[Review] Elixir Festival – Charlotta Öfverholm’s In a Cage of Light / Susan Kempster’s Mother

The Elixir Festival continued with a double bill that veered from the ridiculous to the sublime; opening with a surreal portrait of an aging performer slipping from the spotlight; and concluding with a beautiful, intimate, intergenerational duet.

Hat’s off to Charlotta Öfverholm for a noteworthy opening to In a Cage of Light as darkness gave way to the sight of this ebullient blonde performer, seated on a trapeze situated high above the audience, shouting an a cappella version of the Frank Sinatra standard, That’s Life. Then (spoiler alert) mid-song, Öfverholm takes a suicidal backwards plunge from the trapeze as the lights cut out (thankfully a safety line lowers her to the stage in the darkness).

In keeping with the Elixir Festival theme of dance and age, In a Cage of Light celebrates the twilight years of a mature performer – although whether Öfverholm is a circus artist, singer, burlesque performer or dancer, it’s hard to tell (perhaps she’s a mix of all these roles and more besides, as indicated by a title that infers a life in the spotlight). In this UK premiere (it first opened in Stockholm, two years ago), Öfverholm spun a tangled web of images that had her climbing a ladder precariously up the side wall of the Lilian Baylis Studio Theatre or being played as a cello by her partner, Jordi Cortes (formerly of DV8). Unlike the same idea in Cathy Marston‘s The Cellist, this “instrument” fights back, writhing and swaying out of the cellist’s lap and taking control of the bow.

The interplay between Öfverholm and Cortes is the heart of this work. The latter wears a full-head gimp mask for part of the action and their highly physical duets, embracing pulling, stretching, counterbalances and strong lifts, are high on mutual trust; although at one point Cortes walks away saying that he is too old for this kind of work. Their repartee is a key element of a witty and always absorbing work.

Susan Kempster’s Mother was a world apart in terms of content, being essentially a work of pure dance, a tightly woven duet for Charlotte Broom and Harry Wilson, dressed identically in striking bronze-coloured outfits comprising a long-line fitted tunic with three-quarter sleeves and a full skirt (designed by Jessica Cabassa, made by Mattieu Nunes), which emphasised both their shared engagement and a duet without obvious gender reference. The title encourages an assumption that Broom is Wilson’s mother although the generational distinction is not at all obvious: it would have been just as realistic if entitled Sister.

Unlike the title, the choreography provides no hints to the relationship between the protagonists. Their dancing is simply free-flowing and beautiful, intimate with both joyful and poignant accents. Kempster has utilised the whole stage in flowing diagonal lines and geometric patterns of movement that the two dancers perform elegantly. I know little about Wilson and the programme notes provided nothing more than his/her/their name, but no words were needed to expound upon a performance that seemed to have been enjoyed as much by the dancer as by the audience. The co-founder of HeadSpaceDance, Broom is nowadays mostly described as a Movement Director and Choreographer, although in Mother she brings all of her 20+ years’ experience to bear in a memorable performance that I hope is still far from a last hurrah!   

Just as with the opening triple bill in the Elixir Festival, these works brought an appreciation of how bodies of a certain age can still command great strength and flexibility in dynamic and lyrical movement, and as well as introducing (to me at least) some new finds (notably Öfverholm and Wilson) it was wonderful to be reacquainted once more with the movement artistry of Charlotte Broom in the meaningful and arresting choreography of Susan Kempster.

Graham Watts

Graham Watts is a freelance writer and dance critic. He writes for The Spectator, Tanz, Shinshokan Dance Magazine (Japan), Ballet Magazine (Romania), BachTrack and the Hong Kong International Arts Festival and has previously written for the Sunday Express, Dancing Times, Dance Europe, DanceTabs, London Dance, the Edinburgh International Festival and Pointe magazine (USA).  He has also written the biography of Daria Klimentová (The Agony and the Ecstasy) and contributed chapters about the work of Akram Khan to the Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet and on Shobana Jeyasingh for the third edition of Routledge’s Fifty Contemporary Choreographers.

He is Chairman of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle and of the UK National Dance Awards and regularly lectures on dance writing and criticism at The Royal Academy of Dance, The Place and (until the war) for Balletristic in Kyiv.  He was a nominee for the Dance Writing Award in the 2018 One Dance UK Awards and was appointed OBE in 2008.