The end comes almost too fast. As if in flight, the fifty minutes are up as Finnish choreographer and dancer Susanna Leinonen explores, overrides and plays with the laws of gravity in her 2014 performance “Touch of Gravity”.
It is a grippingly choreographed dance, beginning with a kind of big bang and illuminating different facets of natural law in the universe: gravity as a gravitational force shows its effectiveness during a dance sequence on a sloping wall. As a focal point, rising above the “mass” of the group, gravity begins to affect the individual.
Susanna Leinonen mixes elements of classical ballet with contemporary dance. Especially impressive are those scenes during which the six dancers unfold in unison, in the collective elegance cast in fluid movement. Simple as well as sophisticated, the trick with black tights seems to make their legs disappear into the darkness of the stage, thus creating the illusion of impossible bodily shapes.
Light effects and sometimes seemingly mysterious and threatening sound underline the dense atmosphere. Costume changes are skilfully copied in the haunting video sequences: breaking pieces reveal the destructive nature of gravity. Dancers hover in freefall – until they fall powerlessly out of the frame and thus out of sight of the viewer. As the almost never ending applause proved: “Touch of Gravity” left no one unmoved.