Forward in Motion: Influx Review

Forward in Motion Dance Festival 2011

Walking Piece

Choreographed by Matthias Sperling

Performed by Influx

I was able to see this performance several times because I was a member of the front of house team for this company. I have never seen a durational piece before and I think this is what intrigued me the most. In conventional theatre, the audience come in as the piece starts and leave as it ends; they stay in the same place throughout.  However, in this piece, the audience could come and go as they pleased staying for a little or as long as they liked. They were also free to move around the space and interact with the performers. There were two groups of performers who took in turn to come into the space.

Overall I thought the piece was very entertaining and I liked the way in which it moved around the space, it wasn’t stereotypical of a normal dance piece.  The movements seem very pedestrianized yet random at the same time. They could play around with the piece and make it fun to perform. The piece consisted of the same elements every time but done in slightly different ways, this kept the performers on their toes. It meant they never knew what to expect and they could humour themselves without having to worry about keeping a straight face. I liked how vocal was also used by the dancers as it gave the audience the opportunity to interact and answer the question. I also liked the lifts used because I haven’t seen anything like that before in dance.

From watching the performance, I still don’t have a clear understanding of why it was called ‘Walking Piece’.  Having listened to the Yr2 students talk about how they created the piece, I can now understand why it seems so random. They played a series of games with the choreographer Matthias Sperling and then he put those games into an order and this became the piece. The piece did seem to have a lot of walking in it though so that may explain the reasoning behind the title.