One Third of a Picture
The Pegasus Theatre, Oxford
Fri 23 - Sat 24, January 2004
By Jenny Enarsson
One third of a picture, Oxford based modern dance company Biserk's latest production incorporates dance, music and film to create an extraordinary performance in three parts.

In Odd positions, the group of dancers move as if they were different parts of the same organism, breathing and shifting as one, before breaking free from one another and heading away from the group.

In L'empreinte dans le Jardin, Biserk founders Sarah Bishop and Nickely Burke perform a tender and powerful pas de deux that showcases physical strength and audience contact as well as technical mastery.

The third offering, the title piece, is accompanied by footage projected on the background, music composed especially by Christian Alexander, and playground rhymes. Dressed in brightly coloured costumes reminiscent of 1950s swimsuits, the dancers efficiently set off their different characteristics.

One third of a picture is beautiful and moving with an ever-present edge. Under the immediately aesthetic surface there is a gnawing sense of unrest which makes the work all the more interesting.
The dancers glide in and out of sync with each other, bouncing energy off one another and irresistibly drawing the audience in. A lot of work is done with glances and eye contact between the dancers, adding an extra dimension to the space between them. These force fields hold an intensity that enhances the choreography every step of the way.

One Third of a Picture
The Pegasus Theatre, Oxford
Fri 23 - Sat 24, January 2004
By David Bellan, Oxford Times Jan 04

In their new programme, which they are taking on tour, Biserk gave us two previously seen works, and director Nickely Burke’s long and ambitious new piece One Third of a Picture.

They opened their performance at the Pegasus Theatre last Friday with Burke’s Odd Positions, a piece that suits this small company well. Dressed in white, they flow through these dances to music by Bjork, Radiohead and Ghostland in Burke’s characteristic style – sometimes fluid, sometimes contorted, each dancer seemingly isolated, yet ultimately connected. Only towards the end is there eye contact between them. This is a satisfying piece, marred only by the abrupt cutting off of the music as it finishes.

L’Empreinte dans le Jardin is by Burke’s mentor, the French choreographer Herve Robbe. It is a long duet for two women, well danced by Nickely Burke and Biserk’s co-founder Sarah Bishop.

One Third of a Picture is the result of close collaboration between Nickely Burke, Christian Alexander, who has composed the eclectic ‘soundscape’, and Kasia Howard, whose film clips of columns, Roman baths with a girl in a red costume entering the water, and abstract patterns, are projected in one, two or three rectangles behind the stage. Classical architecture is the main inspiration. “The space an architect creates is so much more important than the fabric and hardware of the design,” says Burke.

It’s hard to do justice to this long work in a short space, but the three media are interlocked. There are times when the stationary dancers become architecture and the columns move; there are passages where three women in Roman garb pose as classical statues. Towards the close the voices of children shouting, and chanting rhymes from afar, give a feeling of vast spaces. The girl in the red dress floats in the pool like a bloodstain, and finally exits as Burke, alone at this point, leaves the stage to end the work.

This is a highly imaginative piece, which succeeds for most of the time in maintaining its momentum, and needs to be seen more than once to appreciate all its subtleties.