The rollercoaster of romance, real and imagined, provided the literal and metaphorical backdrop for a new work, from choreographer Luke Murphy.  His very physical duet piece with Carleye Decker seeks to ride the see-saw rhythm of love and rejection to a constant video projection of Hollywood images and its narrative of love and heartbreak.

The splicing of schmaltzy film scores and the video excerpts - slickly produced by David Fishel - with the live performances, often humorously underlined the small stories being played out on stage; expressions of longing and heartache, intimacy and betrayal.  Murphy chose both an illustrative and a deconstructive style for his dance, where these celluloid truths are then re-enacted or even interacted with by the dancers, as though life sought to imitate and interrogate art and find the key to a happy ever after.

Watching Rhett Butler’s withering goodbye to a disconsolate Scarlett O’Hara and Bogart’s throwaway  exchange with Casablanca’s Ingrid Bergman  may offer ironic undertones for a  modern romantic dilemma, but saturation in these screen images sometimes overwhelmed  the dance.  A pity, because especially in enacting the dark side of romance- the anger and frustration, Murphy’s dance-making can match sharp words with edgy moves any day. There is edited pace and clean lines in Eckert and Murphy's passionate,  full force body exchange and their lifts, body wraps, floor tussles are handled with a mesmeric control, equally as arresting as anything on screen. 

Star rating: ★★★★