Paseillo

Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Choreography by Javier de Frutos

Stage and Costume Design by Jean-Marc Puissant

Lighting Design by Michael Hulls

Costume Supervisor: Sasha Keir

Costume Maker: Sasha Keir

Images © Gavin Evans courtesy of Phoenix Dance Theatre

The Independent by Zoe Anderson

Paseillo is frilled and ruffled with ironic detail. Jean-Marc Puissant dresses the men in ecclesiastical-looking robes, which doesn’t stop them snogging each other. Women stop and shake, as if possessed. There are vivid moments of dance, and of drama. Limbs swing boldly under those robes. In the last duet, two men dance forcefully, bending and grappling. Then one steps back, turns away, settles his costume. But before he leaves, he sniffs his own hands, aware of his partner’s touch.

 

The Telegraph by Mark Monahan

An elegant exercise in wrong footing (liturgical Mozart blazing through the speakers; Kilroy Was Is Here scrawled at the back; bout-style “Round” placards brandished), Paseillo is like a complex string of intimate comings and goings in some nameless market square – hence, presumably, the title, a bullfighting term meaning “opening parade”.

 

The Times by Debra Craine

Set to sacred music by Mozart juxtaposed with the Hawaiian song Aloha ’Oe (all recorded), Paseillo is a hotbed of sexual intrigue and lush couplings, both gay and straight. The seven dancers are swept up in almost stately expressions of passion, rivalry and jealous confrontations, delivered in rounds like a boxing match. Jean-Marc Puissant contributes a striking set.

 

The Independent on Sunday by Jenny Gilbert

Using a scratchy old recording of a little-known sacred oratorio by Mozart, the piece evokes the cloistered world of a religious institution, the men dressed like priests, the women as Victorian school-mistresses.

 

The Observer by Luke Jennings

The men seem to be dressed as Sufi princes, the women as governesses. The exchanges are elaborate, fragrant and homoerotic, with the men tongue-kissing each other even as they hoist the women into the air above them.

 

The Guardian by Judith Mackerel

Set to an ancient scratchy recording of Mozart’s Litaniae de Venerabili Altaris Sacramento, this evokes the secret world of a remote religious institution, the men dressed like priests, the women as governesses.

 

Sunday Express by Ian Palmer

The action, with its courtly sensibility, unfolds on what might be a boxing ring; each scene preceded by card held aloft, bearing the number of “The Round”. It is, simply, the most beautiful new work I have seen this year (…).

 

The Sunday Telegraph by Jenny Gilbert

Using a scratchy old recording of a little-known sacred oratorio by Mozart, the piece evokes the cloistered world of a religious institution, the men dressed like priests, the women as Victorian school-mistresses.