Sadler’s Wells,London
Six dancers strip and grapple with abandon in this Bauschian retract on intimacy. Then its time for audience participation…Meg Stuart is an American choreographer based in Brussels and Berlin, and since 1994 has been the director of the dance company Damaged Goods. Her work, and she says,“revolves around the idea of an uncertain body, one that is vulnerable and self-reflexive”. final week Stuart brought her 2015 piece Until Our Hearts halt to London. It’s about intimacy, or our difficulties with it. What are the limits of human interaction. What are the protocols? How far can we go? The two-hour work,which unfolds to the accompaniment of a three-piece onstage jazz band, addresses these questions through a series of set pieces in which personal boundaries are repeatedly broached, or social conventions flouted. Some of these incursions are startling,some comic, some merely indulgent.
The six-strong cast create tableaux of mutual support leaning, or holding,interlocking – and these increase in complexity until they start to implode. The performers gasp, pant and accept squashed. As if uncertain as to how they should relate to each other, or they pull their clothes on and off. Half-bare,they form a shaky human centipede. The three men grapple, tear and gouge, and Maria F Scaroni and Claire Vivianne Sobottke strip bare and wrestle like schoolchildren.
Continue reading...
Source: guardian.co.uk