Yesterday, time constraints yadda yadda, I saw only half of Hand in Glove, a promenade revue of Chums & Fans material performed by students from the London Contemporary Dance School. Almost inevitably, I went back for the full 3 hours today.
Longtime readers (or reader — hi Robin!) may recall that I’m a Lea Anderson groupie from way back — indeed the site name was pinched from a Cholmondeleys piece. I’d seen all of tonight’s material before, in some cases many times. But it’s been awhile — a long while in the case of Smithereens — and I really enjoyed revisiting the various pieces again. Even, sort-of, some excerpts from the tedious Russian Roulette (that video makes it look more interesting than it was). The gallery environment was cramped but amusing, the young dancers slick and adorable, and who could resist another go at Elvis Legs?
This was the second Anderson outing in a week, after a long hiatus (2011, I reckon). Last week’s was Ladies and Gentlemen at The Place, a surrealist music hall train wreck (in a good way) that had some points of contact with Dancing on Your Grave, but was very much its own, very odd, thing. Some of it was very funny indeed, some completely “WTF?”, but overall it was a welcome return in a novel form — a step out from the goth expressionist Divine David mode that mostly dominated since Egon Schiele.
A bit of post-show googling produced various things, including Lea’s own website, and also this little gem from before even my time, which I’d never seen before and feel compelled to foist upon y’all:
Sardinas from Frank Bk on Vimeo.
As an additional grace note of retro-ness, I was accompanied on Thursday evening by my favourite botanist Alastair, erstwhile WT fixture now mostly found on the other side of the world. Or lost on the other side of the world. Damn adventurers. He’s back there already, natch.
