The director of the Swiss Cultural Festival ‘Origen’ showed a good instinct for choreographic talent when he tracked down Isle of Wight native Robert Robinson after having come across 1 of his short dance videos on the web.
Giovanni Netzer, who runs the annual festival in the beautiful canton of Grison, then spent several years persuading Robinson to create an hour-long work for the dance section of the Summer festival.
Robinson, currently a dancer with Hanover’s State Theatre in Germany, finally accepted the offer and choreographed ‘The Artist‘s Way’, a stunning work that premiered in the beautiful medieval castle of the mountain village of Riom last week.
The work is based on Robinson’s own path in recent years when he decided to quit a soloist position with Stuttgart Ballet and went travelling to the US and South America. Free from the time constraints of a theatre job, the trip offered him eye-opening moments about the concept of time and also rekindled his passion for dance in a new way.
The piece for 5 strong and expressive dancers, also from the company in Hanover, is a subtle and sensitive exploration of his experiences, insights and emotions, presented in a way that conveys meaning on a much larger scale: the search for one‘s own path and the impact of time is interwoven in all our lives.
Seated around the intimate stage that allows a close-up view on the dancers and the dance, the audience were palpably captured and moved. Robert Robinson’s first longer work, set to an eclectic music design by Ed Shaw, received a standing ovation.
After such a promising opening in the mountains, Robert Robinson will hopefully bring ‘The Artistˋs Way’ to the Isle of Wight in the not too distant future.
