Every live performance will inherently be different. Ways of Being promises that and more.
Roberta Jean’s “Ways of Being,” weaves together a diverse array of rejuvenating influences, drawing from realms such as psychedelic therapy, witchcraft, botany, and insights into the intricate relationship between the brain and hormones.
Dancers and collaborators include Stephanie McMann as well as Katye Coe, Maëva Berthelot, and Nicole Nevitt who perform a heavily structured improvisation piece that steams from Jean’s own experience with mental health and her experience with a neuroendocrine disease that affects mental well-being and a “hunt for peace”.
The score by the talented Jonathan Webb guides the audience into the different mental states being explored and while open and spontaneous the work feels very articulate and detailed for the most part.
The concepts of time, space, and psychedelics are explored throughout the play and the beautiful script by Jude Christian that accompanies the piece helps to challenge the audience but at times feels disconnected from the dancers.
The increasingly playful relationships test out some beautiful imagery of push and pull, action and reaction, tension and release and they draw from each other with mirroring. They do beautifully at giving weight to each other while not aiming for “pretty” but instead open and raw.
Although the aim was not technical perfection, the solos of Nicole and Stephanie prove that when you have technique you can afford to let it go as it stays with you regardless of the framework.
In a conversation with the creative team behind Ways of Being, Roberta Jean described this work as a “very indirect way of working with movement and scores. (…) It’s very open and very specific, it’s sculptural but it’s an open language”.
Ways of Being is at the Lilian Baylis Studio until the 10th of November.