Having been to at least one event every day since the start of the Tonbridge Arts Festival I've started to feel just a little jaded. I'm not used to this much excitement all in one serving. Last weekend was the Book Fair, then on Monday I took a look at the Tunnel Gallery exhibition, the Big Picture on the Castle wall and the fish project over the river. Then there was the Arts Fest Quiz on Tuesday at the Chequers Inn, and on Wednesday I was compere at the fabulous Aoife Mannix performance at Mojo's Bar. How much better could the festival get? Well last night I found out as, for the second year running, I went along to the Dance Platform, organised by Hillview School, held at the E.M. Forster Theatre. For the second year in a row it didn't disappoint. I think I made the statement when commenting on the same event last year that I went along expecting a competent performance but didn't expect to be totally blown away. So this year's had a lot to live up to! I wasn't exaggerating when I made this comment because, for me, this is what art, and the arts festival is all about. It's that moment when you become totally enraptured by the event, when you sort of cloud over and become part of the performance. I know that might sound a little pretentious but it's, nevertheless, true. Last night there were many very very good dance performances and a few brilliant ones. I can honestly say that there were glimpses in some of the performances where you wouldn't see any better on the West End stage. "Aspiration" was the opening act, performed by Hillview Dance Company and, as the girls took to the stage the lights went out. Total darkness. The audience waited in anticipation of the graceful dance to come. Then there was the piercing, screeching sound of the fire alarm which couldn't have been timed any worse. The whole theatre had to be evacuated; as the audience filed out of the numerous doors from the rabbit warren that is the E.M. Forster the girls and boys coming from back stage started to mingle amongst us. We were given a tantalising glimpse of what was to come, some were in black, with eyes like pandas and skeleton paintings on their bodies, looking spooky in the darkness outside. Some had whitened faces, some had street dance baggy jogging bottoms like a scene from Fame. It took a full half an hour before everyone managed to get back to their seats. The cause of the alarm? Apparently one of the boys back stage had sprayed too much body spray in the direction of one of the smoke sensors! Enough said about that!
So the show began and we were treated to a slickly connected array of modern dance, acrobatics, wonderful sensitive movement pieces, ballet, singing, innovative use of props; and that was just the first half. I never like to single out any performances in this type of event but what sticks out in my mind as I reflect back on it are "Boys Will Be Boys" by the Hillview Boys Dance Academy who gave a magnificent acrobatic, mock-street fighting display of high impact dance, superbly choreographed and slickly executed; like a modern day interpretation of West Side Story. Brilliant. I enjoyed "Roxanne," the 1970s song by The Police, which was one of the few to include boys and girls, not surprisingly, really since Hillview is mainly a girls school. Again this was a lovely interpretation of an old favourite song of mine. "True Colours," by Commotion, a long running community Saturday dance project held at Hillview, was beautifully and gracefully enacted. We had many other superb performances like the "Madonna Remix" which began and ended with the girls striking a pose in a specially constructed picture frame, which they used to magnificent effect. We had ghostly movements, we had street dancing, you name it it was all in there. I'm sure that some of the acts had the whole range of human emotions all in one piece. The final piece, "Bombay Dreams," though was worthy of an award of some kind; it was an accomplished performance of a Bollywood style routine and very current what with the success of Slumdog Millionaire. Remember the scene at the end of the film which just breaks into a gratuitous Bollywood mass dance of all the characters for no other reason than it looked great. Well this was every bit as entertaining; we witnessed the whole stage being filled with girls in Indian outfits dancing as one to something that sounded like Shakalacca Baby (but probably wasn't!) By the end of it the whole audience had spontaneously joined in and everyone clapped as the stage filled and the dancers took their thoroughly deserved bows.
I said last year that I expected to see competent performances, after all Hillview is a specialist performing arts school but that I had been unexpectedly blown over; well this year's was an equally breath taking night. Not one person walking out of the theatre could stop themselves beaming from ear to ear and I'll still be smiling at the thought of it for months to come. If you ever get the chance to go along to a Hillview performance, just find an excuse, any excuse, I don't know, your great grandmother once went to an open day there or something, just find an excuse and go. There's no doubt about it that life would be very dull without schools like Hillview around....
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