Clinkard’s style in this work comes with a light hand preferring simplicity over a more overwrought approach. “Ordinary Courage” typically explores the theme of loss motif by motif, one section running, one section linking arms, one section shaking. Some are a little stale, utilising run of the mill contact-improv and release work (though superbly executed by the cast). Other motifs are more engaging, particularly the weighty solos that are a through-line in the work. “Ordinary Courage,” while mostly a little more detached, does reach tender places on occasion with emptied gestures of embrace or bystanders contemplating whether or not to aid others in crisis. Clinkard’s interest in the communion of individuals is perhaps most potent. At the end of the day people really are all that we have got.  

Closing out we enter the heated world of athletics with Alessandra Seutin’s “Untamed.” Inspired by runners and racing, Seutin manages to fill the work with very little actual running, preferring spritely jogs, weighty slumps, and campy shuffles. Made on the dancers she finds all the best ways to exploit their gifts (remember that gooeyness I referred to earlier?). Seutin’s style is a little uncanny, a chewed-up and spat-out mash of images and metaphors—I mean this as a compliment. There are shows of bravura in triumphalist poses and sweatier moments of languid bodies like melting candles. A little like marathon runners in slow motion at their 42nd kilometre.