Inside Giovanni’s Room
Phoenix Dance Company, Dundee Rep
 

GIOVANNI’S ROOM is a James Baldwin novel wherein an attractive American in Paris experiences a loving liberation that is only viable within specific hospitality. He is already set to marry. Convention rears its head when his intended turns up. She is anticipating their untrammelled union. In her absence, there’s been physical compulsion: the breaching of societal chasms, in quest of same-sex spasms. 

Back in the 1950s many Americans, including writers like James Baldwin, found Paris less repressive than their homelands. The city would form an arena for sensual enlightenment and self-definition. Compromise and casualties could ensue on homecoming.

Inside Giovanni’s Room is now an intrepid full-evening work presented by Leeds-based Phoenix Dance Theatre. 

Does this show fully ignite? It’s hard to build dramatic suspense when, deep down, we all know what’s set to happen between the American David and the European Giovanni. At the unstinting climax of the show’s first act, the audience has to figure out what, and whether to applaud. Should we discharge a polite smattering or something more copious?

Procrastination aside, Phoenix’s skilled dancers put wiggle in the room. We witness generous arcs of spinal flex and bursts of rapidly phrased sculptural malleability. The troupe flips from individual naturalistic playing to drilled crowd conformity, without turning a hair. They work to illuminate factors that function less convincingly.

Marcus Jarrell Willis’s initiative to wrestle Baldwin’s angelic novel into dance-theatre choreography has not emboldened his signature, as far as I can see. There’s more a sense of collaborators being on the same page and a cleaving to devices that are discovered to work.

Set-designer Jacob Hughes obliges with a vast clinical box as the vessel for taut set-pieces that alternate with loaded but hard-to-call events. Tellingly, the eponymous room, a distant recess replete with chaise-longue, looks tidy: a swoon-free zone. 

There’s also a sense of responsible homage to a great writer. Punters may respond with a vibe of respectful distance. We’re not looking at anarchic risk, or the sowing of creative wild oats.

Whilst production forces usher this team directly toward admirable if hermetic competence, sideways glances are productive. Dramaturg Tonderai Munyebvu may have assisted the innovative way in which characters and their baggage hove mysteriously into view. There is an experiment with halting speech. Mark Strobel’s booming soundscape alerts us to focus with its stops and starts. 

Characters fleetingly astound with abundant dimensional nuance and abandon: dancers Dorna Ashory (the intended) in a libidinous solo prior to betrayal, and Hannah McGlashon, in the consensual fling of a duet, colour such passages with spontaneity and ownership.

Fugitive elements that tease in the moment please in retrospect. I’m determined to see Phoenix Dance Theatre tackle something else. I may also make a beeline for my local library.

On tour until June 14. For dates and tickets, see: phoenixdancetheatre.co.uk