Holly Blakey is best known for her choreographic work in music videos for artists including
Jessie Ware,
Florence + the Machine and
Coldplay. But that looks set to change with Blakey’s first full-length contemporary dance work
Some Greater Class, which certainly makes no effort to deny her successful career in that genre, but takes it far beyond simply putting pop video dance moves on stage.
With a desire to make her work accessible to a wider audience – not necessarily ‘a dance audience’ – Blakey is avoiding the traditional dance spaces (even within traditional dance venues) and aiming for galleries, festivals, places where perhaps people won't think ‘oh no: dance’ and scurry away.
For
Some Greater Class’s appearances at The Lowry, Blakey is staging her work in the more unconventional Compass Room, which is a essentially a function room at the top of the building – a space normally reserved for weddings and industry conferences, but one occasionally used for other dance artists aiming at working outside of the ‘box’ –
Theo Clinkard,
Fevered Sleep and
Flexer & Sandiland have also used the flexibility of this large space to site their work.
Some Greater Class sits well in this space although the setup is actually fairly conventional with seats in long rows in front of a dance area, and the atmosphere is chilly.
Gwilym Gold and
Darkstar sit to one side at the back behind a table piled with all the kit required for the live soundtrack. Banks of lights drench the space in blue and green. A tumble of foliage forms an odd backdrop, like an 80s nightclub.
The piece starts moodily with the cast of seven sloping in as a group, coolly checking one another out: blankly confrontational. Dressed in red, their costumes are deconstructed, rebuilt: edgy, diverse, gender-fluid: tough girls, urban lads, femme boys. Blakey’s dancers look like club kids, like real people.
Some Greater Class itself is a rollercoaster of thrilling group sections, usually with the dancers forming two advancing lines: vogue, street dance, martial arts and alternative cabaret influences are smoothly linked with a deft choreographic touches by Blakey and considerable individual charm and attitude from the dancers, from the smouldering beauty and fuck-you cool of
Grace Jabbari and
Naomi Weijand, to the gender-queer buffness of
Ted Rogers and
Chester Haynes, to the sexy streetboy cool of
Waddah Sinada and
Jonny Vieco, via the strange androgyne aloofness of
Eve Stainton.
The group sections are interpopulated with a series of smaller group and individual performances that explore connection, emptiness, identity, pleasure, sex, ennui, exhaustion, exhibitionism and uncertainty.
Some Greater Class interrogates and dissects young relationships, identity, social life and (inter)dependence. It moves startlingly between narcissism, tenderness, exploitation, brutality and the simple human need – and sometimes incapacity - for emotional and physical contact. They gaze lovingly, blankly, emptily at one another: questioningly, passively confrontationally at the audience. They compete for love and acceptance: fight for the right to exist without compromise, without fear.
Gwilym Gold and Darkstar’s soundtrack, which melds haunting vocals with relentless electronic beats and shimmering techno, underpins the choreography thrillingly. When the dancers line-up in the dark for the final section you actually feel like you've been taken on a brilliant night out with friends. There have been arguments, tears and hugs and laughter but
Some Greater Class leaves you with a sense of hope, and a real sense that you've just seen the work of an ambitious choreographer who has the ability to shake up the world of contemporary dance.
There is a lot of exciting, darkly-messy dance coming from Europe. Unless drawing on those influences a lot of British dance is starting to look safe and formulaic.
Some Greater Class is pulling in a lot of different influences from urban and queer culture and it looks edgy and exciting. I want some more.
