Explosive emotions, deep waters and a refreshing spark in Dance Room 5

A field littered with landmines. This is what life feels like sometimes. In waiting rooms, for example. Uncomfortable situations. What should you say to each other? Timorous glances shoot past each other. Hidden tension pounds against your muscles. Everyone is afraid of everyone else. And for themselves.

Fobia by Davide Bellotta is one of three works with which young choreographers present themselves in the programme Dance Hall 5. Three short works. But what a wealth of experiences they give you!

Shy

Dance Hall is an initiative of Conny Janssen Danst in cooperation with production companies Dansateliers and Korzo. Talented choreographers get the chance, coached by Conny Janssen, to rehearse a choreography with dancers of this company. These turn out to be completely at ease with the style and approach to dance brought by the choreographers.

Davide Bellotta is the only one with whom Conny Janssen Danst is already familiar. He is a dancer with the company. It is instantly recognisable and very funny, as in Fobia the four dancers sit on five chairs and do their best to suppress their shy tensions. Small movements, meaningless but telling. One picks at her arm. The other shoots up from his seat, sends an apologetic smile around. 'Have you been sitting here long?" he asks one of the others, trying to eliminate the maddening silence. Standing up, making contact with an attractive woman, flinching, shooting off to the side. Love sears in a spastic explosion.

Unleashing the brakes

But Fobia is much more than just funny. Especially when the atmosphere changes and the characters throw off the brakes, I experience how strong fear is a source of irrepressible energy. Impulses arise that you tend to suppress, but cannot avoid. You are pushed in a direction you have not chosen.

Close or open. Which of the two will it be? Like a weather vane, they swing in all directions. In a tightly packed four-dance, the dancers force themselves and each other into contact. Hand contact, head contact, back contact. Do they want to conquer something or are they seeking shelter?

After a while, they retreat. There they sit again. As if they had awakened from a shared dream. Back in the waiting room. Again as embarrassed as before. Cramped and trapped in their embarrassment.

Fear as a motor

The burst of agility glows within me. What a fascinating connection between anxiety and dance! Dance is moving out of one hundred per cent necessity. Because you can't do anything else. Far beyond rational choices. And fear? When you give in to your tensions, your body shoots full of movements you don't think of beforehand. Uncompromising. Unquenchable. Fear as the engine of dance; fear that makes the body creative, that gives depth to contact and makes touch penetrating and intense.

All this without forgetting how amusing Fobia too!

The voice of the river

Lana Čoporda (of Dansateliers) chose as a starting point for Creep Deep A poem by Shanda Studd, speak to me like the river. There is a watery atmosphere. The dancers, dark figures, are silently engrossed in themselves. 'Cold, wet, deep,' sounds a distorted voice. Being swept along by the water is chilling. But the secrets in the deep pull at you.

The three dancers have strayed from their busy lives. They seek unknown regions within themselves. As they move inwardly, the atmosphere and music lead them to step outside themselves too. They entrust themselves to the water to find who they are at the bottom.

The familiar shapes of the body dissolve. Like a frog-like creature, one of the three enters the stage. The dancers display strange poses, lying down, standing, crawling. If you want to be carried away by the water, you take the forms of creatures that are at home in the water. The forms the water asks of you. Surrender is it. Desire to be absorbed in something great. Erotic impulses arise. Extreme, ecstatic. There is growling, thunder. And a distant voice.

Compelling

In turn, the movements of the dancers swept along by the water also have a compelling effect. I feel them falling down, getting up, writhing and crawling across the floor as something powerful and at the same time defenceless. Strange postures their bodies have never assumed before. What offered grip has been released. Erotic glow. Desire. Being lost. Sharon Stewart's music creeps around. In their floor, the dancers are three lonely, isolated beings. But they have everything to do with each other. The music spreads over them, connecting them in one flow. It is as if they are each other's undiscovered depths.

The bottom is reached. It is silent. Death as the ultimate corollary of being absorbed into the water.

Soft contact

One of the three lies motionless on the floor. The other two focus on her in amazement. They examine her. The going is tough. As they swing the limp body back and forth on arms and legs, chills run down my spine. They stand on the body, but also crawl around it, grabbing the head, the hands. Softer and softer the contact becomes, and very intense. One of them pulls the dead arm towards him and talks to the fist, as if into a microphone, or through a speaking tube to the deepest depths.

Gentle nurturing. That is what I experience as the outcome of the search, the secret in the depths.

Perfect lightness

At Vacuum garden by choreographer Antonin Comestaz (of Korzo Productions) springs to mind. A hoover suspended in mid-air turns on and three dancers perform a playful, lucid dance with gestures that blend breathtakingly cleverly. They move in a space detached from the outside world and - even though the hoover hums - from everyday worries. Constantly, the three are focused on each other's bodies, exploring how to use each other for yet another movement. They turn the three chairs on stage into a sculpture and dance with them in the same way they danced with each other before. When it starts to rain, they take shelter under the seats of the chairs, but just as easily they continue their dance in long mackintoshes.

They put limbs together, intertwine on and under each other, exchange gestures at lightning speed. The body can resemble a wheelbarrow and a springy mattress.

A space filled with fun

Anyone who has ever vacuumed knows how isolating the hum of that appliance can be. But between the dancers, a spark constantly sparks. They have sparkling contact, filling the room with their fun.

Vacuum garden makes me feel wonderfully uncluttered by the disarming camaraderie that radiates from it, as does the perfect lightness and humour with which the incredible wealth of movements is performed.

Dance Hall 5 not only shows great quality but also proves in how many different directions budding choreographers are developing. Young dance is alive and kicking in the Netherlands.