Solo Independents

ORLA Martin's witty and self mocking poem about a relationship, The Morning After, despite the author's tendency to drop her voice so that the humour was hard to hear, set the mood for Saturday night's Solo Independents, the Firkin Crane's celebration of International Women's Day in dance and poetry.

Alexandra Diana also suggested a changed, relationship in her sophisticated dance Adios Nonino, which could have figured in a Cochrane revue. To Astor Piazzola's piano piece her reactions were emphasised by changing colours on the cyclorama. The relationship revealed in Lost Moments by recorded dialogue between the Portuguese composer Nuno Rebelo and dancer/choreographer Cindy Cummings was less clear, punctuated by the composer's manic laughter and with the performer's body sometimes hard to separate from the video of his face, though often nicely echoing the curve of his projected hand or performing a duet with her own shadow.

Maire Bradshaw gave a triumphant reading of High Time for All the Marys, in honour of the President, but I was less comfortable with Mary Nunan's Dialogue, as she moved to a parody of the Lord's Prayer, pleading to be delivered from the evil of mass appeal. Christine Michael sang her poem, Who Made the Rainbow, enchantingly, to her own guitar accompaniment, and Christina Svane O'Haire talked of her unborn child in Me and Big Mama, failing for me to suggest her vision of space in dance to a Miles Davis score.

Adrienne Brown's The Well, a fusion of dance and poetry well staged at the Project in 1994, was cancelled due to Ella Clarke's illness, so the evening ending with its best realised dance performance: Diane Richardson in her tribute to the late, great tap dancer Charles "Honi" Coles, set to Brian Hughes's Latin flavoured score.