SOON after he started making his own work, Mark Murphy was pounced on
as a fresh new talent by critics, audiences, and -- most importantly --
by funding bodies. He founded his own company, V-TOL, and became a hot
property on the touring circuit where his fast and physical style of
choreography continued to prove popular with audiences.
But -- and there is a very big and sadly serious but -- his
choreography has not developed or even sustained its early vitality and
the new directions he has chosen to follow, particularly the integrated
use of film, are disappointing, partly because they often make the dance
seem irrelevant or even an afterthought.
32 feet per second per second, his latest work, reflects his interest
in film noir. Its opening image is of a man falling -- James Hewison
spinning in a harness while behind him, floor after floor of a
multi-storey building blur past. The company then appear -- on film. A
hotel becomes the setting for various encounters of a depressing kind.
It seems as if his own excitement has been not in the dance but in the
making of the film, of being able to send the camera whirling and
spinning at a breakneck speed beyond the scope of human bodies.
Nothing falls faster than one's spirits when a work like 32 feet
arrives on stage, full of pretensions, containing very little good let
alone innovative dance, all this being made to look better than it is by
the hard work of the performers.
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