11:40am Tuesday 20th July 2010
By Viv Hardwick
LET’S face it, this could be one of the biggest Olympic-inspired event to get anywhere near the North- East when the London-centric games takes centre stage in 2012.
Newcastle’s Theatre Royal gained Northern Rock and Arts Council funding for this £66,000 project, which brought together six Newcastle boxers, five Danza Contemporanea de Cuba male dancers and Dutchbased Israeli choreographer Itzik Galili for this opening effort. The creator’s nearimpossible commission was to bring together the stiff-muscled world of pugilism with the writhing whirl of elastic contemporary dance.
Calling it Embracing Shadows, there was a flash of bare bottoms in the changing room before the sound of the bell brought out the combatants of the two very different disciplines. Wisely, Galili played to his strengths.
The boxers, Lewis Morton, Lawrence Osueke, Manny Burgo Jnr, Cyrus Pattinson, Chavez Pattinson and Daniel Steel, boxed. The dancers, Yoerlis Brunet Arencibia, Wuilleys Estacholi Silveira, Edson Leonardo Cabrera Veitta, Yosell Calderon Mejias and Osnel Delgardo Wambrug, added the adventure and emotion. What it obviously needed was for just a few moments to see the two exchange roles, but that would have taken many months of rehearsal. In the few days available, there was a time to punch out a bare-chested routine where the dancers athletically flowed around the boxers’ jabs.
Finally, only one boxer and dancer acted out a finale of eternal conflict which must always be the case if Olympic boxing continues to flourish after 2012.
The perspiration-soaked participants enjoyed the applause, which is likely to ring even louder in two years when the full Cuban company returns to stage Seconds Out at the Theatre Royal to celebrate the venue’s 175th anniversary.
There will be no boxers then, but, hopefully, at least one of them will be facing a Cuban for the right to win a gold medal rather than the golden glow of artistic effort.
Earlier, the evening began with the North-East’s only world champion, Glenn McCrory, explaining how he and the Theatre Royal staff, led by chief executive director Philip Bernays, came up with the idea of boxing and dance.
McCrory has a dream of bringing Cuban boxing knowhow to the North-East “and now has got tattoos all over my arm to prove it”. He admitted he had no idea how that would involve dance or if boxers would want to get involved.
Thankfully, once again the region is punching above its weight.
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