17 June 2025
How do you translate a well known book into a dance piece? How do you define complex relationships when pages of text have to be distilled to just a few dance moves? Broad strokes are inevitable. But unless you bought the programme for Phoenix Dance Theatre’s latest full-length narrative work, Inside Giovanni’s Room, and read it before the performance, you would have little idea exactly who is who outside of the two main protagonists.
Does that actually matter? I think it does. And it detracts from gaining maxmium enjoyment.
Giovanni’s Room is a seminal 1956 gay novel by the black American writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin. It chronicles the life of David, an American man living in Paris and his feelings and frustrations with his relationships with other men, particularly an Italian bartender named Giovanni whom he meets at a Parisian gay bar, while his fiance, an American woman, is away travelling in Spain. Baldwin’s novel – controversial in its day – was a torch bearer in dealing with homosexuality, bisexuality, internalized homophobia, social alienation, identity, masculinity, and manhood. Good luck distilling that into a coherent dance piece!
Created by Phoenix Artistic Director Marcus Jarrell Willis to celebrate Baldwin’s 100th birthday, Inside Giovanni’s Room has a few moments of explosive beauty, notably in the intimate duets between David (Teige Bisnought) and Giovanni (Dylan Springer) and the steamy sex scene that closes the first act and in the joyful Parisian nightclub dance scenes involving the whole cast , which pulse with a terrific energy. But elsewhewere the story and characterisations get a little fuzzy.
Lighting Designer Luke Haywood’s short bursts of light and darkness, illuminating the passage of time and the twists and turns of the central relationship, are a great plus to the production. As are stylish costumes by Melissa Parry. The set (designed by Jason Hughes) with Giovanni’s ever present room centre, a place of intimacy, love and desire, but also the physical embodiment of confinement and shame.
A near miss with a frustratingly confusing narrative.
