Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Rachel McBride.
We find ourselves constantly developing ways in which communicate with those in our lives that we love, that we occasionally get frustrated with, and every so often cannot fathom why they became cross and upset with us; communication is key, but when we find ourselves in silence, when faced with no interaction, when all we have become is mark in the credit score of life, then we find ourselves looking for other ways to express our souls, even at the cost of our lives.
History hasn’t changed really, many still feel unwanted, the lives of some woman in the world always dependent on the partner they have had chosen for them or even the once love of their lives becoming cold, distant, stopping out later and later and when they finally appear in the house, the unresponsive chill of the unspeaking tyrant is ever present.
Sometimes the stand is overwhelming, the parallels between certain moments in time is something that cannot be ignored, and when the dance between two souls stops beating, it is surely the point, the resolution of frustration, to stamp your feet, sing out loud, create a scene, in which the other person might ask, When Did You Stop Dancing?
It is a parallel in which Rachel McBride explores with subtly, with the mixed emotions of love and abandonment, of pressure and of infuriation, that nothing has changed between the days in which the dancing craze which hit Strasbourg in the 16th Century and today’s open-ended talk of equality and openness. The dance should never be solitary, never done in the throes of angry despair, and yet as Rachel McBride plays with the audience’s interpretation of today’s world and that of every woman throughout history who has been holding her end up in the dance, that dance was a sheer force of magnetism.
It takes a certain kind of bravery to make a stand against silence, of being dismissed in such a manner that you don’t feel the warmth of the spoken word, or even the appreciation of kindness when you have been doing all you can to make life good, happy, or even if you spend your time with a face that never betrays the smile for the unhappiness you feel; when the question comes of care, of When Did You Stop Dancing? that is when the world comes back into view, that the silence is the biggest killer and if we are not careful as men, it leads to realisation that women can dance without any man.
A bold and imaginative production by What A Little Bird Told Me Theatre and by writer and performer Rachel McBride.
Ian D. Hall