Sat 25 Jan: Blue Ka Wing, Lily Kind and Orla Hardie

To call Blue Ka Wing’s opener for tonight’s edition of Resolution ‘repetitious’ would be simply stating the obvious. Her triptych Re-Do Re-Do plays out the same story of a family’s coming-to-be twice through to different soundtracks, and once more in silence. But the smiling faces grow wearier in each iteration — rifts deepen until the quartet of dancers seem like strangers going through the motions. Despite a sometimes tiresome ambiguity, there are glimmers of theatricality and pathos, Carmen Yu is especially compelling as the weary mother trying to keep it all together. These moments are affecting, but too infrequent. It’s all quite vague, but one feels that Ka Wing is beginning to scratch the surface of something interesting here.

Orla Hardie also keeps it vague in her visually striking LoonHeads: sketched. We follow a trio of lanky, hooded figures with balloons for heads. These inflatable everymen sheepishly skulk about before melting into lava lamp grooves, punctuated by Sam Robinson’s tenebrous beats. There’s a vulnerability to the LoonHeads. Though awkward and peaceful, some foreboding door knocking suggests that evil forces are coming — and judging by the nervous twitching, possibly with a comically large needle. Hardie’s Lynchian relationship to narrative, melancholic humour, and hypnotic movements make for intriguing stuff. Armed with her cute, forlorn mascots, she may go to some very curious places.

Until the Real Thing caps off our evening with what is intended to be a study in “the slide between sincerity and bullshit”. Performativity is toyed with by a few coy smiles and peeks from the wings, but the rest of the proceedings seem to abandon whatever it is that Lily Kind was attempting to explore. Happy dance sequences abound, blending popular Black American vernaculars — including some very polite waacking. These chunks of dance are pleasant but flat, though they do nicely showcase Kind’s genuine stage presence and charisma. Ultimately, we feel we never quite get to see the real thing.

- Eoin Fenton

An unusual night, as all three pieces brought something memorable or special to the party; if for various reasons, none went on to join all the dots and fully win me over.

Blue Ka Wing's Re-do re-do was notionally about the routines of everyday life and how they might change. In reality, this was routine shown through a family of three that becomes four with a live birth on stage; memorably and cleverly done. To classical/opera music, the dynamics and jealousies within the family are played out in emotionally resonating dance detail, using fine dancers. And the repetition of routines comes with the initial work being reprised twice with little adjustments, the second time to Pink Floyd'sEchoes (yeah!) and lastly in silence. Sadly, these replays were not so clearly differentiated. I felt I was racing to try and think what was added/ missing/ indicated rather than basking in Re-do's interesting clarity.

The really special thing about the second piece was the faceless alien look of its dancers (the LoonHeads in the title), the work of Neil Rose, emphasised by Sam Robinson's darkly ominous electronic score, all drawing you into Orla Hardie's very different cartoon animation world. LoonHeads: sketched, for Hardie and two others, certainly has the right ingredients, if presented as a series of disconnected sketches, only some of which landed. It could be glacially slow at times, and the freeze-frame action hard to follow, but I loved a spooky section where one LoonHead crept up on another, and it was stunning when the three twisted, swooped and play-fought together. Unfortunately, the lighting at the end was really too dark to be sure of what was intended.

From a pared-back alien world to a loveably daft one, where it looked like four dance-trained friends were having fun, Lily Kind's Until the Real Thing nominally seemed to be about the cack-handed (and occasionally serious) way we present ourselves to others and had some nice observations of human nature. I’m not sure about the real-time consumption of bowls of breakfast cereal for cheap laughs, and the lengthy ending droned on too long. But the special thing here was Kind's very idiosyncratic dance mix, taking in vaudeville, jazz, waacking and contemporary, all to a catchy song mix. It's a life-affirming combo, and I want to see more of what it can achieve.

- Bruce Marriott