Even if it arrived two years ahead of the Olympic Flame, Shobana Jeyasingh’s Counterpoint could well have been a blueprint for the 2012 Opening Ceremony. Instead, it was one of the early highlights in this year’s Big Dance Week, an extravaganza of more than 850 performances, classes, films, exhibitions and tea dances stretching across the capital from Stratford Circus to Richmond. Almost all are free.
The 12-minute Counterpoint was performed a dozen times over the weekend. It featured 20 women dancing in, on and around the 55 geysering jets of water that make up the vast rectangular courtyard fountain at Somerset House. Jeyasingh’s movement patterns strike a purposefully exacting balance between spontaneity and regimentation. There’s nothing small or tentative here. When the women run —