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The Seven Fingers 'Traces'
February 24, 2010 -- Curve Theatre, Leicester French-Canadian company The Seven Fingers visited Leicester as part of their UK tour with “Traces”. Originally premiered in 2006 in Montreal, “Traces” looks to combine several disciplines including contemporary, hip-hop and street dance, acrobatics, basketball and skateboarding. Set in an underground shelter with unknown dangers awaiting outside, the piece features the group of five performers who set to live out their last hours with as much energy and expression as possible. Music, song, speech, live film and illustration are just some of the ways they choose to articulate their last moments, all the while sharing details of their past with the audience. The show is divided into small sections, each with different music and movement styles. The five performers, all students of Montreal’s National Circus School, each have a section showing off their individual skills. For example, we see Geneviéve Morin, the only female of the five, display her flexibility and strength via a suspended harness fromwhich she forms her body into beautiful shapes. Phillip Rosenberg impressed audiences with his hand balancing skills, and we see a mix of quartets, trios and duets that display the versatility of the performers. Mixing disciplines can be a tricky business. Performers can often stretch themselves too far and find it difficult to specialise in so many different areas. However, The Seven Fingers seem to have taken the challenge in their stride. The show is moulded to the strengths of the cast and is clearly very personal to them; rather than performing as a character they are truly themselves. They share their real name, date of birth and anecdotes of their lives. Along with the personal touch, the performers introduce a good amount of humour to their performance; at some points we even see some acrobatic slapstick comedy. This is then contrasted by slower, meaningful sections such as acoustic guitar sets. Unlike conventional dance performances there are the obligatory pauses for applause when the cast does something particularly impressive. Though the applause was well earned, I couldn’t help thinking that it interrupted the flow of the movement, and this interruptionreminded me that this wasn’t your run of the mill dance performance. So what bracket would “Traces” fit into? It does such a good job of combining the various elements that it is difficult to say. I would not, however, class this performance as sport. There are sections where they use basketballs and skateboards, but these are simply props in their acrobatic sequences and dance phrases. They achieve a new genre of ‘acro-dance’ that can appeal to a wide audience, perhaps an audience who wouldn’t normally visit a contemporary dance performance. The overall audience reaction speaks for itself. When it was funny they laughed; when the performers were free falling down a pole, they gasped. Finally, in the end, when the performers took their bows, the audience gave them a standing ovation--a rare thing within British audiences (the only one I had witnessed to date was for Bausch’s “Le Sacre du Printemps”-- rightly so!) A highly entertaining piece of family theatre and a must see for fans of dance, acrobatics, circus skills, sports, comedy…the list goes on.
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by Cathy Scott