Platform souls

dance : Resolution Place Theatre, London

Resolution! is The Place Theatre's annual platform for the brave, the foolish and, of course, the resolute. Open to choreographers who believe that the chance to show their work outweighs the risk of presenting it themselves, the season attracts more wannabe participants than it can accommodate.

And while the mainly young, unknown choreographers - for whom Resolution! is primarily designed - may be advised to keep £200 in reserve (just in case), they are unlikely to need it: most Resolution! evenings are shared between three companies, and if each can sell just 40 tickets, the cost of hiring the theatre will be covered.

Resolution!, by its very nature, isn't really critics' territory: it's a jamboree bag affair whereby you pay your money and hope to strike lucky. Of the nine companies I saw last week, Remnants and Nic Sandiland left the strongest impression. Remnants, atrio of Rambert dancers led by Ted Stoffer in his Honoris Causa (for the sake of honour), provided pure dance-without-frills relief. He, Steven Brett and Margrete Helgeby elucidated the work's latent quirks; former Cunningham dancer Emma Diamond, in herown choreography - Lock Stock and Barrel and Polyphonic Dialogues - somehow neutralised the protean clarity of her own dancing. Although her work is full of movement, ideas, Diamond and her co-dancers, Suzanne Thomas and Antonia (the fledgling ballerinain Fame) Francesci, looked stiff and unengaging.

Sandiland's solo, Relativity, was an elegantly constucted interactive work in which location was relayed via crisply beautiful film images while Sandiland slowly discovered and established his own presence in these environments, enacting the processes ofmemory through movement.

In stark contrast to the authoritative introversion of Sandiland's work came the amusingly deranged acts of Penzani's Italian housewife in Ma mi . . . and tomboyish female trio b sharp in to next to. Neither of these works suggested new choreographic talent on the horizon. But watching Penzani stuff her face with tomatoes and derive sensual ecstasy from rolling around in the half-masticated, disgorged mess, or b sharp's hair pulling, clothes-tugging horseplay, you were at least treated to the sight of women behaving badly - a rare but heartening occurrence.

n For details of `Resolution!' and `Dangerous Corner', see listings below