the facility of one or the strength of another, they each had different limitations and natural abilities that made them unique and I’m no different.  I will admit to being horribly jealous at times, they’re all a few years younger than me, thus managing to make me feel old at 28, but mostly I was inspired and determined to find/create more opportunities to dance.

There’s only a couple of more dates down South to catch this, but it’s worth it – and if you don’t manage to see this one then check out Retina anyway.  They’ve been producing consistently great quality dance for a while now, and being based in the East Midlands it’s a real treat for us to have this based in our region, rather than down in London.

Want to see more? Try one of these posts:

• Sense of Self
• nottdance09 (15-25 October 2009)
• Music & Art Festival