The North Critique - London, England

What began as a winter wonderland turned into a thought provoking night of dance and dialogue. Choreographer Joan Cleville, a Barcelona native who has lived in Scotland as well as England, created a piece of work that made the audience question loneliness and what it is like to be new to an already established community.

The dancing alone in this piece was breathtaking. The dancers moved in a grounded contemporary style which involved inversions, floor work, and movement of the spine. There were many moments of broken and staccato line movements which were contrasted by smooth and subtle movements. When dancing in duos, the dancers almost always used manipulation of the body to move the other dancer – each movement was about stabilizing one another and moving the body in a different way while still acting as if they are having a normal conversation.

The dialogue throughout the performance only enhanced the story line. I was fearful it would be too much and would give away most of the story but thankfully, Cleville did not want the audience knowing what was going on in front of them. The dialogue was enough to be thought provoking and provide a decent amount of background. In moments, it was also a hilarious representation of what it is like to try to assimilate cultural norms such as a greeting kiss or another language whether it be French or, in this situation, the squawking of a duck.

Photograph by Nicole Guarino

Though many interpretations can be made of The North performed at The Place on November 8th, I have my own clear description as to what the story line of the performance was. The young man, John, who is dragged on stage in a plastic bag by two girls in one-pound reindeer antlers and Christmas sweaters, has just been in a horrific car crash in which he runs into some deer and inevitably dies. The reindeer are shapeshifters who are welcoming John into their culture and environment which they call The North. To me, The North is meant to be a form of limbo in which the shape shifters are always stuck. John has lost his memory from the crash and is trying to regain lost knowledge through the performance while the shapeshifters try to bring him into their culture. John slowly goes insane, tries to fit in, goes through a period of denial, and finally puts on his reindeer antlers to join the shape shifters in roughly an hour of beautifully choreographed movement and dialogue. There is so much in The North that it is impossible to talk about it for only a few minutes. It is a performance worth seeing multiple times so you can pick up on new details to form a more complete analysis of what The North is, what John is doing there, and who the shapeshifters really are.