Hagley Dance Company’s annual Insitu programme functions as a way of introducing students in this pre-tertiary dance programme to one another.  It is a way of breaking the ice, forming collaborative relationships and a sense of trust and involvement in a common goal.  After seven or eight weeks of work it is also an opportunity for them to show family, friends and anyone interested in the formative stages of dance education, an opportunity to see for themselves what the students are doing.  Education in almost any field can easily become a hermetic activity so Insitu is a valuable means of breaking down barriers both between the students themselves as well as their wider community.

2019’s intake comprises eight women and one man, although for one of the women this was both a first and last performance as she leaves to pursue other interests.  With eight students remaining, this is still a largish intake for the programme and the imagination and engagement shown in their performances suggest that this could be a vintage year for the Company.  It is also worth recording that these students have had to cope with more than the usual rigors of commencing a new programme of study for they were impacted upon, and at a closer proximity than most, by the tragic events of 15 March, which unfolded at the Al Noor mosque on the opposite side of Hagley Park.

The programme opened with an introductory piece that brought all nine students together on the College’s Open Stage.  Chalked circles on the floor provided places to stand and allowed each dancer to be introduced by name, traced on the floor as the dance unfolded.  Ensemble sections alternated with solos as the now named dancers gave us what amounted to their individual movement signatures, signatures that will inevitably evolve and differentiate as their year progresses.  It was a witty and entertaining work and effectively set the scene for what was to follow.

Emily Belle-Searle, Niamh Hogan, and Toni Imbriolo performed their jointly choreographed piece on the steps of the Open Stage theatre, with the audience divided between the interior foyer and the exterior driveway.  Whether pressed against the plate glass walls or making full use of the side walls, steps and railings, the three dancers made effective use of the limited space available to them; interacting with one another as well as with the physical limits of the space.  At times I feared for the safety of the dancers as they rebounded off the glass, but reassured myself that they wouldn’t have been there if there had been any real danger of it breaking.

Three outdoor tables and their accompanying benches provided the setting for Brydee Gibbins, Olivia Singleton and Gabrielle Terras to perform their contribution.  Again the tight space was fully utilised and the percussive potential of the steel benches exploited.  The piece was given further coherence by the way in which in its final moments the dancers returned to the positions and poses they had occupied at the start, although I couldn’t be entirely sure from a single viewing that the same individuals occupied the same places at the end as in the beginning.  This gave the work a level of ambiguity that added to its interest.

For Sophie Brown and Sammy Johnson the balustrade and steps outside the main Hagley College building formed their stage.  To music from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons they traversed the balustrade in a series of seated moves, with legs switching from side to side.  The steps at the far end of the raised platform from which we viewed their performance were also exploited to good effect, with the bodies of the dancers disappearing while their limbs popped up into sight.  If the rhythms of their movements were not always in synch with those of the music, their choice of accompaniment was by some degree the most demanding of those chosen.

Byron Roughton struck an individual note by commencing his piece hanging between the limbs of a tree, briefcase in hand.  Was he a distraught businessman seeking solace in a return to nature?  As he wove his way between the plants there were faint echo’s of Pina Bausch’s Café Mueller in which the protagonists traverse a stage littered with tables and chairs that are continuously being rearranged.  Roughton’s interest in the narrative possibilities of dance is one that is worth encouraging.

Before the final work of the hour long programme, we returned inside for a short film by fleur de Their and Sean James featuring the students of the 2015 Hagley Dance Company, a worthwhile retrospective that also gave this year’s students time to set up for their final piece.

Naressa Gamble choreographed this in collaboration with Dave Hazelwood from Hagley’s Outdoor Education programme and the reasons for his involvement were soon clear.  The piece is performed not on a flat stage but on a vertical climbing wall, the dancers wearing climbing harnesses and for those in the air, belayed with ropes from the top of the wall.  One of the key experiences that every dancer must come to terms with is the way in which gravity works on the body; by shifting the plane of the dance floor from the horizontal to the vertical this fundamental reality is given a new dimension.  The ability to break free from gravity that rope and harness offers opened up the possibility of moves inconceivable on a conventional stage.  It took a significant degree of both courage and trust for these young performers to hang upside down several metres from the ground while supported by their fellow students on the other ends of the belays.  This was more than simply a novel exercise in finding new ways to move, but also a way in which to draw a group of individuals together to succeed in a common purpose.

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