Unlike painters, say, it’s rare for a choreographer to have a retrospective. But in Play, Charlotte Vincent has created her own: 30 years of work skimmed through in 90 minutes. The piece came out of the reckonings of Covid times, brutal for performers who were suddenly stopped in their tracks and forced to stay home and evaluate their purpose in life. In her programme note, Vincent paints a pessimistic picture – artists leaving the sector, the closure of dance degree courses, culture funding being cut – and what she presents on stage is a mix of the ominous and strangely hopeful.
Play is a journey through Vincent’s back catalogue, video clips on a screen, then choice scenes reenacted on stage. It’s fascinating to glimpse the worlds she’s created – wry, amusing, wistful, eccentric – and her progression as an artist, from the energetic contact improvisation of 1994’s Noli Me Tangere; to Pina Bausch-esque scenes in the early 2000s; to 2012’s Motherland and a switch into more forthright politics. Then Vincent began a series of works that used real voices, powerful testimonies reflecting on subjects including teenage sexuality (Virgin Territory, 2016/17) and the care system (In Loco Parentis, 2020).
