Wed 25 Feb: Billy Gigurtsis and Jana Melkumova-Reynolds, Julia Lupașcu and Brooke Sorensen

This image is divided into three parts. On the left, two people wearing white shirts – one patterned with letters – and dark trousers stand with their backs to the viewer in front of a brick wall, arms at their sides, each balancing a book on their head. In the centre, A woman’s smudged reflection in a mirror as she looks at herself, with withered flowers resting in the mirror’s top left corner, while the woman’s feet and the hem of her skirt are visible below. On the right, four people in a bright room, three gazing intensely at the viewer while the fourth raises an arm above the middle person’s head, looking at them.

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Billy Gigurtsis and Jana Melkumova-Reynolds Subject to Change

Julia Lupașcu The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living

Brooke Sorensen rubble/Fantasy


On a packed last night of the festival each contribution to the triple bill made tentative and tender offerings, holding the audience softly whilst inviting glimpses into their inner worlds. Brooke Sorensen’srubble/Fantasy explores the coming together of fragmented pieces to make a whole. In a barren wasteland of rocks and bodies lying strewn, desperation marks the dancers’ slow and tentative movements, steadily building in pace and intensity. A patchwork of live speech and over-amplified music, weaving through solos and muddled motifs, left me feeling lost in places. Eventually, the detritus of rubble forms a structure like the ruined remains of a medieval church. As the four strangers come together, it sparks moments of community, ritual, joy, and child-like innocence. With our world feeling increasingly destructive, these moments showed that glimmers of hope and joy, however fleeting, can exist.

I like the curiosity that Subject To Change inspires. Billy Gigurtsis and Jana Melkumova-Reynolds’ work is non-linear in structure with rules that we as the audience are not privy to - but I don’t mind. It feels as though they are laying out their streams of consciousness in a visual tapestry. The random connections and tentative steps offer a live commentary on the expectations of space and pace, whilst rebelling in the face of them. The two performers radiate tenderness and patience towards one another as they navigate their surroundings, adding another layer of support with a BSL interpreter. As an audience we are tested in our patience too, especially in the instance of a lengthy blackout between ‘scenes’. It feels slightly jarring at times but in keeping with the tone of the piece, it just about works.

When our light extinguishes, where do we go? Julia Lupaşcu’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living searches for something tangible in death. A single candle, a shrouded rectangular tomb and the sound of cawing crows over distant tolling church bells evoke a typical funeral effigy. Lupaşcu’s efforts to hold on to palpability, to grasp the impossible, see her reaching, falling, rising, and shifting. She communes with the live cellist, Katie Harrison, to begin accepting this impossibility of death, and the exchange between them is once again tender and sincere.


Lauren O'Sullivan

We walk into Brooke Sorensen’s rubble/Fantasy world with four performers contorted and deadly still under large pieces of rubble. One by one they eventually emerge at a glacial pace. What planet are we on? Set design, though minimal, paired with jarring high-pitched synth strings, static and white noise all give a strong sense of some otherworldly, post-apocalyptic land of destruction. Yet, one performer lets us know with conviction that “...this place is sacred,” though nothing in the performance conveys this. The characters share a puzzling relationship and are only firmly united by a shared joyful dance after assembling their rubble pieces together. rubble/Fantasy left me with too many unanswered questions and very little to ponder on.

Subject to Change skillfully bypasses unease to create tensions and subtly dotted moments of humour that firmly grab the attention of the audience. The non-technical background of Jana Melkumova-Reynolds, combined with the interdisciplinary approach of performance partner Billy Gigurtsis bring refreshing ease and simplicity to the piece anchored by emotive sound and visual choices. A soft piano track accompanies projections of personal family photographs with live handwritten questions to the audience on time, beginnings and endings, while the audience is soothingly read to from books and strips of paper containing text on the subject matter. Considering the piece is based on change and tentativeness, mirrored in its non-linear structure which contains blackouts, total silence, stage rearrangements and mid-performance bows, Subject to Change is a surprisingly gentle journey through uncertainty.

Julia Lupaşcu’s is a skilled dancer with impeccable control of her sharp, sudden moves. However, the theme on death seemed to hang solely on the threads of the draped black lace over a reflective cuboid that Lupaşcu had more interaction with than with the music provided live by cellist Kate Harrison. A final moment of welcomed connection punctuates the evening with the handing over of an extinguished candle to an audience member.


So'l Jelenke

The art of barely there movement themed the final session of Resolution ‘26 with strong supporting cameos from stillness, silence and darkness, occasionally punctuated by rapid bouts of dance. Lying motionless on the floor was also a leitmotif across all three thoughtful but largely unexciting works. Backpacks and soulful spoken text were also features of the first two works.

rubble/Fantasy suggested an exploration of place and time, focused on deconstructed fragments of an edifice, in situ as the audience arrived with four motionless figures trapped underneath them. In due course, these were reassembled like a vertical jigsaw while one of the quartet remained apparently constricted by a tight-fitting backpack that had to be forcibly removed to end the work. There were too many shifts of momentum and although the brief forays into swirling patterns of movement were welcome, this seemed like a concept that needed more development, and tighter integration of the creative elements, to bring it to a more satisfactory fruition.

The clue to Subject to Change was in the title of this partly improvised work. The duet (augmented periodically by a BSL interpreter) featured an engaging couple working with a plethora of seemingly random props, including notes scattered on the floor and a lectern from which a camera beamed real-time scribbling in a notebook onto the back wall, brief statements that concluded by asking how a beginning becomes a middle. It also needed an end.

The festival finished with a movement solo that had a strong sense of creative integration including interesting costume design and strong, purposeful lighting. A squat electronic candle was carried meaningfully by choreographer/performer, Julia Lupaşcu and a reflective coffin-sized box suggested the work’s association with death. The abrupt introduction of cellist, Katie Harrison, brought live music to conclude proceedings in a challenging dialogue between dancer and musician.



Graham Watts

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