The tiny Ustinov Studio at Bath’s Theatre Royal has, under the direction of Deborah Warner, been a crucible for intimate and varied theatrical experiences, including a trilogy of danceworks commissioned from choreographer Kim Brandstrup, inspired by Greek myths. Its concluding part, Echo and Narcissus, is a short work, exquisitely formed and performed. It is preceded on this programme by a replay of Brandstrup’s 2014 dance film Leda and the Swan and a live recital of Britten’s Six Metamorphoses after Ovid for oboe, played by Judy Proctor. Each serves to set up the main piece, the solitary voice of the oboe wandering through timings and tonalities, the film built upon a disjunction, indeed a dysfunction, between desires.
In Echo and Narcissus, those disjunctions are not only narrative (Echo’s desire for an indifferent Narcissus, Narcissus’s for his own unfeeling reflection) but also sensorial: throughout, sight and touch are counterposed, one marking distance and perception, the other marking connection and corporeality.
