After the first piece there was dead silence, until someone said “maybe we should clap now”, and everyone did. It wasn’t reluctance to applaud but the sheer power of the performance that left the entire audience unable to move or speak. Extending the moment when someone says “I’m leaving you” in a controlled and beautifully worked sequence of movement and expression, Daniel Somerville showed exquisite control and emotion. It was breathtaking stuff – impossible to recreate in words, as you might expect from a journalist turned performance artist. It’s as hard to categorise as it is to describe, because although you can refer to Butoh from Japan as an inspiration, labelling doesn’t do the piece justice.
The words were there too in the third piece My Egypt Stories which is a strange but effective fusion of dance, spoken word and operatic song. And the second explored the experience of loneliness, crafting and exposing feeling through the movement and music. Somerville makes sparing use of simple accessories, the dry ice, incense, the bubbles, white body make-up to create a multi-sensual more than a multi-media experience, everything tuned to work together. The music, soundtrack, again call it what you will, was evocative, intricate and beautiful to the ear. At the beginning of the second piece he says “I’m not a dancer, an actor or a composer...”, but the works encompass all the skills and magic of these professions while still, somehow, slipping in-between their definitions to produce something that was new, powerful and fresh.
- Bill Parslow, TOTAL THEATRE