Press Reviews — Trespass

Published: 23 November 2010

StopGAP at The Place, London WC1

by Donald Hutera — The Times

StopGAP is a British company that places dancers with physical and learning disabilities alongside non-disabled performers. Vicki Balaam, the artistic director, has only got five at her disposal, but what a dynamic, fine-tuned handful they are. The energy coursing between them quickly sucks us into their orbit even if the motives behind the dances themselves might leave us in the dark.

What, for instance, is it that so distresses Laura Jones, the centrepiece of Thomas Noone’s curtain-raiser, Within? When we first see this young woman she’s sitting on, rather than at, a plywood desk, barely tolerating David Willdrige’s tender solicitations. She slaps his face, thrusting him away. Three others — Lucy Bennett, Sophie Brown, Chris Pavia — burst on to the scene. In a startling instant one of the women leaps on to Pavia’s chest, drops on to the table and rolls down to the floor.

Soon everyone is scrabbling across the floor, save for poor, inconsolable Jones who’s been dragged upstage in a state of high anxiety.

Driven by Pedro Navarrete’s spidery, neurotic soundtrack for harpsichord and strings, the vaulting dancers demonstrate a perpetually voracious appetite for movement. But who are these people? Could the other four be manifestations of Jones’s inner demons? That, as it turns out, is not far off the mark. A programme note refers to them as “apparitions” populating her imaginary world.

And what a curious, compelling and feverishly intense place it is. I still haven’t a clue why we were taken there, what the source of Jones’s trouble was nor why, in the closing moments, she’d seemed to discover a new resolve.

The bill’s second half was just as breathlessly theatrical but far more light-hearted. Rob Tannion’s Splinter has a terrific opening image. Laughter bubbles up out of the darkness. As the light rises on a pile of bodies we see Brown doing a headstand on top of Willdrige’s stomach. This, along with Jim Pinchen’s Japanese-influenced music and some motley costuming, sets the tone for a jaunty, acrobatic lark in which the dancers might temporarily glue themselves together or just as easily rocket apart.

Brown and Bennett surf on the men’s backs. Jones swings pendulously off Brown’s neck. Someone somersaults over Jones’s wheelchair. T-shirts are revealed that carry the name of each dancer’s idol. Cute. Finally, from another mound of bodies two clasped hands emerge. The audience, not inappropriately, cheers.

Published: 25 October 2010

Splinter Review

by Mary Brennan — The Herald

Splinter — choreographed by Rob Tannion for the Farnham-based StopGAP Dance Company — opens with all five performers piled up in a heap.

Bit by bit, bodies will disentangle, and though the process releases individuals, there’s still a strong sense of supportive interaction. In the course of the choreography, that interaction will shift from playful to combative, from antagonistic to tender.

Duets will encompass a range of techniques – including an element of skilled athleticism – that ensure the underlying theme, of the group possibly splintering apart or managing to stay together, has clarity without being over-simplified. It’s a good-looking piece of work that has integration as its watchword, StopGAP being an integrated professional company with one dancer, Laura Jones, a wheelchair user and another, Chris Pavia, with Down’s syndrome. The latter is an exceptional talent in anyone’s terms, while Jones uses her upper-body strength and her wheelchair in more than one sequence where she is the uncompromising mainstay of support for others.

Everything about the immensely watchable Splinter speaks of channelling individual traits — needs, as well as strengths — into a performing unity that has humour, risk, invention and interesting movement.

Published: 20 November 2010

StopGAP, Trespass — Within & Splinter, The Place

by Sam Gauntlett — LondonDance.com

StopGAP has a strong philosophy of integration and participation, encompassing able-bodied dancers with dancers who have a physical or learning disability. The five full-time members and their individual strengths and potential serve as the starting point for the company’s works, injecting a real sense of connectivity between the artists.

In Within, choreographed by Thomas Noone, Laura Jones is the central character wrestling with her demons. The work begins with an intimate duet between Jones and David Willdridge, with Jones sitting on a desk and the two staring into each other’s eyes. Our protagonist seems drawn to him, yet pushes him away and repeatedly slams the desk in frustration. Jones lost the use of her legs in her late teens, and the piece, during which she is out of her wheelchair, seems to explore the limitations and possibilities that her physicality embodies. She uses the desk to pull her upper body around, lifts her legs by hand to reposition her body and, then, during a fast moving section, is the lynchpin of some complex choreography, involving all five dancers, as she sits on the floor, reacting and contributing to the conversation with dynamic arms and floor work.

The desk is used throughout as a platform that the performers leap onto, a prop that is moved around the stage and a reference point that Jones returns to again and again. Sophie Brown is possessed of an impressive athleticism, at one point, from a reclining position on her side, somehow jumping off the desk and landing in the same position on the floor. Lucy Bennett (also StopGAP’s Co-Artistic Director) is an expressive and dynamic mover and has a mesmerising chemistry with Chris Pavia, a technically skilled dancer, who has been recognised by Mencap as a person with Downs Syndrome achieving excellence in their career. The two make a series of complicated lifts look effortless and it is clear that these performers trust one another implicitly.

This element of trust and intimate understanding of one another’s bodies is underlined when Splinter begins with all the dancers lying in a pile centre stage, like a collapsed game of Twister. Choreographed by Rob Tannion, of Stan Won’t Dance fame, the piece, which veers between intensely focussed choreography to comedic moments, brings some light relief from the dark moments of Within.

The first laugh comes when, following a frenetic section, where the two men, Willdridge and Pavia, throw them selves around the stage, to the tribal percussion of Jim Pinchen’s music, they suddenly stop and, Willdridge, struggling to catch his breath, pants: “I think I’m coming down with something”. Other charming moments include the dancers pairing up to create four legged creatures by holding onto each others feet and an unexpected shift in tone, when Pavia runs into the middle of the stage shouting “Rooney!” sporting a T-shirt with the football star’s name emblazoned across it.

There are touching moments too, particularly between the three women performers. Bennett and Brown move in fearless proximity to Jones’s wheelchair; Brown lies on the ground, whirling Jones, and the wheels of her chair, close to her head and, when Bennett climbs into the chair with Jones, they tip backwards with astounding control.

Published: 24 January 2011

A Unique Company

by Maggie Foyer — DansPortalen.se

At The Place, home of London School of Contemporary Dance, StopGAP, a unique company of five dancers of mixed physical ability presented a double bill, Trespass.

The opening work, Within is Thomas Noone’s first for the company. His work is hugely demanding physically and this work was no exception. Laura Jones is the central character who dominates the work even when not at the centre of the action.

Noone moved her from the safety zone of her wheelchair offering instead a desk and chair. This allowed her an extended range of arm and torso movements which she used to powerful dramatic effect. Her duet with David Willdridge, opens with a slap, setting the edgy tone that, even when emotions mellow in a sort of truce, never quite loses its bite. The interest never slacked in this short work as relationships were shaped then reshaped by the powerful choreography.

Rob Tannion’s Splinter proved an excellent vehicle for the uncanny close harmony that pervades this group. Despite the dividing and uniting indicated in the title, the dancers instinctively understand their collective needs and seem to communicate through shared rhythm in fluid, constantly evolving work.