Dance that tackles life's tougher issues; ARTS DIARY.

Byline: BY LAURA DAVIS Arts Editor

A PART from that awful You Tube video of George W Bush jigging about on the White House lawn for Malaria Day, it's not often the US president is associated with dance.

But his face appears, larger than life, as part of a new piece of physical theatre being performed in Merseyside this week.

Gravitas, created by the multi award winning company Earthfall, is an exploration of the human response to war. It brings together, dance, live music, film footage and text in an hour-long performance that aims to stimulate and provoke.

"We're watching the world, the behaviour of governments - good and bad - and we're drawing on our own experiences growing up and the difficulties we had going into young adulthood," explains Gravitas director Jim Ennis, who confounded Earthfall 20 years ago.

"So the piece looks at relationships in different stages of harmony and disharmony, with the backdrop of world conflict."

The work considers Britain's "special relationship" with the US and the country's involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It also includes true testimonies of two performers describing their experiences of being locked up - one in a cell, the other imprisoned in a room by a man.

In creating Gravitas, the company read blogs written by serving soldiers. One account was by US veteran Colby Buzzell, whose controversial posts have been published as a book.

"He gave a very interesting account of being a soldier, the d around him and the friends he made in Iraq. He had a wider perspective that we were interested in," says Ennis.

"It's also about our take on how governments, under our name, end up involved in these conflicts which are futile if not very destructive."

Transforming all this information into movement was the next step in creating Gravitas.

"Take confinement for instance, if you're locked up that immediately has a choreographic result - say if you don't let somebody move across the space or if you pin someone down. "It's important to us that what we do has impact."

DANCE company Earthfall brings Gravitas to Edge Hill University's Rose Theatre, Ormskirk, tomorrow and the Unity Theatre, Liverpool, on Wednesday

CAPTION(S):

Multi award-winning dance/physical theatre company Earthfall performing Gravitas, which deals with the human response to worldwide conflicts