Ghost and John, Monika Blaszczak and Juan Sánchez Plaza - Resolution 2020

Ghost and John’s Skirmishes, in collaboration with Angela Hui, opens the evening. Exploring a sensitive and intuitive relationship between the body and live sound, the 23-minute piece constantly shifts, unravelling and presenting itself steadily. Performed by Ghost and John themselves, movement rarely halts, growing from a tentative and uneasy reaction to rhythms, with robotic convulsions of the arm, into a catharsis of the entire body; Twisting, jumping, falling and catching. Overwhelmed by the volume of activity, Hui repeatedly pulls us from the seemingly bottomless pit of movement, centering our focus, with sound as simple as a stone dropping.

Next on the programme is Monika Blaszczak’s How to Mimesis. Present throughout the sharing of the work, Blaszczak takes the stage, improvising a lengthy monologue, before leading a task-based offering, that invites the audience to engage in an exploration of visibility and invisibility, alongside six performers. Where the instruction of invisibility displays static figures, working to conceal their identity and protect anonymity, the offer of visibility shows a collective in chaos, the calm being quashed with screams, shouting and exaggerated gestures. Shifting the focus over to the audience very late, a questioning of behavioural etiquette and conventions was scraped only at surface level, leaving a potentially provoking aspect of the topic, underwhelming.

Juan Sánchez Plaza’s expressive Flamenco duet, Gallo Rojo Gallo Negro, closes the show. Questioning the role of binaries through performance, Plaza is on display instantly, performing supple, yet powerful, twirling movements that liberate the satin material draping over the lower extremities, as a skirt. Irene Gimenez Montes takes the helm of the Farruca, typically danced only by men. Strong, percussive and brazen, she performs rapid footwork, complete with flare and emotion. This strength soon dissipates, with the return of Plaza, in a blood red skirt, demanding the attention of all eyes in the room for the remainder of the performance, essentially, allowing the female performer to fade away into the background. A coincidence?

Location of performance: The Place, London.

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