This wee gem, a duet for two men, was showing for just a few nights, until 11th August, at Edinburgh’s busy Dance Base as part of the Fringe (on which, we should say, there was far more interesting dance than in the official Festival). Created by Newcastle-based Mathieu Geffré for his own company Rendez-vous Dance, What Songs May Do... featured two dancers, Oliver Chapman and Paolo Pisarra, trying to find their way through a gay relationship accompanied by the unmistakeable voice of the legendary Nina Simone.
Holding hands, matching and magnificently moustachioed, the two walked onto the stage to Simone’s version of Jacques Brel’s Ne me quitte pas (‘Don’t Leave Me’). In itself such a heartbreaker, this song would be an odd opener if we were seeing this as an A to B narrative. You’d hardly need anything else, let alone the overpoweringly majestic Nina Simone to set the scene and chronicle the relationship. But here we are, it seems, at the end of something: what follows is in retrospect… (‘Let’s forget the time, the misunderstandings, the wasted time’.)
A slightly combative getting-to-know-you sequence played out to Feelings and Someone to Watch Over Me, as the men sized each other up, moved in closer, faced each other warily on hands and knees, stared into each others’ eyes and gradually became entwined. Chapman, the taller of the two, was mostly the initiator: Pisarra, doe-eyed and initially tentative, grew in confidence as they moved through their encounters. Emotional displays, like the exchange of weight in the choreography, were rarely one-way.
Geffré’s choreography was confident and inventive, taking his dancers through naturalistic movement to more exuberant leaps, quirkiness and playfulness to a kind of elegance. At times they snuggled head-to-toe on the ground; then a long slo-mo sequence of reaching, closeness (and handstands); swimming in air. They removed each others clothes; jackets, then T-shirts and trousers, seemed to enjoy some happy domesticity, but then… Clever and deceptively complex twining, hands locked while pushing each other away, encapsulated indecision. Each in their separate space they listened to Janis Ian’s Stars (‘It gets lonely there/When there’s nobody here to share…’). Letting Nina Simone sing the relationship was a great idea but her soundtrack was by now so idiosyncratic that although it supplied an element of drama, it risked taking attention away from the dance. It looked as if we were going to end with them trying vainly to find a way back into the other’s empty circling arms (oh, no!), but then, as the lights went down, they were together again in a sweet still moment.
This was a lovely piece: concise, allusive, highly original. And beautifully danced. W.H. Auden, who knew a thing or two about such relationships, once said ‘If equal affection cannot be/Let the more loving one be me’. I think he’d have enjoyed it.
