Perhaps the most riveting performance at this year’s fringe features seven dancers who never move their feet.
Correction begins with seven people standing still in a line across the stage. Four musicians sit behind them wearing black. The rest of the theatre is empty with the exception of a pair of shoes on the far left side. Anything more would clutter the magnetic virtuosity that follows.
First with simple glances, then inching to increasingly complex movements, Correction trusts deeply in its simple concept: seven dancers in a line wearing shoes bound to the floor. The performance, by the Czech company VerTeDance, studies the nature of creativity built from restriction. By having their feet essentially nailed to the floor, the dancers explore a wide range of movement that appears nothing short of magical.
The choreography, by the dancers: Veronika Kotlíková, Tereza Ondrová, Martina Hajdyla Lacová, Karolína Hejnová, Robo Nižník, Jaro Ondruš, and Petr Opavský, with direction by Jiří Havelka, explores patterns, curiosities of physics, personal (often humorous) relationships, fear and combativeness, and somehow reaches inside the darkness of the human psyche, then seamlessly shifts into comic bits including one with a banana.
The dancers are as extraordinary in their technical skill as they are in their vivid, personal connection to the material. Before long, each dancer has a distinct personality, and they find tremendous joy playing with subtle variations on simple concepts like leaning, poking, falling, or running (without moving their feet of course). The choreography manages to remain somehow simultaneously ordinary and transcendent. It is this careful duality that allows one to experience the piece on a theatrical, human level, and on a complex choreographic scale of expertly crafted theme and variation. I can imagine dancers, acrobats, theatre lovers, children, farmers, runners, and even people who don’t like dance finding something to love in Correction.
But let me not forget those four musicians sitting in the back wearing black. The score, mostly clarinet blended with atmospheric vocals, shapes the open space with ease and panache. I could have sat spellbound only listening to their music, but the blend of the musicians and dancers together generate consistent moments of pure bliss. They never do too much… until the moment is right, then they go wild.
Correction plays at Zoo Southside daily 11-19 August 2015