Vigorous athleticism and bold expression are at the forefront of a new double bill from the Alleyne sisters. In the five years since launching Alleyne Dance, twins Kristina and Sadé have developed a tidy body of self-choreographed, self-performed work, plus a bustling teaching operation that reaches far beyond their London base. Their dance language is multifaceted, blending influences as diverse as hip-hop, African-Caribbean, circus and Cunningham technique, and there’s a penetrating physicality to their performance style (both were athletes before they were dancers). These qualities find an elegant home in The Other Side of Me at the Place, London, which matches taut, gymnastic plunges with beguiling feeling.
Both works in the double bill reflect on the anguish of incarceration. Testimonies, newly created for 2019, interprets this theme loosely, exploring the personal prisons we create when we blindly shape ourselves in the moulds of others, a notion that takes on an extra layer of significance with twins. Attire becomes a cipher for identity in this duet, the pair rifling through piles of clothes in search of items that distinguish and articulate their truest selves. A silk robe hints at sensuality, while a yellow cardigan suggests serenity. A glittering jacket, on the other hand, proves vicious, dangerous, suffocating. The conceit is well-considered, inducing daffy moments of comedy along with teeth-clenching humiliations, the dancers clutching each other in solidarity when guises go awry.
Aiding their shape-shifting are catapulting slides, rapturous jumps, tumbles that invoke twisting springboard knees. The choreography wanders in tone, but the force behind it remains steady, a nuanced blend of brawn and poise. An injection of spoken-word recordings towards the end is less graceful, displacing a vibrant, textured soundtrack with on-the-nose intonations about “the prisoner of war within”.
The motif of imprisonment is given more tangible shape in 2016’s A Night’s Game, which restricts the dancing first to a wooden chair and later within a small square of light. A vigorous opening solo, performed seated amid a pall of smoke, evokes power and pain with violent, chest-thumping slaps. This ferocity is reprised when the twins square off in a collision of jolting convulsions, a screech of string music goading them along. It’s a dance of torment and reckoning, the pair finding pathos in slackened feet and crisp contractions, in cradled heads and desperate gulps of air.
Much like Testimonies, A Night’s Game starts out intense and urgent, then unfolds into something more meditative. Here, however, the reflective portion feels unsteady – an overlong denouement sidetracked by its own variance of ideas. I was itching to take a red pen to these final phrases, which trace a tangled, long-winded trail, in contrast to the red-hot body percussion of the first half. The vibrancy fades as the piece proceeds, even with the Alleynes’ bold force of expression.
Still, as the lights go up and the two clasp each other in congratulation, there’s an irrefutable sense of achievement to the evening. Whether they’re channelling shockwaves or drifting in quiet contemplation, these sisters summon an instinctive, triumphant sense of communion.