Grim(m) Desires was commissioned by The Wapping Project as a site-specific dance performance for the Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, London. The piece revisits five well-known European fairy tales, exploring their underbelly of deeply rooted human instincts, fears and desires.
Performance duration: 100 minutes (including 15 minute interval)
Performed by and created with:
Ben Duke
Lise Manavit
Raquel Meseguer
Dimitris Papakyriazis
Roberta Pitrè
Laura Wheatley
Aerial Work Consultant:
Susanne Beschorner
Music and Sound Design:
Jeremy Cox
Costume Design:
Suzanne Holmes
Voiceover Artist:
Russell Raisey
Lighting:
Mark Williams
Josh Wright
Lighting Consultant:
Guy Hoare
Set:
Mark Williams
Josh Wright
Choreography, Concept & Text:
Maresa von Stockert
Commissioned by The Wapping Project. Supported by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation.
… the British based dance-maker has gone beyond the mere interpretation of individual stories. She has taken five familiar tales and woven them into a single, connected narrative which unfolds so cleverly and with such dry humour that it presents one of the most engaging contemporary dance events of the year…
Debra Craine, The Times, 18 September 2004
This is work of magical intelligence with a grisly kick. Go be entranced.
Donald Hutera, Time Out, 29 September 2004
… Stockert has a unique way of looking at the world – both scrupulously focused and wildly hallucinatory.
Judith Mackrell, The Guardian, 17 September 2004
… a witchy piece of theatre, powerfully attuned to the building’s atmosphere, demanding great daring from six dancers, and with an amusing and often barbaric wit about the stories.
Ismene Brown, The Independent, September 2004
Von Stockert teases out the twisted psychological subtexts of each original Grimm’s fairy-tale with an uncanny synthesis of wit, humor and irony. … The movement is gaspingly daring, violent at times, gestural, highly expressive and erotic. … Each story leaves us with unforgettably disturbing images … For me, and for many others, “Grim[m] Desires” was the dance performance of the year.
Josephine Leask, Flash Review, 2004
A feeling of abandonment and dereliction prevails and there is something of an Escher influence in the surreal landscape of people running at right angles to the floor and cups and saucers sitting sideways on the wall…
Katie Phillips, The Stage, September 2004
Von Stockert has cleverly morphed these stories together to make strong narrative, a dance piece for a company of six, with the space itself as a seventh character, its walls serving as a springboard as often as its floors… the four girls echo the disturbing world of suppressed sexuality in the paintings of Paula Rego.
Robert Hewison, Culture, The Times 19 September 2004
Von Stockert is an original.
Jann Parry, The Observer, 3 October 2004
What these fairy tales have lost in innocence they make up for in maturity that knows which buttons to press to stimulate the psyche.
Times Chronicles Series, 29 September 2004
