The Place Prize moves ever closer to its conclusion in London this week as the five finalist slug it out for the £25,000 first prize in the worlds only contemporary dance competition where the prize is cash.
The audience for the opening shows have spoken and they have chosen Jonathan Lunn, Freddie Opoku Addaie, Nina Rajarani, Luca Silvestrini and Lucy Suggate, all suitably diverse in terms of ethnicity and gender. That’s the kind of demographic spread Arts Council England lives for and we imagine the press teams at ACE and The Place are salivating about what they can put in their brochures for next year.
Here in TheLab™ we’re hoping Luca Silvestrini wins the swag, he’s a good sort and has some serious game in the choreography dept.
Along with the results the judges for this arts orientated debacle have let some pearls of wisdom loose about just what they think of the winners thus far. Prepare yourself for some serious drivel!
Of Luca Silvestrini’s piece they said; “We fully endorse the audience’s choice – very good choreography disguised by humour”. So Mr Silvestrini not content with making good choreography tries to hide the fact he has done so by making people laugh because good choreography is something that needs to be hidden?
Lucy Suggate’s work draws the comment; “Carefully layered material, donkeys, pink Lycra and white fun-fur offer some answers to the questions that are usually silent.” if the questions are silent how can you answer them and how do you know they are questions?
Finally, Freddie Opoku Addaie’s piece draws Contemporary Dance Redundant Statement No. 3827 with; “An awkward originality and determined ambiguity surprised us into wanting to see the piece again.”
All we can say to the judges, John Ashford, Robyn Archer, Guy Cools, Brian Eno, Rose Fenton and Chris Ofili, is; stop talking bollocks, especially when people can hear you!
Article19 was supposed to conduct interviews with some of the participants, of which two have since been eliminated from the competition, but the PR company handling the setup is as hopeless as the entire Place Prize competition itself. For the life of us we cannot remember their name.
The debacle continues at The Place from the 20th September.