The night of Tuesday 15th January at Resolution! 2013 opened with Chris Pavia's Captured by the Dark, a fitting title for this eerily-staged duet between dancers Hannah Sampson and Tomos Young (both of Stopgap Dance Company, as is Pavia).

A relationship is instantly set up between these two performers, the intensity of Young's gaze highlighted by Sampson covering her own eyes. There are human touches and subtle nuances of weariness or urgency that give a sense of real connection between the performers: a satisfying extra layer to the sometimes quite stark movement material.

Young’s physicality is eternally watchable, and with Sampson’s fluidity and natural energy, the two meet in some occasionally tentative, but often tender moments of contact and interaction. Such moments are highlighted to great effect by Sarah Gilmartin’s lighting design.

In an unexpected shift in energy fuelled by Dougal Irvine’s engulfing score, the work becomes somewhat cartoonesque. The two dancers do well to fill the stage, and there is a constant sense of there being more than just the two of them in the space.

In a circular structure, the piece calms once more, referencing earlier movement, now in a (quite possibly deliberate) unrelenting way. The final image is strong and memorable, an apt punctuation to this intriguing and carefully thought out piece by Pavia.


The shadowy visuals, sudden changes and stormy soundtrack are all themes which continue into the second piece of the night. Tom Bowes' Brute presents a quartet, satisfyingly united in their various black garments and boots, gradually dispersing from the downstage left spotlight. 

The dancers twitch and pull together and apart, through some almost stilted exchanges and some moments of real connection in unison. A recurring theme of hands reaching and plucking at the air relates perhaps to the sense of ‘decision and discovery’ detailed in the programme note, although there are times when this, and the periodic upward focus become affected and unexplained.

The piece is at its strongest when all four dancers move individually, but in close quarters and with real conviction. ‘Brute’ seems to end just as swiftly as it began, with a sense of things being left unseen or unsaid.


Mazzilli Dance Theatre’s For How Much begins (though we didn’t know it initially) with the audience being accosted by a comical, yet slightly unnerving and manic gentleman in the foyer during the interval. He ushers the already intrigued audience back into the auditorium where the stage holds eight performers, a pianist at his piano, and piles and piles of clothing.

The one male and six female dancers surround the man we first met in the foyer, and from this tumbling flock of bodies, troubled solos break out and return as the momentum builds to a fighting energy with satisfyingly messy exchanges of weight. Andy Higgs’ accompaniment to this, both live and recorded, is beautiful.

The juxtaposition of the comical and the sinister running side by side throughout this work is used to great effect, particularly in a colourful ‘family portrait’ moment, where fixed grins become manic and a dancers begin to paw at each other with increasing urgency.

The piece moves on at a pleasing pace, and is at its strongest in moments of suggestion relating to the themes of human trafficking and forced labour. One solitary dancer is burdened with piles of garments, and a fluid and feminine quintet displays further sensitive choreography by Annarita Mazzilli.

As the work draws to a close, the title ‘For How Much?’, is clearly referenced, as gradually every performer moves through the space with handfuls of coins: shaking, dropping, scrabbling, spinning, stealing, donating, caressing and rolling them until the one solitary dancer remains, still and alone.

I left feeling inexplicably haunted by this last piece; and with an overall sense of satisfaction from my first outing to this year’s Resolution! platform… I look forward to the next!