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The enterprising company presents three specially filmed virtual dance works, including Smith’s own intriguing take on ancient mythology
Many small dance companies are clinging on by a thread after this year of cancelled performances. Newcastle-based Eliot Smith Dance has been determined to keep creating work. In the summer, Smith was behind a hybrid documentary-dance film about the nurses Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale, and he now presents a short virtual triple bill of new work that, in a parallel world, would have been premiered in-the-round at Wylam Brewery’s Palace of Arts. This recording is the result of making-do: the low ceiling, the visible radiators, the vinyl dance floor taped to the ground are all things we’ve got used to in this time of ad hoc stagings. You have to applaud the spirit.
The setting gives an informal feel to the opening short solos. First is Jake Vincent’s five-minute Onward, danced by Smith. There’s something of the Mark Morris school about its gently paced stepping and skipping to Haydn’s Cello Concerto No 2; a touch of folk and courtly socials, and Smith has the poise of someone just rising above it all.