Filler 50

Although it was a pleasant enough afternoon, Flag was, alas, a bit of a disappointment. The dancers -- dominated by the children, we thought, although it wasn't easy to be certain from where we were seated -- seemed scrappy and under-rehearsed, the music grating, the choreography a bit threadbare and -- crucially -- totally overwhelmed by the huge echoing space. Lea Anderson is often very intricate and detailed and really needs to be seen in an intimate venue rather than a giant barn.

And because it was a free Saturday afternoon performance in festive circumstances, lots of the audience was pretty casual and uncommitted. Many quickly decided that this whole contemporary dance lark wasn't quite their cup of tea and headed for the exits in a steady stream, clattering their hard soles down the polished wooden staircases. All the fucking way through. Grrr.

Far better, more appropriately located, and with an enthusiastic audience, was the return of Les Ballets C de la B to the QEH in Import/Export. From the team behind Bâche and featuring live music from a countertenor and all-female string quartet, this was vaguely patterned around ideas of immigration and powerlessness, providing ample opportunities for casual sadism, grotesquerie, wonderfully fluid and incongruous acrobatics, weeping and shouting -- you know, the usual. Arguably C de la B's house style is almost as much of a cliché as the Royal Ballet's chocolate box frou-frou or Merce Cunningham's joyless abnegation of form, but for me it still works much, much better. This was more upbeat than any of the pieces up to Foi, so I'm not sure whether Max would have been impressed. But we took my ex Matthew, who'd never seen anything quite like it before, and he loved it.

Also this week, I am now ensconced in Pharmacology for the summer, struggling to get to grips with microscope optics and such, and it's a bit odd but nice to be out of the flat much of the time rather than beavering away at the kitchen table. (Although here I am right now doing just that.) And we had our poster presentation on Wednesday at which, despite being fairly drab and wordy, my effort took one of the two (unranked) prizes; I guess I must have defended it well. Go me.

Now, or soon anyway, I'm off the Royal Vauxhall Tavern to see more of the Cholmondeleys and the Featherstonehaughs as they rework parts of the rather large-scale Yippeee!!! for a stage about the size of a ten pound note; subtly surtitled Dance, you fuckers, dance! Which may or may not work, but at least there's unlikely to be that "wrong end of the telescope" effect we had last week in the RFH. I fully expect to see all the nuances of Lea's choreography, assuming some drag queen's beehive doesn't block my view.

This was supposed to be a group outing, but I have been incrementally deserted by all six companions -- okay, some have pretty decent excuses -- and must thus go alone, forlorn and unloved, the world forgetting, by the world forgot, into the drooling maw of ancient Queer London. Wish me luck.
Posted by matt at June 15, 2007 07:32 PM