Photo credit: Julia Gat
Emanuel Gat has a sensitivity in his work that sets him apart from other contemporary choreographers. Five Days In The Sun, making its London premiere at Sadler’s Wells, captures his distinctive aesthetic, creating a magical and cathartic evening of dance.
Opening with the dancers whirling in peach-coloured sheer costumes (by VICHER), we are transported into a mystical purgatory, or perhaps a Rococo painting of excessive prettiness but hiding a darker secret. This image gradually shifts towards something more contemporary, as uber-casual clothing emerges, creating a satisfying contrast between the ethereal and the everyday. The work moves between moments of darkness and light, restraint and abandon. As the title suggests, time in the sun is fleeting, its warmth made all the more meaningful by the darkness that surrounds it. The work opens and closes with a sense of ritual and myth, giving the performance a circularity, as though we have entered something that existed long before we arrived and will continue after we leave.
Choreographed to Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, the work unfolds across five choreographic tableaux for twelve dancers. Gat has a particular sensitivity to music, deepening the audience’s experience of listening as much as watching. The relationship between choreography and score is not unusual, but here he picks out individual sounds and details for the dancers to respond to in less predictable ways. He also plays with arresting silences, allowing movement to continue, accompanied only by footsteps or the rustle of a costume. The dancers’ sounds become part of the composition, creating a sense of zooming in and out of the picture. We are brought back to reality by these live sounds, then transported into a dream by the wider soundscape. In one particularly moving moment, the suggestion of a beach and distant children playing creates a warm, expressive world without becoming overbearing.
There is a particular sophistication in the listening and complicity that Gat and sound designer Frédéric Duru creates between the dancers and the audience. Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 carries its own emotional journey, composed in the wake of his near-death experience and during a period of profound personal change, including his relationship with Alma Schindler. Gat seems to draw on this emotional depth without illustrating it literally, allowing the choreography to move through its own shifting states and interpretations.
Gat's use of the ensemble is equally compelling. Dancers continually form and reform into different groupings, with occasional solos emerging from the collective before returning to it. The solos never linger so long that the individual takes over. There is a sense that the whole picture is always more important than any one performer. Although the dancers demonstrate impeccable individual skill throughout.
The use of space adds another layer. Working across the boundary of the curtain, Gat places dancers sometimes in front of it and sometimes as far upstage as possible, creating a strong sense of depth. The audience is occasionally held at a distance, simply witnessing the composition, before being brought uncomfortably close to the action. These shifts in perspective, alongside the interplay of movement and sound, continually alter our relationship to what we are watching.
The ambiguity of the narrative is both part of the work's appeal and its limitation. There are moments when the imagery and movement invites us into a particular emotional state, but doesn't quite give us enough to hold onto. A little more clarity or development of the underlying concept might give the work greater weight. Its openness is appealing, but at times it tips towards obscurity.
Nevertheless, FIVE DAYS IN THE SUN is an absorbing choreographic experience. It is in the subtle exchanges between the dancers, the music and the space around them that much of its richness lies.
**** Four stars
Reviewed by: Stephanie Osztreicher
