Leine & Roebana/Norton is a young Dutch group that came to the attention of international critics at the last Nouvelle Danse Festival in Montreal. Harijono Roebana (1955) and Andrea Leine (1966), both of whom have a strong background in training at the Studio’s Onafhankelijk Toneel, have created around ten choreographies as a couple since 1989, many of which were made in collaboration with contemporary composers from the Sound Palette group. For “Glottisdans” the duo worked with a third young name in Dutch choreography, Paul Selwyn Norton (1964), an author who has already been commissioned by both Het Nationale Ballet and the Batsheva Sance Company. The three share a dance technique that hinges on a decentralized use of movement, according to which each part of the body can be a focal starting point for action. Let’s say that an arm starts a shift of weight in space: the rest of the body follows the primary impulse, dragged along by the energy set in motion by the initial gesture. A journey during which new impulses intervene, which, having developed in other parts of the body, bring into play different paths of movement. This intertwining of influences is governed by a soft quality that recalls the type of energy of the release technique. “Glottisdans” is composed of two parts, “If we could only even if we could”, by the duo Andrea Leine and Harijonno Roebana, and “Sub Rosa” by Paul Selwyn Norton. The first is danced by five performers and is mounted on a series of solo interventions, duets, trios, quartets and quintets linked together by a continuous flow of energy. In all performers, the head provides the main impulses to the movement of the body in space. As in the first solo, played on a dance with a circular energetic tone: it is a choreography that favors contact with the ground, borrowing some evolutions from break dance (spins on the hand, low rotations on one foot) and loosening its abrupt accents in light of the energetic quality described above. During the piece each performer gives his dance a specific tone, accelerating the impulses, stiffening the arms, accentuating the off-axis movements of the pelvis. Accompanying “If we could only even if we could” is an electronic score composed specifically by Han Otten and Wieber de Boer (Sound Palette) who, after following the rehearsals of the show, have signed a music that respects the choreography, living on its own rhythms and tempos. “Sub Rosa” by Paul Selwyn Norton is a duo between a man and a woman that, despite being centered on a decentralized technique whose principles are similar to those on which the Leine/Roebana duo works, proposes a more angular movement style. Compared without any relationship of dependence to “Vita Nova” by Gavin Bryars, “Sub Rosa” is described by the author as a sort of poetic “torture garden in which two figures use the body as an instrument to determine their reality and the reality of the other”. In fact, when the two meet, they measure each other, intertwine, feel each other, touch each other with a curious and estranged attitude of mutual attention.
