Words by Sarah Lapinsky.
Resolution Festival 2025 opened last week with a warm welcome from Eddie Nixon, artistic director of The Place, who invited the audience to enjoy the upcoming evenings of new work with “curiosity,” highlighting the bravery and resolve of these creators sharing their premieres. Sixty freshly premiered works, to be exact, as the festival runs from 11 January through 15 February, continuing the vision of John Ashford, who created the festival 35 years ago to champion a space to share the “rawest, most untested talent.” That sentiment rings true as these triple bills showcase a broad range of themes and movement styles from classical and contemporary to physical theatre, clowning, hip hop, waacking and more.
If you’ve never attended Resolution Festival, I highly recommend giving it a try. In the years I have been attending, I always appreciate the freshness of these works — not in an unripened, unfinished sense, but more like a new recipe being tested. These creations arrive fresh from the oven and we are taking the first bite, unsure if the bottom is crispy or soggy, if it needs a pinch more salt or might still be too hot to eat.
In an age when dance is often consumed in perfectly curated, bite-sized clips on a small phone screen, the opportunity to experience a full, live work feels like a special treat. The importance of live performance should not be overlooked or taken for granted.
Now to the reviews:
ANIMA opens the festival with a striking image: a white prop in the middle of the stage resembling a vertical worm holding a human-like mask with glowing blue eyes. Bathed in a warm sidelight, performer and creator, DURAN “DEE DEE” ABDULLAH, slowly glides from the wings dressed in a billowy frock that emphasises the seaweed-like arm movements and a white painted face evoking the likeness of a clown. Stopping short of the prop, a drum-and-bass song begins as the soloist fervently embarks on a repeating pattern of gestures in a Shway style of waacking. The movement is fluid and evolving, and I was impressed by ABDULLAH’s musicality—each gesture and body resonance skillfully matching the beats, though I did question the purpose of the repetitive movements, which seemed undeveloped.
The piece appears to follow a three-part structure: in the second section, ABDULLAH situates herself behind the prop, obscuring her face. A robotic voice questions, “What hides behind the mask?” before the music returns, and she repeats similar fluid, cyclical movements mirroring the shapes with her legs. The voice—perhaps overly edited as it was difficult to fully understand—mentions something about “the weight of evolution,” a concept that landed like a puzzle I wasn’t prepared to untangle.
The third section mirrors the first, as ABDULLAH resumes the patterned movements and exits into the opposite wing as we hear the sound of rain. The classic ABA structure always makes me think: if we end the way we began, what was the significance of this journey? Overall, ABDULLAH is undoubtedly a talented performer with a strong movement style and creative thinking that I would love to understand more of.
The sound of rolling luggage, crying babies and flight delays effectively establishes the setting of LUCID ABSURDITIES, where two strangers, appearing to be a man and a woman, fall asleep as they wait for their flight. In a shared dream, we see the two act out their fears and desires, described by their inner thoughts played as voiceovers at the beginning of the piece
Again, I notice three sections. In the first, the duet repeats mechanical, cause-and-effect movements with entangled body parts, evoking a sterile, robotic quality. The transitions between sections are marked by blackouts, after which the two characters still sleep, as announcements update the remaining delay time. The return to the dream state is signified by shifting lights—pink, purple, and blue—before fading to black again. These transitions work to carry the audience along this journey, but felt like missed opportunities to work through the justification of these sections; how do the dreams relate and what information could amplify our experience of the work?
I appreciate the second section which I saw as one of the few times in the work I could recognise the female’s character bravely holding a “free hugs” sign above her head. This vulnerability starkly contrasts the increasingly forceful hugs of the main character leading into a duet of body manipulation. This dynamic is familiar in dance works, with echoes of Pina Bausch and others who explore power and control in relationships. The piece strongly depicts the male character’s obsessive, aggressive desires through the potent, manipulating movements, but I was searching for the female’s perspective in this “shared dream”. Her voiceover thoughts at the beginning of the piece expressed her wariness of this stranger, but I do not really see this expressed through her movement.
In the third section, the male character’s animalistic behavior becomes more disturbing, as he sniffs her, pulls her ponytail by his teeth and opens her mouth with his hands. All the while, choreographer and performer, TARANTISM, follows his directions with impressive strength and flexibility as she lifts into deep back bends before throwing herself to the ground. The ending, where the two characters finally board the flight, is left ambiguous, leaving the audience without a sense of closure, perhaps to add to the eeriness. While the work does well to explore important psychological themes, I wonder if there is space in this dream for two.
In OMBRA MAI FU, strong imagery takes center stage in this “journey from darkness into light.” SALVATORE DE SIMONE presents a moving opening scene as a searchlight scans a dark stage revealing a dancer frailly posed before being engulfed by a dark cloth. Light evolves in the piece to dark green casting shadows along the back wall offering a new vision of the performers’ classically informed movements. Contemporary qualities augment the movement as a circular gobo projects patterns on the stage floor.
While the light evolves through distinct stages, the performers, though performing with stunning virtuosity, were left with little exposition that left me pondering their roles, relationships and motivations in their beautiful entanglements. Although I was not able to pick up on the references to the Aeschylus Oresteia tragedy mentioned in the program notes, but that did not hinder my appreciation of the technical arabesques, impressive lifts and uplifted tours. At times, I felt lost in what I was meant to be seeing, though this did emphasize the moments where clear focus in a striking solo or direct audience engagement provided a sense of clarity within an otherwise foggy structure. The piece concludes with a satisfying cadence as the title song referencing shades plays. In all, I am excited by what I see here, and I hope to see this journey continue in future iterations.
Resolution Festival 2025 continues with performances from Tuesday through Saturday until 15 February. Tickets are available on The Place website with more reviews coming from Dance Art Journal.