KVT – Phenomenal and Beautiful and 100% Excellent

If I am granted a chance at re-incarnation I want to come back as a member of a phenomenal, contemporary dance company like Skane Dansteater from Sweden and PHENOMENAL is one of the many superlatives one could apply to their performance at the Opera House this week.

The evening began with dancers from the Vietnam National Ballet and a glowing repeat of Bamboo Rain, that lovely, sensitive piece choreographed for them by Swedish choreographer Pontus Liberg and danced to mellifluous and haunting music from Bach’s Cello Suites. This is the last of a series choreographed for the company as part of a Swedish/Vietnamese cultural collaboration that began with The Firebird and included that almost too beautiful Heart of Silk with its ten dancers and scores of red, silk lanterns floating in a velvet night sky.

In September 2009 at Skane Dansteater’s home base of Malmo. Sweden, over 11,000 patrons clamored for tickets to see a program, Black Silk, that premiered their collaboration between the company and dancers from Vietnam. Cao Duc Tan’s Hai Mat with four Vietnamese dancers began the program followed by Heart of Silk with dancers from both countries…

and then… Black Water… seventeen dancers, four of them Vietnamese, performed an abstract, choreographed by Finn Jorma Uotinen, on a reflective black floor in an atmospheric set, wonderfully lit, under a floating sculptural form, and to music transcribed by composer Jonas Nydesjo from the heavy metal album ‘Dark Passion’ by Finnish symphonic band, Nightwish. This was played by a symphony orchestra with vocals by a female choir. At the Opera House we got the 17 performers, a beautifully pared down set, a lighting plot that was atmospherically perfect, a recorded soundtrack… and it was all… phenomenal!

I’ve become so used to seeing lithe and slight Vietnamese dancers perform that it becomes almost a shock to see large and lithe Nordics (and an African) move their bodies so gorgeously, lightly and expressively.

Black Water is a dance that’s easy to comprehend, attuned for the eye and emotions… but it’s intellectually stimulating too. I dare anyone to see it and not be absorbed by the bodies swirling and flowing with the tidal sweep of water currents, movements reflected on the black vinyl and shimmered in a subdued blue and golden sub-marine glow. You can’t help but feel intensely invigorated.

At the conclusion and after the ovations we immediately rang ticketvn and booked three more tickets for the second night.

If you missed it, you missed a five star, 20 out of 10, art event. All of my opinionated superlatives for 2010 will be moderated by the phenomenal I’ve ascribed to it.

The Swedes are totally PHENOMENAL too for their initiation and support of this contemporary dance collaboration.

Essential viewing for any aspiring artist or photographer, for and all lovers of beauty and beautiful movement.

And only one imbecile on the first night popped a flash.