Review- Flawless- Udderbelly
3-2-16
By: Lizzi Wood
‘Chase the dream; not the competition’ (the dance collective’s motto) put a smile on even the notoriously hard to please Simon Cowell’s face, back in 2009, when Flawless fever hit the UK after their first appearance on ‘Britain’s Got Talent’. I’ve been a lover of them since then, and after attending their opening night at Udderbelly last night, I love them even more now!
I’ve got to be honest I’m not a die-hard fan, I love dance and there’s so many amazing companies out there that I just don’t have time to keep tabs on them all. Like many of the other companies if I saw that their show was on nearby I’d make an effort to see it but I don’t actively keep up with their progress. Because of this I wasn’t really sure what to expect from the show because I’m not up-to-date with their current work or their development as performers or as a collective, but I get the distinct feeling that even if I was I wouldn’t have been expecting what I saw. I felt like this style of performance is new for Flawless, an exciting new experiment with the Dance Theatre world, and a very enjoyable one at that.
The Guardians is based on a simple narrative of good overcoming evil but with lots of interesting twists and turns along the way to make for a performance far from simple. The audience get to join in and help the good guys to defeat the baddie, which was a definite highlight for me and judging by the laughs and cheers of the rest of the audience it was for many others too.
Their performance in Hong Kong is the premier of this show which begs the age old question of the chicken and the egg - which came first? The Asian setting or the Martial Arts?! Whether the creative team were waiting for the opportunity to create a piece that draws from Martial Arts or if the Asian setting influenced the idea (and in turn the use of Martial Arts) I don’t know, but I really appreciated the Asian theme and thought it worked brilliantly given the surroundings. I really enjoyed the juxtaposition of drawing ideas from Ancient Martial Art forms with the contemporary gaming world; at times the piece was evocative of a real life video game and I was even transported, for a brief few seconds, back to my childhood in the days when ‘Street Fighter’ first took the world by storm. A note for improvement was in the execution of some of the ‘fight’ movement. There were a couple of parts where it could have been just a little bit sharper.
The first of the stand out performers for me was ‘Steady’, the company’s Assistant Creative. He is not only an amazing dancer but he performs and entertains with every fibre in his body. His face can tell a story on its own, teamed with his great sense of physicality made his character believable and real. Another was ‘Bounce’ aka ‘Big Kris’ who performed as the bad guy. Krump is an obvious style choice to portray an evil character, not in a boringly obvious way but in a ‘oh so fitting’ way and he performed it with aggression and malice in every movement. Having said this, every single one of these men were fantastic dancers and each bring a different and unique flavour to the hot-pot!
The message at the end is inspiring and uplifting. It’s indicative of the many ‘life quotes’ that flood the internet daily, and one, which is relevant to Flawless and reminiscent of their motto. I was glad that despite the confines of a narrative performance the group took time at the end to freestyle and show off their individual skills. This allowed them to showcase their own unique dance styles and for their personality to shine through. It was a certain expectation of mine, which I would have been disappointed if it had been missed from the show.
Although overall the show is not quite perfect (yet) I have to take my hat off to Flawless for trying something new and executing it well. They perform with style and flair with undeniably amazing dance moves, trickks, flips, audience participation and comedy. It’s an all-round fantastically entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable show that I would recommend to everyone.
Flawless is playing through February 14th. For more information, click here.
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