Humans are a creature of habit, making it very difficult to go against the grain and break away from tradition. We wake up, work, return home, sleep and repeat the cycle. Majority of the time, the little things seem to just drift by, however in A Room For All Our Tomorrows, basic instinct and throwaway passages of time are given the platform to breathe.
Choreographed and performed by a duo of Work Place artists, Igor Urzelai and Morina Solinas, A Room for All Our Tomorrow’s automatically pulls the safety net of speech from under the audience’s feet and instead presents a confrontational soundscape consisting of shouts. Initially intriguing, this motif see saws between laugh out loud hilarity to A predictable safety net. A piece all about banishing any inhibitions and abandoning them behind closed doors, Urzelai and Solinas certainly live by this ethos in regards to throwing the social convention of speech out of the window.
Dressed in 80s city slicker attire, the imagery of yuppies prospering in a harsh, grey, Thatcherite Britain spurs to mind. The bold choice to challenge tradition, and to abandon the typical palette of the office, wearing unapologetically bright pinks and oranges reinforces the the dancers sense of playfulness. Solinas and Urzelai adorn the stage with compact contemporary sequences, juxtaposing their loud animalistic vocalisations. The narrative’s atmosphere jars with reality, the shouting going against behavioural conventions of metropolitan society. This flitters the production with a sense of daring, breathing a lease of life into how we usually view the madness of the rat race.
The convention of using the voice in its most basic state is to be praised, however explored even further. Variation is a luxury, and would therefore help to lift an otherwise monotonous sound. The shouting although momentarily uncomfortable, does initially evoke intrigue, but feels too safe after a while, rather than emitting panic and hysteria.
Solinas and Urzelai are perfectly in sync, the two dancers depicting two workaholics energised by the king of their world, the coffee machine. Although two individuals fighting for their slice of wealth, the team work depicted by the both of them is admirable. Their choreography clicking together like a massive jigsaw puzzle, they perform sequences that connect, always keeping a sense of symmetry and belonging. The coffee table set up centre stage aethetically draws the eye to other wise sparse stage. The repetitive making and drinking of coffee comedicaaly comments on our obsession with coffee chains. The table also unveils itself as a piano, also becoming an alternate form of musical accompaniment. The production is playful, the choreography collaborative, I’m left however just wanting a greater sense of nuance character wise. 3/5
Review written by Lucy Basaba.
A Room For All Our Tomorrow’s was shown at The Place from Tuesday 6th until Wednesday 7th October. For more information on Igor and Moreno, visit here…
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