Dance

Now in its second edition, The Place Prize is the self-styled equivalent of the Booker or the Turner for British contemporary dance. The original list of 20 semi-finalists has been whittled down to five. Works by four of them were deemed to be the best by Brian Eno, Chris Ofili and their fellow judges, while a fifth entered the competition via audience vote. Alongside the £25,000 honeypot destined for the winning choreographer, at the end of each night the public awards a cash prize of a thousand quid to the maker of its favourite piece.

The evening gets off to an electrifying start with Nina Rajarani’s  clever, aptly named ‘Quick!’. An all-male cast of artfully integrated dancers and musicians firmly ushers classical Indian dance into the twenty-first-century. The slapping feet, bowed legs, gazelle leaps and thrusting arms of bharata natyam are at home in a business world setting, as is the staccato rhythms of Y Yadavan’s exciting live score. The temperature cools in Jonathan Lunn’s ‘Self Assembly’, a well-tooled duet for Tam Ward and Carly Best. Its springboard is Anthony Minghella’s facile text, a metaphorical set of instructions translated into intricate, sophisticated choreography masterfully lit by Peter Mumford.

Leeds-based Lucy Suggate’s ‘Postcard’ is a pop-driven, seaside holiday ménage à trois for Gavin Coward, Johannah Levy and James O’Shea. They and Suggate fold together sexual desire and disability with an easygoing daring. After seeing the dancers slithering over and under each other, you may never look at pink lycra in the same way again. Young, London-born Freddie Opoku Addaie devours the stage space in ‘Silence Speaks Volumes’. He and four others (including the outstanding Chris Rook) align a full-bodied, gestural movement vocabulary to Sarah Shanson’s affecting commissioned score. The result is fresh, confident dance-making from an original choreographer.

If there were a Place Prize for outstanding performer it would, by rights, go to the painfully exposed and utterly endearing Sally Marie (pictured). As the centrepiece of Luca Silvestrini’s ‘B for Body’, this topless wonder both succumbs to and transcends the pulling and pummelling doled out by a frisky pair of male gym bunnies. An audience choice fully endorsed by the judges, Silvestrini’s work is both a funny, barbed consideration of the dangerous pursuit of beauty and a brightly polished piece of dance theatre.

With a top ticket price of £15, this is good value for money; a longish but rewardingly varied night out.  Cynics might regard it as a prime example of box-ticking (black dance, disability issues, etc), whether unconscious or not. Perhaps, instead, these five ambitious mini-productions simply reflect the diversity of dance in the UK today. Critics have also grumbled about the Prize being needlessly diffuse. Why not shove the entire Bloomberg-sponsored pie of £140,000, they argue, at a single choreographer or company? The fact is, the £5,000 given to each artist to make a 15-minute work is seed money for the future.

Several young choreographers who featured in the 2004 Prize – Bawren Tavaziva, say, or Hofesh Shechter – have parlayed the exposure received and experience gleaned into significant professional career development. Beyond any individual gains, surely the Prize must be helping to raise the level of attention and debate accorded dance.

The obvious question is, of course, who will win the 2006 accolade? My hunch, like my personal allegiance, keeps shifting. It might be well to recall Robert Mitchum’s words after handing an award to a young actor: ‘Remember, you’re not the best actor, you’re only the winner.’