One word to describe Table manners? Unfulfilling.
Avant Garde Dance’s three person show advertised itself as an exploration of ‘the complexities of human relationships and behaviour when it comes to our very different cultural connections with food and dinning’, a concept with great potential that attracted a sizable crowd at The Broadway on Friday afternoon.
The show had its rough edges as any experimental piece expectedly does, yet the numbingly loud music, awkward prop adjustments and poorly timed miming of eating and speaking were hard to brush aside. The dancers did show impressive beauty and energy in their movements and were clearly extremely talented in that regard, yet the forty minute show as a whole felt unconsidered with moments of delicacy tarnished by sloppy changes between scenes.
Whilst watching I couldn’t help but think that even if the issues mentioned were remedied, Table Manners would still be underwhelming as its theme of food felt like just that, a theme, a thing to base work on rather than create work from.
At one point in the show the actor dressed in yellow grappled with an apple, seeming to question how it enters his body and becomes part of him – that moment of epiphany could have led the whole show rather than the collection of sketches and scenes that only featured food. A core image, a question to be explored, to drive the piece and give it purpose was lacking in Avant Garde dance’s show and sadly it left me unsatisfied and uninterested.