henri oguike review

By Catherine Jones on Mar 17, 09 12:28 PM

The Floral Pavilion opened with a fanfare three months ago after a multi-million pound makeover and still smells shiny new.
With the revamp has come fresh confidence and ambition, and the ability to attract artistes of the calibre of the Henri Oguike Dance Company - this performance part of the Leap 09 dance festival.
The Welsh/Nigerian's acclaimed company, one of the foremost contemporary dance outfits in the UK and a Leap favourite, reaches its 10th birthday this year and is celebrating with an anniversary tour showcasing some of the best of the last decade.

Last year Oguike - who was due to attend Sunday's performance himself, but illness led him to cancel - presented his Green in Blue at the British Dance Edition in Liverpool, while in 2007 his Playhouse show offered the piece Little Red.
The colours of this retro-show proved a little more monochrome but the dancing just as bright.
The programme opened with Oguike's signature piece Front Line, the half-dozen black-clad figures providing an insistent bare-footed stamping beat to the accompaniment of the Pavao string quartet playing Shostakovich's challenging 9th quartet in E flat from the back of the stage.
The clever, rhythmic and at times almost violent action - echoing the Soviet composer's rage against the machine - was juxtaposed with striking ballet poses and jerking movements of Coppelia-like puppets on a string.
It was admirable, adventurous stuff, but an odd feeling of detachment about the piece made it difficult to really like.
While Front Line showed everything that is technically terrific about Oguike's choreography, White Space, first premiered in 2004, married the wizardry with warmth and humour to prove the pick of the evening.
Set to Scarlatti's bubbling keyboard works, Oguike presents an imagined royal court whose inhabitants engage in flourishing gestures and sneaky oneupmanship against a changing Mondrian geometric backdrop.
The dancers, in fluid white costumes with a hint of 18th century court about them, strutted, preened and scrapped for attention, their movements half-promenade, half-pavane and with a touch of comic peacock about them.
The programme concluded with a beautiful but superfluous gravity-defying cinematic interlude, and a sunny and increasingly frenetic Finale to René Aubry's carnival rhythms.
8/10: dance master