Desire Lines Dance Theatre
Twenty-First Century Love
Performed and choreographed by Nigel Stewart and Orla Collier
Commissioned and supported by Ludus Dance
Length: 15 minutes
Twenty-First Century Love is an intergenerational duet that explores the compulsions and complexities of love and intimacy in contemporary times.
A man and a much younger woman negotiate their relationship. Refusing to specify their relationship, the audience are invited to question their own assumptions about the dynamics of different types of love and to follow changes in who is and isn’t in control.
Does it show the development of romantic love between a man and a much younger woman who are magnetically attracted to and repulsed by each other in equal measure? Or is this a love between a man and his estranged adult daughter, or between a young woman and the father of her now absent partner? Or is this the love of two once close friends rediscovering each other after the breakdown of their long-standing friendship? Or is this just the shenanigans of two children playing at all the above?
The piece slips from abstract contemporary dance, through comical and confrontational physical theatre, to an ironic pas de deux set to 'Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You' by Engelbert Humperdinck.
Commissioned by Ludus Dance for their 50th Anniversary piece, 'Looking Back, Moving Forward', Twenty-First Century Love was created using Ludus Dance's, 'The Spark' (1994), as a source of inspiration (with the ironic pas de deux being a direct copy from the work).
'The Spark' explored the story of Romeo and Juliet through the lens of modern times and technology. Absorbing these ideas, Orla and Nigel began their creation process with a 20-minute open improvisation. As they carefully negotiated their relationship in the space, getting to know each other, discovering where the boundaries are and the power dynamics (made prominent through their difference in age and gender), a deliciously ambiguous partnership began to take shape.
See below for an extract from this first improvisation.
Above images by Tamsin Drury