Edits is the latest and last UK work from Lea Anderson’s all male company The Featherstonehaughs. Since forming the company in 1988, Anderson has built a reputation for diverse and playful dance works portraying men through unconventional imagery. The show has been touring alongside the excellentDraw on the Sketchbooks of Egon Schiele, yet unfortunately doesn’t do justice to the company as a final hurrah.
My heart went out to anyone who happened to arrive at the theatre with a headache. Steve Blake and Will Saunders’ blaring sound design consists of a frustrating mix of white noise, banging nails and infuriating electronic scratching. From time to time moments of relief arrive with the pair treating us to some live electric guitar and saxophone meanderings.
Anderson’s choreography for Edits consists of her six male dancers recreating literal interpretations of film takes, stripping away the narrative and focusing on the idea of the performers imagining that they are in a film. They are each dressed in glamorous dresses from different eras including a long, velvet green dress with red wig, a 20s era polka dot number and a bright yellow American diner uniform (with pigtails) from the 50s. Each of the dancers continually changes outfits on either side of the stage so that at times we have two or three versions of the same character. They float in and out of rectangular boxes, delineated on the floor by fluorescent pink and green tape, and behind hanging wooden frames reminiscent of television or cinema screens.
The movement is minimal yet incredibly precise. The most engaging moments of the ‘dance’ are those in which eyes light up and fingers move in minute detail. It’s the practical choreography of making the piece happen which is in fact more interesting than the repetitive and non-illuminating moments in the spotlight. Sally Powell’s striking and colourful costumes float by in the dim light around the main areas like a moving painting, as the dancers assist each other inventively into the boxes of light and to quickly change between costumes again and again. Overall, Edits never comes together to add up to a meaningful whole and instead becomes a tedious exercise of an idea.
After the company took their bows on the final performance to be seen here, we were treated to sister company The Cholmondeleys dancing to Nina Simone’s ‘My Baby Just Cares For Me’. This piece of simple, gestural choreography was a complete delight and did in four minutes what Edits didn’t manage in 70 – allowed us to connect with the dancers, and to smile.