PROVOCATIVE, sleazy and subversive – it isn’t a bad way to kick-start the main theatre events of this year’s Queerupnorth festival. In fact, we’d expect nothing less.
The Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs are two modern dance companies with a twist, co-founded by their artistic director Lea Anderson, who is also the choreographer of Yippeee!!!.
Anderson has turned her attention to the work of Busby Berkeley, the Hollywood wiz most remembered for those incredibly elaborate dance routines featuring hundreds of immaculately drilled whirling and twirling chorus girls.
But the teeth and smiles and the sock-it-over-the-footlights ethos of the originals here assume a disturbing new dimension.
The teeth are false and they glitter, glitter, glitter, while the smiles are exaggeratedly large, crudely drawn, clown-style, well beyond the lips, in a nasty red-brown shade. The result is very sinister and doesn’t exactly flatter the 12 dancers.
Transparent
Nor do their androgynous costumes of transparent body stockings that squash the dangly bits and feature a few opaque patches in strategic places.
Add, at various times, gas masks, elephant trunks and frocks with cutaways that let most of it hang out.
Then there’s the on-stage electronic trio, with its scratch and screechy score that does feature the occasional tap shoe overlay but is clearly not 42nd Street.
There’s plenty to watch but not much with which to engage. The dancers remain mostly anonymous and at 100 minutes it’s more than a tad too long.
But, teeth and smiles, teeth and smiles, the show must go on…
Yippeee!!! is part of Queerupnorth and is at The Lowry until Friday, May 11. Click here for more information.
