As a company of variously abled and disabled dancers, Candoco generally presents choreography that has been created for its own performers. Set and Reset/Reset, a transposition of Trisha Brown’s classic Set and Reset (1983), is a masterly exception to this rule, and in the 10 years since it was first performed has become something of a signature work for them.
Why does it hit the sweet spot? Certainly Laurie Anderson’s obstinately pulsing score, and the translucent set and costumes (after Robert Rauschenberg), are delights. But fundamentally, it is down to Brown’s impeccable composition. On the surface, it has the air of happenstance: loose swings, casual lopes, fly-by encounters, a curve here, an angle there, the odd ricochet or trip. Underneath, a lively coherence is in play. Lineups of dancers keep coalescing and dissolving. Circular runs, dropped elbows, frog-jumps, near-misses: everything and anything becomes a motif that can be echoed and refracted, the open-winged stage becoming a game between the random and the regular. Rather than adapt the choreography to the performers, here the performers can happily adapt themselves to the choreography, and no matter whether they’re spinning a wheelchair, swinging a crutch or just extending an arm, it all [...]