Tue 20 Jan: Hannah Todosijczuk, SYNECHO and Kill Your Darlings

This image is divided into three parts. On the top, a nude woman lying on a sofa draped with a painted canvas, captured upside down, holding an intense gaze forward. In the centre, a person in a black costume stands at the front, looking downward, while a group behind her extends their arms to create a geometric pose against a background suggesting a church setting. On the bottom, in a setting featuring a grassy field with trees, a red brick building, and a cloudy sky, there are four blurred figures, three gathered outside, and one emerging from the building accompanied by orange smoke.

News Story

Hannah Todosijczuk Rotting Home

SYNECHO Chronos

Kill Your Darlings pyro

In a varied evening at Resolutions, Hannah Todosijczuk’sRotting Home opens the triple bill from a personal and sincere place. Rotting Home makes the invisible suffering of endometriosis a tangible known in a simultaneously uncomfortable and liberating performance. Todosijczuk faces a contorted struggle wherein sensuous and languid movements are interrupted by tension and rigidity; fingers that trace the long lines of limbs dig in, pinching and pulling at flesh. Rotting Home unearths female suffering, and - instead of lessening or hiding it - magnifies the pain, asking the audience to witness rather than dismiss. Whilst witnessing this internal conflict was informative, and Todosijczuk held the stage well, Rotting Home didn’t fully keep my attention.

If Rotting Home underscores a lived experience, SynEcho’sChronos exists in the opposite, creating a dream-state universe inspired by the Greek god of time. The dancers perform with technical excellence to create a liminal world of striking images: an orange globe illuminates with warmth to reveal statuesque bodies underneath a gauzy sheet; in the folds of an iridescent cloth, a mystical creature emerges with grace and power. Despite such poetic visuals and strong performers, Chronos requires purposeful shaping to convey an impactful story. In particular, the work shifts between many props and images, consequently discarding scenes before they have been fully realised.

Closing the evening, the rich and complex world of pyro pushes Kill Your Darlings into the spotlight - they are a collective to keep an eye on! An intelligent blend of dance, voice, and live music, Pyro laughs at, and then points in alarm to, our indifference towards the climate emergency. From what first appears a comedically bizarre piece on fire and witch-hunts, a fresh work emerges. Pyro is paradoxically humorous and politically driven, fragmenting well-known images with great comedic impact: emergency-exit hand signals are transplanted into a rave context, and a smoke break is interrupted by the recurring fire alarm. Jonas Moore enhances the action with live music loops, generated from props onstage as a sensitive and attuned addition. Pyro crackles with chaos, then concedes with comedy; warns of crisis, and critiques our apathy. Kill Your Darlings skillfully create an interdisciplinary performance which entertains and alarms.

R.E. Pegg

Endometriosis affects one in ten women and those assigned female at birth. It’s as common as asthma or diabetes but not spoken of nearly so much and I can’t recall anyone trying to interpret the illness through dance. So, kudos to Hannah Todosijczuk for highlighting the pain of this gynaecological disorder through her self-performed solo, starkly entitled Rotting Home. She began huddled on a blanket, seemingly waking and stretching, legs akimbo, but this peaceful opening switched into violent convulsions accompanied by gagging and gasping. Having recovered, Todosijczuk strutted around the perimeter of the in-the-round space, seductively interpreting a French ballad but her fun was again cut short by excruciating agony. This juxtaposition of a young woman’s joy being regularly obliterated by pain was a powerful polemic. Through intimate physical theatre this engaging performer has succeeded in raising our awareness of a debilitating illness.

A compelling cocktail of mysticism and eclecticism flowed through SynEcho’s Chronos, an ensemble piece of four performers transporting a glowing globe. The movement, when it came, was sleek and athletic but there were too many interventions of silence, inactivity and blackouts, necessary for performers to change positions or adopt sculptural poses. The work overflowed with ideas within a brief timeframe, especially in costume and lighting changes. Less would have been more.

Pyro began with the performers squishing and placing plastic bottles in a circle into which Eliza Jean Scott was forcibly placed, announcing loudly that they were not going to speak French while identifying as Jeanne d’Arc burning at the stake. Fire was clearly the common theme for a series of disparate vignettes that followed, accompanied offstage by Jonas Moore’s electric guitar and various fire alarms. It was the first time I’ve heard The Place’s fire escape strategy read aloud during a performance! It had humour and elements of Tanztheater quirkiness but, as with the preceding piece, a prudent edit would have given Pyro greater impact.


Graham Watts

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