By BRUCE DENNILL
WGRUV Dance Company: Highlights – Tracing The Line / Directed by Holly Gruver / UJ Arts Centre, Auckland Park, Johannesburg
As an independent dance company continuing to build their reputation, identity and following, WGRUV’s staging of Highlights – Tracing The Line, a show comprising a number of new works alongside some pieces that the company has included in previous productions, helps to embed their style and versatility with established audiences while introducing newcomers to the many different things the dancers are capable of.
For the theatregoer who deeply appreciates dance but is not necessarily learned enough to interpret sophisticated (or sometimes bizarre) conceptual ideas behind choreography, such a programme is wonderfully entertaining as pace, intensity, costumes and music vary, ebb and flow throughout the show.
The production opens with Jessica Lang’s Solo In Nine Parts, set to music by Vivaldi, in which the dancers appear in bright greens and blues. The score is melodic, but the choreography demands relentless on-the-beat steps, making the ensemble performance a mixture of athletic and technical ability. Visually similar, Falling In changes the palette to reds, pinks and oranges as it investigates, through choreography by Holly Gruver and Lex Gruver, a woman’s need to be seen and feel loved. Each of the five dancers, including guest dancer Daniella Venter from Munich’s Beyerisches Staatsballett, gets time for solo expression, made more unique by their different physiques, with some overlapping choreography underlining that such needs are universal.
Game On, by Lauren Lovette, is a WGRUV repertoire piece, an energetic pas de deux featuring Saili Gruver and Ruan Galdino is a fun, cheeky diversion from the weightier themes elsewhere, depicting a competitive couple trying to outdo each other with physical feats of strength and agility and taunting each other with their respective sassiness.
The more abstract contemporary pieces vary wildly in tone and appearance. Rooms is solo storytelling featuring Vuyelwa Phota as a character ventures from bedroom to kitchen to work and back. Waxing Moon and Postures Of Grace offer lyrical interactions between male and female dancers at different scales while Locomotion involves staccato back-and-forth movements by Chloe Gruver and Nicola Tolmay in eye-catching yellow. The latter is one of the pieces accompanied by the percussion work of Tommy Gruver and Decius Pitjadi, who weave high-tempo rhythms to create compelling dynamics.
Beneath The River, which closes the show, is choreographed by New York-based choreographer Jesse Obremski, who dances with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater company. The construct involves the shedding of layers – visually parts of the costumes the dancers are wearing; beyond that, aspects of their characters – and the way people are (or are not) accepted once they have less to hide behind. The imagery is strong and effective, with possible religious overtones as the piece’s main character is left bearing the clothes (or layers or…burdens?) of the others. It’s a powerful place on which to draw down the curtain on a substantial offering.