Impermanence, Venus review ★★★★★

Bristol-based Impermanence defines itself as a dance-theatre company, whose aim is to create 'transformative, entertaining world-class productions.’ Just how entertaining is made abundantly clear by its latest programme of four new pieces presented at the Wilton’s Music Hall.

The meatiest piece, and by far the most enjoyable, is Venus, a one-hour extravaganza that gives the programme its umbrella title and makes up the second half of the evening.

It is impossible to pigeonhole it: it’s not exactly dance-theatre, as the dance interludes are few and far between (but invariably excellent), and its mixture of theatre, cabaret and a boisterous flurry of references and anarchic images really defies classification.

Venus is ostensibly about the suffragette Mary Richardson, danced by Roseanna Anderson, who vandalised the Rokeby Venus at the National Gallery in protest at women being denied the vote. Richardson would go on to lead the women’s section of the British Union of Fascists, and this is one of the startling ambiguities Venus explores.

In the process it provides a vivid, absurdist portrait of the feverish, highly creative, yet chaotic and ultimately doomed first decades of the 20th century, bringing in figures such as Martinelli, the Italian founder of Futurism and an apologist for fascism and violence; the founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists, Sir Oswald Mosley, the infamous Hitler groupies, the Mitford sisters, suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst and, of course, Mary Richardson.


Imperrmanence, Venus, Kennedy Jr Muntanga as Mosley, Roseanna Anderson as Mary Richardson. Photo: Paul Blakemore
Making full use of the split-level Wilton’s stage, seven chameleonic performers aided by recorded voice-overs and an eclectic soundtrack, which inevitably includes snatches from Wagner’s Ring, engage in a maelstrom of activity, led by Alessandro Marzotto Levy as the Martinelli figure, here presented as colourful cabaret MC (pictured top).

After almost an hour that builds up to a powerful representation of the maelstrom of the early part of the 20th century, the mood alters radically and we see Mary sitting alone in 1961 Hastings writing her memoirs and avoiding any mention of her involvement with fascism.

Venus is a glorious piece of performance.

The first part of the programme is hit and miss. The 11-minute film Feral is a melancholy elegy to our despoiled planet. It features environmental campaigner George Monbiot, and is based on his book Feral: Rewilding the Land, Sea and Human Life.



Impermanence, Feral ft George Monbiot. Photo: Jake Duncan

Cosmic Yoghurt, which opens the programme, is proof that if you shout ‘surrealism’ you feel able to throw together all manner of disconnected and incoherent elements and hope it'll somehow amount to something.

In this particular homage to the British surrealist Leonora Carrington, it really doesn’t, despite the best efforts of the three dancers: Roseanna Anderson, Mayowa Ogunnaike and Oxana Panchenko.


Impermanence, Cosmic Yoghurt, performers Oxana Panchenko, Yos Clark, Bryony Pennington. Photo: Jame Randall
Enemy of the Stars, adapted by Joshua Ben-Tovim from Wyndham Lewis’s 1914 play, is a lot more interesting. Ben-Tovim himself has the good grace to warn us that not even Lewis, one of the founders of Vorticism, knew what it was all about; but his compelling, very physical, very masculine choreography is magnetically danced by Kip Johnson and Kennedy Jr Muntanga, to Holly Harding’s disquieting score for strings; and, like the play, it can be seen as a harbinger of the carnage of World War I.