A lot of modern dance is hard-going for those with short attention spans. But then, 90 minutes of silent action can induce the fidgets in anyone. So the Place's idea of packaging 20-minute extracts from three different works had definite appeal, not only to the teenagers it was aimed at, but to some of their parents as well.
The programme for Fresh was adroitly chosen. It started out in Goth mode with the opening section from the Cholmondeleys and Featherstonehaughs' nightmare fantasy 3. Ten men and women dressed in exquisite smocks occupied the nursery world of Victorian Struwwelpeter horror. With their faces daubed in crude make-up and their eyes glinting from behind black contact lenses, these "infants" became the victims of an increasingly scary childhood. As they were marched in rows by invisible nannies, mouthing fragments from cautionary tales, the fraught music played by Steve Blake and Billy Surgeoner triggered moments of rebellious terror.
The piece is sharply imagined and inventively cooky, and has all the marks of Lea Anderson's vintage work. But its choreographed repetitions suggest a shortage of material and proved a little tiresome for some of Tuesday's audience. It also served as an unintended target for the spoof delivered by Air Dance Company that came after it. As its title suggests, This Is Modern is a cod history of modern dance, and in the extract performed by Tom Roden and Peter Shenton the cliches and agonies of late-20th-century choreography were wickedly exposed, with expert comic timing.
It was easily the most successful work of the evening, despite the fact that Union Dance Company's hip-hop-based extract presented the most obvious street credentials. Choreographed by Doug Elkins, Dance in House offered a few neat twists on Elkins's trademark mix'n'match of genres, especially the hip-hop solo, elegantly and urbanely set to some early jazz. But much of the choreography and the humour was lamely contrived, and the standard of the dancing was too erratic. Only a couple of the men in Union's ranks could match the expertise of dancers from a dedicated hip-hop troupe. And the kids in the audience knew it.
