![]() The lines of her movement harden, her gaze becomes direct, and she acquires an entirely different range of gestures – brisk, functional and mechanical. However, as soon as she puts on a suit of male clothes, everything changes. He is the controlling partner who manipulates and lifts her, and at moments this coupling degenerates into a brutal display of power, as he flips, throws and twists Rosalind around as though she were a doll. The duets she dances with Orlando are equally traditional. When we first see Rosalind (alone and with her double) her dancing is as feminised as her dress, delicate tendrils of movement with which she seems to cradle herself into a small private space. ![]() During the course of the work a new language of sexual fluidity emerges, which is mirrored in the narrated poems of Sabrina Mahfouz, in the (drastic) stylistic shifts in Seymour Milton’s accompanying score, and in the dancers’ quasi-modern, quasi-Elizabethan costumes. All four morph through several changes of gender as Cousins choreographs them in an adroit succession of doublings and couplings. ![]() ![]() There are just four dancers on stage, with three of them (including a man) taking on the role of Rosalind and the fourth representing Orlando, her lover. ![]()
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