Dance / Mayfest 2022
Mayfest 2022 Review: Impermanence: Communion, Night One, The Mount Without – ‘Instances of profound tenderness and humanity’
“Silence”, wrote Rumi, “is the language of God, all else is poor translation.”
This remark occurred to me – as these things always do – approximately five minutes after it may have been useful. I was trudging down St. Michael’s Hill, having recently attended Communion: Night One at The Mount Without, ruing the missed opportunity to submit the above excerpt to the scrutiny of the artists by whom I’d been so recently spellbound.
The evening, produced by Impermanence as part of Mayfest, featured a double-bill of new performance and dance. The Mount Without – a building of imposing, almost insulting, beauty – proved a well-chosen venue, gifting the artists an audience overawed before it had taken its seat.
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The first performance was The Two Day Show by Jane Mason and friends. The piece spoke to me of attachment, safety and fear. It was a movement work, using materials and dance to set moments of significant abstraction against instances of profound tenderness and humanity.
An image I’ll be especially slow to depart with was that of a body, in the recovery position, with its limbs propped-up by blocks, forming a shelter for another to slide into the safety of. If silence is the language of God, Jane Mason and friends are fluent in prayer.
The Two Day Show had a surprising ability to deal with big subjects, whilst paying extraordinary attention to detail.
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Mason was joined in the show by collaborators Dominic Coleman, Amanda Lawrence, David Williams, Joff Winterhart and Gary Winters.
The evening closed with a site-specific sound piece. Li Yilei’s Space Telling: The Crypt is a sonic response to moving image work Spotting Masks by Joan Low. The work reconstructed a landscape through sound, and is part of an ongoing project of creating site-specific sonic responses to locations and situations.
Yilei’s work explores nature and industrialisation, creating a sometimes uncomfortable but deeply necessary sense of their interaction. Their work feels distinctly alive, benefiting from a subtlety and candour without turning its face from the harshness and brutality of the modern world.
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Impermanence: Communion is at The Mount Without from May 19-21. The show is running as part of Mayfest. For more information about the festival programme and ticket links to all shows, visit www.mayk.org.uk/mayfest-programme.
Main photo: Mayfest
Read more: Mayfest 2022 Review: Birthmarked, Bristol Old Vic – ‘Beautifully human’
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