Sat 17 Jan: Fin de Fiesta, JJ James and Lauren Scott

This image is divided into three parts. On the left, woman standing on stage in front of a group of musicians, wearing a long dark skirt and white jacket, captured in between movements with her arms by her sides. In the centre, person wearing a navy shirt and two blue shirts styled as a skirt with red sneakers, caught mid-movement, setting the fabric into motion. On the right, a person with long platinum blonde hair covering their face, wearing a white tank top and leather trousers, kneels on grass while holding a leaf blower aimed at their face, setting their hair into motion.

News Story

Fin de Fiesta Encuentros

JJ James COPTERS AND HEARSES

Lauren Scott Ad-lib

Transplanting the flamenco settings of southern Spain to the urban, diverse setting of London, where the group are based, Fin de fiesta seamlessly blends jazz, contemporary and classical Indian dance styles. Live instruments and vocalists, body percussion and strong polyrhythmic footwork dominate the airwaves. The costumes tell the individual stories of the performers who take turns to express this passionately in the centre of their cypher, all to encouraging chants in various languages echoed by versed audience members. It’s like witnessing a party amongst friends but with the structure and production quality of a scene from your favourite dance movie. A no-notes performance concurred by enthusiastic audience cheers and a standing ovation.

Appearing through a thick haze, Lauren Scott’s inner world seems uncertain as she wanders the outskirts of the stage before settling in a corner, popping and locking in twisted, windy moves. What is she wrestling with, I wonder? “Nobody else knows this story”, we hear narrated. A welcomed moment of ease midway as Scott makes contact with the floor, resting there a while to nature soundscapes and subtle lighting mimicking sunshine after the rain. Scott is an accomplished dancer who can fill time even with a minimal performance. Although somewhat restricted in range and reach, Scott adds impact through direct eye contact in some of the final moments.

Black leather, lace and laces, buckles, a biker helmet and a skipping rope. Six dancers take turns across the stage with confidence and sexual prowess to the sound of a motorbike engine sputtering through the speakers: crawling, thrusting, head whipping, gun fingers. The beat picks up and the dancers, who have largely taken the stage in ones and twos, come together for an ensemble piece under red flood-lights. However, one dancer keeps on relentlessly skipping at the far right. Torture or pleasure? JJ James’ Copters and Hearses is an unapologetic statement of attitude. Something the likes of FKA Twigs would be into. Sinfully good.

So'l Jelenke

Fin de fiesta stages a flamenco jam, where players, singers and dancers gather in the round, the dancers taking turns to riff and strut in the centre. A woman curlicues her arms to sinuously bowed strings; a duo spiral each other in a face-off of smiles and challenges. A striking figure is Bharatanatyam dancer Varun Shivakumar, who enters the game with his entirely distinct style; Juan Carlos Otero too spins away from flamenco into more freeform whirls and flips. There’s a convivial, play-and-display vibe that highlights the pleasures of presence and performance. Also, of generosity and good-heartedness: the circle opens towards the audience at the end, for our presence has been welcome too.

Lauren Scott is a riveting presence in her solo performance Ad-Lib. A slight figure who enters unobtrusively to static crackles on a smoky stage, she remains nevertheless in command of this wide, somewhat desolate space. With an idiosyncratic style founded on the smooth ripples and sharp angles of popping, Scott is a quiet dynamo of articulacy and exactitude. That translates into an emotional presence too: an unsettled being of tics and tremors, sensitive – perhaps more than is good for her – to the sounds and spaces around her. Warm, brassy jazz and dappled lighting bring a balmier, more natural mood, and she finds some respite here; yet this remains a portrait of a person constantly retuning herself to surroundings that are themselves dissonant, unstable and ungraspable – and that feels very contemporary.

Copters and Hearses, choreographed by JJ James and costumed by Joca Veiga, is zeitgeisty too, but far more impersonal, even hollow. A high-fashion ghost bride strides in diaphanous veils and spiked heels. A figure in studded leatherette writhes on a gym powerplate that revs like a motorbike (very “Pillion”) – the same powerplate on which another figure will strip to her underwear and grind away in a soulless simulation of sexiness. A guy encased in a pink tracksuit pumps through exercise routines. The attitude is: appearance as style, as simulation, as armoury, as alienation. Its look is hot – couture-kink – and its heart is cold. At least one guy, determinedly jumping rope in a corner as the others keep on with their on-the-beat pumping and grinding, reminds us that it is also hard, high-maintenance work.


Sanjoy Roy

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