Reviews

Find out below what is happening in the world of the arts.

Hermosura

BBC Blackstaff House, Belfast

What else can you say about love that hasn't been said in song, drama and film? Argentinian group El Descueve seems to believe that it can just repeat what has been said before and, by superimposing dance, ballads, projections and dialogue, find fresh bizarreness. Carlos Casellas's final crooned words, "Que extraño la vida mía", sum up its outlook: our lives are indeed strange and what, the group asks, have we done to love?

Three couples and three relationships. Power games are at the crux of the first, playful teasing leading to biting manipulation. Even a simple "give me a kiss" becomes a negotiated transaction as the gormless man is forced to strip, wear clothes on different parts of his body, and mimic the flighty woman's whimsical fantasy. We know she doesn't mean it, of course. She is not looking for the idealised image but is simply humiliating him to gain the upper hand.

Fantasy takes a bizarre twist for the second couple as a sleazy guapo expresses his fantasies to an indifferent, drink-swilling woman. Towelling her hair becomes a flight on a private plane with a naked parachute descent until, finally, the couple settle for being poor and simple. Each described episode is punctuated with a self-convincing "and you like it!"

The final couple forgo words and, in a short duet, show their lives through constantly but softly falling, supporting and rising again, each moment captured like a snapshot by the strobe lighting.

These three stories are almost hidden in Hermonsura's scatty, short-gag structure, which bombards us with other takes on love from everyday life, from G-strings to bondage. It's all told with humour and a sense of the absurd. Soppy ballads are delivered with a Eurovision-like earnestness and monologues with a not-quite-believable sense of belief. Although co-director Ana Frenkel has in the past asserted that dance drives the work - conceptually and formally - it just about nudges itself in front of the witty dialogue here. And that final observation about our strange lives is as prescriptive as they are prepared to be. Let's take a look at ourselves.

The Belfast Festival continues until November 7th (www.belfastfestival.com)Michael Seaver

Shutter

Project Cube, Dublin

Grabbing a fold-up stool and finding a spot in the red rectangles that surround a square pit in Project's Cube feels a bit like entering a darkroom. The white surfaces of the pit turn up towards the corners like curling photographic paper and the projected images from above complete the illusion. When dancer Ella Clarke enters, sits beside us, smiles and eventually steps on to the white surface, her feet sink and the illusion is destroyed. The two-dimensional paper is, in fact, sand, and immediately there is something more at play.

As she moves on the sand she becomes more like a cartographer, as her weight and movement imprint themselves, and the final contoured surface reads more as a map of her inner landscape than an impression traced by outward movements. Her relationship to the contents of the pit is the constant mystery in the work and she seems to shy away - padding around the edge - as much as luxuriate in the sand. Although Clarke and co-creator Selina Cartmell have taken the instant still photograph as a launch-pad for Shutter, it is Clarke's restless and disaffected movement that is a more suitable aperture for their ideas.

Paul Keogan's warm-toned lighting is not just atmospheric but also keeps Clarke's image in sharp focus. As she moves a few feet away from us we are able to make out individual grains of sand stuck to her skin as we follow her faltering steps around the rim of the pit. A knotted rope and a bone are discovered beneath the sand and, with a pair of old boots, lightly suggest a context for the ideas, while Denis Clohessy's de-tuned twangs simmer underneath.

In the midst of the emotional bleakness there is a constant sense of hope in the work, and rather than bombard us with projections the internal balance between the different stage elements is kept in check. It is this subtlety of touch that makes Shutter rattle round in the mind long after viewing.

Runs until Saturday

Michael Seaver