Review: Mission Possible - Lads and Dads Move!, The Place

Written for Culture Wars

Looming large for any abstract investigation of gender are the dangers of stereotyping. After all, in taking maleness as its subject, Mission Possible attempts to capture something of a property shared by forty-eight percent of the world’s population. The attempt to generalise, to pin down some universal quality or other, is met by almost three and a half billion messy particularities, each proving an exception to the rule.

The three short pieces that comprise State of Emergency’s latest offering tackle this problem with varying degrees of success.

Jeanefer Jean-Charles presents the most hackneyed version in It’s A Boy – an exploration of the moment of response, where two alternate paths open: ugly violence and peacefully amicable. Using an unashamedly modish urban physical language in which House Dance combines with a jaunty contemporary style, Jean-Charles suggests a pack mentality that overtakes individual decision-making. Here maleness bubbles over into a picture of competitive masculinity – chest-puffing and chin-thrusting – that aims to undercut and humiliate. Respect comes from others rather than the self, bred from image rather than self-worth. With masculinity imposed and imposing the animal male begins to resemble stags immersed in a courtship ritual without an object over which to do battle.

Wilderness proves a playfully tender piece concerned with the father-son relationship set around a weekend camping. In aiming at loose narrative, however, Kwesi Johnson blurs the picture somewhat with a third dancer playing a range of hazily defined roles around the parental dynamic. That said, there are flashes of real wit and invention in the choreography; not least in the charmingly performed duet between Carl Harrison and a tent, whereby the lightness of the latter provides a joyfully contrasting accompaniment to the human body. At times, the tent escapes Harrison; at others it chases him, like a nightmarishly springy slug tracking its prey. Occasionally, the two merge to become a single animal, before separating as if by mitosis. In spite of this, Johnson’s piece feels slightly piecemeal and its tendency towards overplayed humour leaves it feeling slightly weightless.

In contrast, Colin Poole’s 4s:kin is a densely packed and intoxicatingly pure piece that, in spite of throwing the widest angle on gender in focussing directly upon it, presents a swirling picture of maleness. Solely reliant on the interplay of male bodies and light carving up the stage, 4s:kin achieves a mixology of masculinity and femininity that combines to form a vision of classical Man. With muscles arched and heads held high, whether grappling in wrestled combat or comradeship, the company seem to have stepped from a Greek Vase or biblical illustration. Poole instils a nobility, a majesty, a mischief and, moreover, a deep-set attractiveness into the male form and mentality that swells with grounded self-confidence.

Rather than overlaying symbols of character as Jean-Charles and Johnson do, Poole is content to use his dancers as the men they are, as examples displaying something altogether above and beyond themselves. Through the elasticity and stillness of these bodies, we glimpse real personalities and, more than that, the suggestion of a universal or abstract term sharing the space with us. In this, 4s:kin confirms itself a complex, passionate and thrilling piece and marks Poole out as a choreographer at the top of his game.