John Parish, Polly Harvey & Mark Bruce Dance Company
Dance Hall At Louse Point
Sheffield Crucible Theatre, 10 February 1997
from the Sheffield Electronic Press, http://www.shef.ac.uk/~shep/music/gigs/pjh/
review by Ian Youngs

It’s never been any secret that Polly Harvey has always lived at the more - how can I put this - experimental, risk-taking, bonkers edge of modern music. Hell, that’s why we love her. But performing the album she co-wrote with John Parish, Dance Hall At Louse Point, alongside five contemporary dancers enacting their interpretation of the music on stage, could have been one experiment, one risk, one act of a scary bonkers Yeovil woman too far. Few would have dared to attempt this ground-breaking venture. But fewer still would have been able to pull off this culture-clash with such spectacular results as Harvey, Parish and Bruce did here.

Not one person in the audience knew quite what to expect when Harvey, Parish and the band stepped out onto the stage, the instruments set up at the back of the huge floor more used to hosting Pinter than PJ Harvey. Most of the sceptics - of whom there were a few - changed their minds after the five dancers took the floor. Two men, three women, all young, all vibrant and all dancing out an interpretation to the music and adding extra level of meaning to the performance which we did not think possible, let alone through the medium of dance. Whilst the music of Dance Hall At Louse Point was played in the background, the band became almost incidental to proceedings, with the attention shifting to the dancers. Think of it as a music video, except being performed live. The music is startling and powerful enough on its own, but with the dancers’ intricate movements another level of emotion was found, another nerve hit, and another chord struck. The body language transformed the emotions behind Harvey & Parish's music into a visual show, which instantly made these emotions much more powerful and immediate. Whether running, writhing, or acting any of the other thousand movements which are impossible to describe here, the Mark Bruce Dance Company stunningly conveyed the emotions central to Harvey & Parish’s music: love, distress, desperation, sex, terror.

The show was not everyone’s cup of tea, of course, with a few walking out after a couple of acts and one proclaiming to the whole of rows D-G that "I’ve never seen a bigger pile of shite in my life". Well, what on earth was she expecting? Oasis playing and five people po-going? Or maybe the Pan’s People reunion tour? When PJ Harvey’s got anything to do with it, you can be sure it’s going to be something out of the ordinary.

Throughout the show, most of the audience remained spellbound, not wanting to applaud until the end, in case it broke the fragile equilibrium that was building up throughout the performance. Parish built up the atmosphere with his mood-laden music, whilst Harvey, with her raw and captivating voice, would occasionally wander past the band’s boundary to confront the audience and join the dancers. Mark Bruce has the gift of being able to transform emotions into the medium of dance with as much ease and success as Harvey and Parish do with words and music. One of the collaborations of the decade? Can’t wait to see it on Top Of The Pops.

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