While Resolution! provides a platform for people's first choreographic steps, last night highlighted the difference between those who have started out as choreographers, and dancers who are dabbling in choreography.

Ieva Kuniskis's Gone To Get Milk could be described as a work about three disturbed characters, each in their own way. And a lot of oranges.

Gone To Get Milk starts entertainingly with Helen Aschauer running onstage, dropping oranges everywhere before running into the wings, followed by the sounds of urinating and a toilet flushing. We're introduced to each character in turn: Helen Aschauer battling strong emotions while talking to herself in German; Zoe Georgallis, who resorts to cleaning the floor to counter her nervous madness, and the wonderful Charlie Cooper Ford, who walks onstage apparently in mid-conversation, possibly with himself, and possibly about the orange in his hand. This develops into a dynamic solo about letting the orange go or eating it, and eventually settling for tucking it under his chin, appealing for the audience's applause. Charlie's character is perhaps the most accessible of the three, as he relies less on signature moves which don't necessarily convey their meaning.

The three dancers work together extremely well, and Gone To Get Milk successfully creates entertaining relationships between each of them - even if Charlie Ford has a bad habit of always dropping Zoe Georgallis.

Physical theatre work typically neglects choreography, so it's rare to see a work which is both experimental as well as choreographically strong. Even rarer is a piece which is 25 minutes long and doesn't feel its length: the characters and their interactions are entertaining enough that the time flies quickly, and this could easily be the start of a much longer piece for Kuniskis. For starters, we need to see more of Helen Aschauer, and secondly, Gone To Get Milk deserves a stronger ending.


Ceyda Tanc spent four months training at The State Turkish Conservatoire for Music and Dance in Izmir, Turkey, following her graduation from Roehampton University, and she has since been working on creating a movement style which draws on both contemporary dance and traditional Turkish dance.

Volta opens with dramatic flair as occasional bursts of light show dancers walking, duetting, or holding poses. The programme notes refer to a prison walking exercise, and there are a number of walking scenes at the start of Volta, interspersed between sections of dance, and also to clarify the tense relationships between the dancers.

Ceyda Tanc has created very confident choreography with committed performances by all her dancers, effectively using lighting to create a shadowy atmosphere, compounded by Seb Jaeger's evocative score. Volta is impressive in several ways, especially the use of group scenes with her dancers almost perfectly in sync - something even the larger, well-known dance companies struggle to achieve. And we all know that time and money are short when it comes to creating Resolution! works, but it's always a joy to watch a well-rehearsed piece. Ceyda Tanc is definitely onto something.


There's something about performing a work in concentration camp costumes two days before the Holocaust Memorial Day. And after seeing several Resolution! shows, opening scenes in blackout start to lose their novelty. Fast.

Nathan Goodman joined Richard Alston Dance Company after graduating from LCDS in 2009, and interest in his first Resolution! work undoubtedly magnified after his electrifying performances in Martin Lawrance's Madcap in October 2012: after finally seeing him come alive as a dancer, would Elsewhere give us more of an insight into his inspirations as a dancer?

Unfortunately, that didn't really happen: from an awkward Cunningham-influenced beginning, Elsewhere only really found its pace once it moved into street dance territory, transforming Theo Lowe and Nathan Goodman, who seemed to be less comfortable with the more traditional choreography at the start. The sole highlights were a physical duet between Lowe and Goodman, and Goodman later performing a few pyrotechnics, but that was too little in a lengthy piece with lacklustre choreography and a soundtrack of a woman gasping.