Us

There is no need to talk about the universality of choreographic language that can equal or even surpass the expressiveness of any other artistic discourse. Thus, it would be useless to talk about how ‘Us‘ is built on the ability of contemporary dance to synthesize emotions or ideas. The choreographer Jordan James Bridge creates a brief insight into the intimacy of inter-human relationships, shaping the movements of two female dancers whose kinetic and energetic chemistry incarnates not only a hypnotic duo, but also a moving metaphor about the loneliness or the impossibility of a total sensory symbiosis of individuals looking for the perfect balance.

Recalling now and then the strategies used by some of Israel’s most important choreographers (like Sharon Eyal, for example), fluid slow motions with slight acrobatic traits captured in a black-and-white alternation of an atemporal background are enhanced by an incantatory musical crescendo, featuring two androgynous bodies that fascinate not only by their unpredictable mobility but also by their generic ambiguity with which they portray the inter-human contacts. Placed rather in the area of abstract choreographic discourse which explores, within an immaterial meta-reality contoured by chameleonic luminosity, the interpersonal links embodied by an energetic confrontation, the short film includes both soloist passages and body interactions in a well-adjusted visual and acoustic experience. The expressive plasticity of the movements blends in with the contrasts of the stage-lighting, the details and the objective perspectives provoking in the viewer’s perception an emotional oscillation placed between contemplation and inner reactivity, since one of the creator’s subtextual stakes lies in the problem of the current partnerships’ sincerity.

Adopting a relatively wide range of choreographic strategies, with slow lunges or equilibrium exercises, the vision of Jordan James Bridge focuses on the subtleties of body language through which the kinetic grammar of everyday movements manage to define our humanity itself. The protagonists of this artistic project essentialize, thus, not only in a somewhat minimalist manner the strong core of the interior of some partners with all their specific emotive fluctuations, but also the general pattern of the social gesture formula through which people express or hide their true intent. In a similar manner to all the remarkable cine-choreographic moments of contemporary dance, ‘Us’ is a subtle and magnetic experience of unpredictable dynamism that analyses through an ambivalent filter the complexity of interhuman contact.