The Belfast Festival deserves congratulations for bringing the work of pioneering American post-modern choreographer Trisha Brown and her nine splendid dancers to the Waterfront Hall last Friday, albeit for one night only.
Brown has a highly original vocabulary and a quirky sense of humour with visual jokes such as the too rapid "flight" of a somersaulting Katrina Thompson in the aerial ballet forming the Prologue to Canto/Pianto, to the music of Monteverdi's Orfeo, and in the way dancers are suddenly pulled off stage like variety artists who have outstayed their welcome. She uses choreographic repetition to great effect and often freezes dancers on one leg for so long as to require great control, as she does during Keith Thompson's delightfully loose-limbed solo in Twelve Ton Rose.
The opening Set and Re-set (1983) gained little from Rauschenberg's film, which was screened above the dancers on three tent-like cloths, though it mirrored the frenetic feel of Laurie Anderson's score. Yet it distracted from the dancers' lively encounters, progressions and obstructions, executed with great virtuosity. Canto/Pianto, her latest piece, is still evolving, and further work should knit the episodes of the Orpheus legend more tightly together. It was beautifully danced by Abigail Yager as Euridice, as it was by all the hard-working small cast (with principals doing stints as nymphs, shepherds or Bacchae, as required), though it did seem odd that the latter tore Orfeo apart with the same merry movement as the former had celebrated his wedding.
Best of all was the final amusing Twelve Ton Rose (1996), danced to Webern's music in Burt Barr's black and red costumes.
An enjoyable evening which deserved a larger audience.