Choreographer: Lizzie Klotz
Music: Jayne Dent of Me Lost Me
Entering a yellow hazy space, with colouful duvets piled onstage and in the seating, it is clear Abundance is a work interested in softness, comfort and play. As the piece begins one of the dancers speaks to the audience, inviting us to rest on the duvets in the seating, introducing the playful movement to follow, giving some context to the musician onstage (Jayne Dent of Me Lost Me), and the live captioning projected on a sheet behind them. By neatly incorporating the accessibility elements as another element of creative staging, choreographer Lizzie Klotz subtly extends a warm welcome to a broader audience. It is refreshing to see this inclusive approach in action.
The six dancers (three professional and three volunteers) make up this strong intergenerational cast. They begin by building a soft landscape of mountainous duvets, shaping them into peaks, and then squishing them as the log roll over them one at a time. Soon the cast have gathered their own duvets and start to spin with them flopped over their heads and upper bodies, becoming half duvet, half dancer. The duvets are a versatile prop, used interchangeably as set, costume and props. They take on almost a life of their own throughout the performance, culminating in their suspension above the stage during some floating duets.
The bubbly electronic score highlights the imaginative tone of the choreographer, looping Dent’s voice and varying in intensity. A particular highlight is the duvet organ section, where the sensors of the instrument have been set up so she can play the duvet she is sitting on. Once the live accompaniment shifts to something more ambiguous, as we see a great singular pile of duvets begin to collapse in on themselves. This collapse transitions the piece from a higher tempo moment to a restful state, where birdsong is introduced into the score.
A recurring visual motif is limbs poking out of duvets – this obscuring and confusion of the body puts so much personality into the duvets and really effectively engages the imagination – what could these duvet creatures be? The effect comes to a weird and wonderful crescendo with a two performer lift, duvet obscuring all but four feet of the two dancers as they slowly rotate.
Overall, the dance feels reminiscent of childhood sleepovers; taking over a living room, building forts, playing games, causing a bit of chaos with friends before sprawling into sleep. Definitely, a dance worth rolling out of bed for.
Reviewed on 10th July 2026
The Reviews Hub Star Rating
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8
