2005 / 2006
Dancers
Pari Naderi, Marina Collard
Music
Charles Kriel
Sarah Warsop’s Whiff is a fascinating dualogue exploring the self and the other, black and white, motion and stillness, balance and falling, danced by the mesmerizing dancers Marina Collard and Pari Naderi. It has everything which you would expect from a disciple of Siobhan Davies (who was characteristically present to watch the piece): the soft, tender, soothing language of the abstract which seems to lie deep within the body and which twists its way out from within to hint at so much more. At the centre of the piece, as Charles Kriel’s score builds up to the violent patter of rain on a tin roof (an extraordinarily comforting sound for those protected against it), a dancer repetitively pushes one hand out, as protection from it, whilst the other hand seems to be lapping it up, quivering. The lower body gently rocks from side to side and watching these movements repetitively pounding my mind I felt the profundity of Shakespeare’s Titus as he first confronts the massacred body of his daughter, Lavinia. The dance movement is rounded, the language is delicate - a poignant, gentle work which I hope we get to see again.
Ian Palmer - Ballet Magazine
ROH2 - Something Big:
Warsop: ‘Whiff’,
Doughty: ‘A Dance for Radio’,
Poole: ‘The Box Office’
July 2006
London, Clore Studio
by Ian Palmer
