Lullaby

King’s Theatre, 24/9/26

Jasmin Vardimon Company

Artistic Director & Choreographer: Jasmin Vardimon MBE

Co-creators & Performers: Lew Baker, Lisa Birades, Donny Beau Ferris, Thomas Kerek, Eri Magkou/Liudmila Loglisci, Risa Maki

Set Design: Guy Bar-Amotz & Jasmin Vardimon MBE

Lighting & Projection Design: Andrew Crofts

Costume Design: Dorota Wieckowska

Sound Design: Jasmin Vardimon

This excellent piece is the first dance production of the autumn season in the magnificent jewel-box interior of the newly restored King’s Theatre, where the raked stage has been replaced with a level one suitable for dance performances - a huge leap (or grand jeté) forward for dance in Edinburgh. It’s such a pleasure to be back in this lovely space, with its glowing interior and friendly, helpful staff.

Dancer and choreographer Jasmin Vardimon created her eponymous company in 1998. Based in Ashford, Kent, it researches, creates, tours worldwide, and teaches the next generation of artists. Ms Vardimon created ‘Lullaby’ in 2003 as a response to her childhood experiences in hospital and the death of her father. Twenty-three years later she re-imagined it in collaboration with her dancers, adding their experiences, taking inspiration from the earlier piece and improvising on it, and building a story with their bodies. This deeply personal story incorporates universal themes, from the opening shadow theatre scene through seemingly unconnected vignettes of life in and around the hospital, unfolding and moving sometimes gently and sometimes forcefully to the final quietus. It approaches sensitive subjects with respect and reverence, juxtaposed with unexpected humour.

Set in a hospital, the bare stage was divided by concertinaed blue paper curtains pulled back or drawn to transform the set into a variety of spaces: waiting rooms, wards, consulting rooms, and cubicles. Shadow play and video projection moved the story on seamlessly, with dancers partnered by shadows and projections as well as real people.

The six dancers portrayed different characters during the 90-minute performance. Patients clamoured to be seen, arguing and contorting themselves on and around the institutional waiting room furniture, and giving a new meaning to the term ‘queue jumping’. Medical staff dealing with uncooperative patients, with attack and response sometimes between dancers and sometimes with invisible opponents in, over, around, and occasionally under the hospital beds. An extravagantly convulsive mass sneezing session echoing Covid, but funnier. Plus an energetic dance with Zimmer frames - I will never look at one in the same way again. My companion, a former nurse, was fascinated.

The dancers’ athletic, highly physical performances transcended the limitations of the human body, dancing sometimes to music (heard and unheard by the audience), sometimes to speech, and sometimes to silence. The eclectic recorded soundscape included music by Beauty Freak, Cul de Sac, Solid Bones, and the Swingle Singers, with some beautifully atmospheric sounds, voiceovers, and variegated rhythms as the backdrop to (or catalyst for) the action.

On the opening night, a post-show Q&A session allowed us to question Ms Vardimon and the six dancers. I refrained from voicing the query uppermost in my mind ‘How on earth do you manage not to injure yourselves?’ In answer to a much more serious question about the meaning of one section, Ms Vardimon replied with another question ‘What did you think it meant?’ She wanted the audience members’ reactions to be part of the creative process.

This brilliantly bold and brutal piece advanced my understanding of dance as a vehicle for stories, questions, and for discussions which will continue long after the production ends.

https://www.jasminvardimon.com/

Photo credit: Capital Theatres, Edinburgh