Co-Directors: Dan Daw and Stef O’Driscoll
Built around 15 words and phrases, dance and music styles that are placed across a single club night with friends, the collaboration between Candoco Dance Company and Dan Daw Creative Projects, Over and Over (and over again) is an exploration of all kinds of individual and collective experience that shape the lives and perspectives of the five-strong dance troupe. The mix of high and low energy segments sometimes creates pacing issues, but this show, co-directed by Dan Daw and Stef O’Driscoll, succeeds more often than it falters.
One of the reason for that is the consistent visual impression created through Erin Guan’s staging on the flat floor space of Sadler’s Wells East, the evolving lighting schemes across the performance and the breadth of Guy Connelly’s club-based score that covers everything from house and jungle to drum & bass, R n’ B and grime, giving the dancers a huge range of pieces, beats and rhythms to respond to. Nao Nagai’s lighting creates shadow and intensity using spot and rod lights to give depth and energy to the movement, particularly in a showcase moment when the embellished silver costume worn by one of the dancers becomes a blazing glitterball.
The central spine of Over and Over (and over again) is well managed with strong storytelling as the group of revellers enjoy the peaks and troughs of a night of dancing. Some of the chapter titles indicate that trajectory, explaining what the audience is seeing or is about to see, including activity descriptors like ‘break’ and ‘chill-out’ that create a programmed period of respite before they get their ‘second wind.’ Other section headings capture the feeling of the dance or life itself as the performers are experiencing it with ‘abandon’, ‘shake’ and ‘hard’, joining the music and choreography together as the friends party strenuously.
Connection through dance and friendship is the common theme and, however the chapters appear, they are represented in Daw and O’Driscoll’s show through constant touch, often showing the dancers in a mass, leaning, hugging, protecting one another, comfortable in their fivesome. And the words reflect this too, ‘unity’, ‘solidarity’ and ‘love’ describing the feeling of integration. Some of the segments seem to exist more for variety than narrative, with a long piece about ‘desire’ that is part of the rave experience but doesn’t feel as conceptually worked through as the rest of the show.
Sometimes that balance between group, individual and multi-performer sections is also missing, pieces created to give – nonetheless excellent disabled and non-disabled performers – Anna Seymour, Annie Edwards, James Olivo, Maiya Leeke and Temitope Ajose a solo sometimes upset the pacing while their placement is variable, taking energy from the show that takes time to recover. Across the 60 minutes, like all big nights out, the enthusiasm wanes and, as the lights go up, everyone’s ready to depart. It’s been fun, it’s been challenging, there have been moments of glory and things you’d rather forget; it is never the perfect night out you expected.
Runs until 4 July 2025
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