Tue 11 Feb: Orange Skies Theatre, Perpetual Folly and Silas Grocott Cain // PussyBoy

Orange Skies Theatre I’ll Hold You

Perpetual Folly Terpsichore in Jest

Silas Grocott Cain // PussyBoy Experiments 1-5

Tuesday night at Resolution Festival delivered an eclectic triple bill of performances exploring the vulnerability of messy interpersonal relationships.

Mr Bean does Wayne McGregor in Terpsichore in Jest, a slapstick duet of impressive technical ability paired with disgruntled looks and purposeful awkwardness. Katie Kelly and Mary Sweetnam emerge in preppy waistcoats and private school cravats, flapping their way through broken fourths, attitudes and the occasional shaking hip. While the pair display some comic timing and a precise awareness of each other’s manic movements, the dynamic of the duo doesn’t fully register. Even a record-scratch moment that interrupts the classical score and provides room for a tonal shift is amusing but not fully seized. Overall, the piece feels like a joke where the punchline doesn’t quite land.

I’ll Hold You by Hours is a heartfelt tribute to paternal love and Northern Soul. Telling the story of a young woman using her father’s collection of 70s records to connect with him after his passing, Daisy Minto takes the role of emcee, delivering personal anecdotes interspersed with theatrical dance-meets-circus sequences in a format not dissimilar to desert-island-discs. Whilst the acrobatic somersaults distract somewhat from the spontaneous and effortless cool of Northern Soul culture, the hoop that Adam Fullick masterfully controls draws a satisfying parallel with the imagery of spinning records. The mixture of adrenaline-inducing tricks, classic tunes and tear-jerking speeches feels like a promising idea that could develop into an expansive homage to musical and personal heritage.

In a vastly different reimagination of the world, PussyBoy Collective invites the audience into an eerie laboratory for their Experiments 1-5. Siblings Delilah and Silas exhibit stony faces and genetically similar backbends in a series of rituals designed to test their endurance and connection. Flashes of red light and harsh beeps punctuate each act, in a rigid structure that elicits P.E. trauma, but moments of tenderness are also found amongst brutal bass and desperation. After a sequence of core-crunching lifts and balances, Delilah climbs a ladder with Silas mounted upside down on her shoulders, who then crawls down the rungs with their arms as legs, appearing as some kind of amphibian acrobat. The piece is testament to the vivid imagination of Silas Grocott Cain and their risk-taking approach to performance as well as the devoted bond between the test subjects.

Gian Sanghera-Warren

It’s intriguing how a programme selected for practical reasons ends up carrying a theme. This one involved trust. Two duets, and a trio all somehow revolving around the values we place on others and the faith they have in us.

The most adventurous was Experiments 1-5 danced by siblings Silas and Delilah Grocott Cain. With matching white-blonde hair, pink-rimmed eyes and loose white shorts, the two look otherworldly. As red light floods the stage, and Luke Samuel Marley’s distorted electronic sounds blare out, the dancersface each other, on their toes in small, repetitive beats, eyes locked, arms creating angular shapes.

They separate and come together, but the movement is always distinctive. At one moment, Delilah flexes and twitches like a colt as Silas sits on a ladder, painting. At the close, they take turns to cover one another in red paint. It’s not absolutely clear what each test represents, but the sense of a pair symbiotically bound by blood is cleverly explored.

Family ties are part of the narration of the genial I’ll Hold You, by the circus-arts trained Hours. The uplifting combination of Northern Soul steps, a hoop and some fabulous grooves, backflips and lifts from performers Sally Malloy and Adam Fullick is unusually hard to resist. This is a piece that makes you want to whoop with pleasure. But it is also a little slack, and Daisy Minto’s heartwarming narrative about the way music allowed her to bond with her father is jerkily written and delivered. Tightened up, perhaps with more dancers, it could be a showstopper.

It's friendship that forms the background to Terpsichore in Jest, in which Katie Kelly and Mary Sweetnam dance, mainly in unison and sometimes in conflict, to classical strains. There’s a tension between them, as they reflect each other’s jumps and poses, or grapple in lifts and clinches, an anxiety about their relationship both to each other and to the audience. As they straighten their waistcoats and adjust their kerchiefs in irritated competition, it feels like a private joke you haven’t been let in on, but both choreography and performance are sharp and enjoyable.

Sarah Crompton