Tend/Liminal

Samuel Beckett Theatre

****

Although driven by contrasting aesthetics, both works in this double bill are reconciling external expectations and influences with individual solace. In Tend, dancers Emma Fitzgerald and Antje O'Toole are happy to quietly allow fragments of speech, movement and video to hang loosely together, free from theatrical rhetoric. Frustrated by societal problems – from refugees to sexism – the two dancers nevertheless revel in the joy of the ordinary, drawing on the limpid optimism in the male trio version of Paul Johnson's 1999 dance work, Without Hope or Fear.

In contrast, Liadain Herriott's Liminal wallows in theatricality, from ditsy hair and heavy dabs of blusher to a swinging lampshade and blaring Tchaikovsky. Her dancing, most comfortable when classical, is occasionally bombarded with more contemporary techno beats, forcing uncertain jitteriness in movement and thought. Her constantly focused performance might have been cheerfully semi-autobiographical, but it is also more seriously universal.