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One of the great things about the performance space in the Robin Howard Dance Theatre at The Place is the proximity of the audience to the performers and their experiences on stage. As Charlotte Vincent’s cast of ten (five men, four women and one child) present their smiling selves to their audience in the opening of Motherland, the smiles connected and felt infectious, many in the audience smiling back at them.

The opening moves into a sequence which recurs four more times before the work is over: a female performer slugs a bloodlike substance from a wine bottle against the stark white backdrop, lifts her skirts, and hovers over it. Diagonally opposite her, another woman collapses in a heap, all to the gentle sounds of musician Scott Smith at the piano.

As with this recurring scene, marking a passing of time perhaps, suggestion is everything in this work. There are comical suggestions, as when dancer Robert Clark unzips his trousers to pull out a banana, and enthusiastically eat it; there are more profound suggestions, as young performer Leah Yeger asks a seductively standing Patrycja Kujawska, ‘why are you doing that?’.

The young Yeger’s presence in the work serves to encourage the audience to see things through younger eyes: moments when she sees something she is perhaps not supposed to, or is beckoned away by another performer highlight further what it is that we are watching.

Vincent utilises her varied cast wonderfully, and the partnering we see in a slow-motion fight sequence (between two men, between two women, between a man and a woman, with an old couple dancing and a child watching) is a testimony to her trademark strong partnering material. And yet nothing was forced, or over the top, or gratuitous. There was almost a sense of containment of these clearly very accomplished performers; if anything, they were perhaps held back in terms of movement to allow a more human side to radiate through. An example of this is Greig Cooke’s idiosyncratic solo, which recurred many times, in many forms, shifting forwards and backwards, where he is joined by two men in a show of raw, shouting masculinity, and later it becomes a tender male / female duet.

There is wildly, comically-celebrated simulated sex, there is a trio of screaming female rock musicians in their underwear, there is an uplifting ensemble sequence revelling in the fertility of the Earth. There are moments of true ridiculousness, one being Janusz Orlik in a little black dress and stilettos, gyrating and screaming out graphic pop song lyrics, and moments of real human tenderness, as we hear Benita Oakley,  the eldest member of the cast, tell her story of being a young, unmarried mother. The live–voiced (by performer Aurora Lubus) ‘baby sounds’ which accompany this should not work, but somehow do: it is absorbing and emotive.

These tender moments that draw you in are rife throughout Motherland, and too often the very functional transitions into the following scene took something away from the momentum, and otherwise real cohesion, of the work.

The subject of gender and particularly of femininity is gently, comically, but very definitely highlighted. It is interesting though that the five male performers are never outwardly aggressive, dominating, or intimidating towards the women; any idea such as this is simply implied, or suggested. It is suggested through sequences such as when musicians Alexandru Catona and Scott Smith stand either side of Patrycja Kujawska shouting, calling for ‘a virgin and a whore’, a woman ‘in control, but not too controlling’, ‘mother material, but not a single mother’.

The issues that Motherland explores are all issues we are aware of, all things that we are aware we ought to change. Not needing to give us any new information, what it does do is gently nudge these ideas and stories to the forefront of our minds. In an entertaining, emotive, albeit rather long two hours, it gives them a human face, it highlights how ridiculous things have become. And through astute casting, and giving only just enough away, it successfully, quietly questions the effect that all this has on our future generations.