Matrafisc Dance Company is a new presence in Manchester, created by Ina Colizza and Antonello Apicella. With the addition of four other dancers, this unexpectedly makes the company one of - if not the - largest in the city: a city which is rich in grass routes dance and independent dance artists but short on companies of stature.
Soul's Paths takes the form of both an inner journey exploring themes of friendship, love, fraternity and sexuality and a physical journey around The Wonder Inn, the venue for this site specific but not site-limited work.
The Wonder Inn is a dark and atmospheric listed building in Shudehill, still evolving from disuse into a 'creative wellness centre'. Shabby chic and heady with incense and the smell of coffee, the bar area is buzzy and relaxed-funky, and it is at the end of the bar that Soul's Paths starts, with loose and groovy jazz trumpet played by Gary Farr of Manchester's Vonnegut Collective, the musical partners for the show. A playful, flirty duet is performed behind, on and around the bar before the trumpet falls away to be replaced by a violinist Gemma Bass - the Pied Piper - who will lead the audience around the building for further encounters.
Next, in a ground-floor space lit with ropes of lights, a more questioning exploratory duet by two further dancers, the trumpet more mournfully classical. Given more space, full use is made of it with soaring lifts and expansive expressive movement. As this section moves from discord to reconciliation and intimacy the violin leads us up the stairs to another room where Ina Colizza and Antonello Apicella await. This duet demonstrates yet more physicality; playful and passionate and yet riven with seeming conflicts. Apicella and Colizza are performers of considerable talent and solid rapport: both immensely watchable and unfussy, never wasting a gesture, clean and communicative. Explosions of energy are driven by percussion and the pair eventually depart separately; Colizza leaving a photograph of happier times to mark the space where two souls followed different paths.
We are lead to a wide corridor where Apicella awaits before a grand mirror. He performs a lyrical solo with classical references which seems to explore and question his identity and sense of self. Creation, destruction and rebirth.
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Finally we are lead to a large, windowed room where all the dancers and musicians - with the new addition of another operating an atmospheric electronic soundtrack - meet for the final section. When all six dancers move as one, break and shift into different patterns - their former relationships echoed and revisited, two things are striking. Firstly, just how dynamic and distinctive Apicella and Colizza's choreography is, while still respecting the individuality of the other performers and, secondly, that this first showing by this new company instantly makes them about the largest dance company in the city. The scale and ambition of this work and this assembly of dance and live music is notable and rich with promise.
Soul's Paths starts with two people moving in a crowded bar, but ambitiously arcs through the building, accumulating new moods and experiences before making a real statement of ambitious intent. Manchester is not short of dancers and dance artists - they mostly emerge annually at Contact for the Turn festival before disappearing again into the gloom of a city that appears chronically under-resourced and energised as a dance community. This was a bold explosion of glorious colour in that darkness.
Soul's Paths takes the form of both an inner journey exploring themes of friendship, love, fraternity and sexuality and a physical journey around The Wonder Inn, the venue for this site specific but not site-limited work.
The Wonder Inn is a dark and atmospheric listed building in Shudehill, still evolving from disuse into a 'creative wellness centre'. Shabby chic and heady with incense and the smell of coffee, the bar area is buzzy and relaxed-funky, and it is at the end of the bar that Soul's Paths starts, with loose and groovy jazz trumpet played by Gary Farr of Manchester's Vonnegut Collective, the musical partners for the show. A playful, flirty duet is performed behind, on and around the bar before the trumpet falls away to be replaced by a violinist Gemma Bass - the Pied Piper - who will lead the audience around the building for further encounters.
Next, in a ground-floor space lit with ropes of lights, a more questioning exploratory duet by two further dancers, the trumpet more mournfully classical. Given more space, full use is made of it with soaring lifts and expansive expressive movement. As this section moves from discord to reconciliation and intimacy the violin leads us up the stairs to another room where Ina Colizza and Antonello Apicella await. This duet demonstrates yet more physicality; playful and passionate and yet riven with seeming conflicts. Apicella and Colizza are performers of considerable talent and solid rapport: both immensely watchable and unfussy, never wasting a gesture, clean and communicative. Explosions of energy are driven by percussion and the pair eventually depart separately; Colizza leaving a photograph of happier times to mark the space where two souls followed different paths.
We are lead to a wide corridor where Apicella awaits before a grand mirror. He performs a lyrical solo with classical references which seems to explore and question his identity and sense of self. Creation, destruction and rebirth.
Soul's Paths starts with two people moving in a crowded bar, but ambitiously arcs through the building, accumulating new moods and experiences before making a real statement of ambitious intent. Manchester is not short of dancers and dance artists - they mostly emerge annually at Contact for the Turn festival before disappearing again into the gloom of a city that appears chronically under-resourced and energised as a dance community. This was a bold explosion of glorious colour in that darkness.