Choreographer: Hofesh Shechter
The Hofesh Shechter Company returns to its unofficial home at Battersea Arts Centre for four sold-out performances. As entertaining and as urgent as ever, the eight dancers that make up Shechter II, young performers between the ages of 18-25, bring a touch more attitude and humour than we have come to expect from the Israeli choreographer.
While the ironically titled Contemporary Dance 2.0 is less intense than some of Shechter’s work such as Grand Finale, the sense of a controlled mass hysteria still remains. As if they are the victims of some strange medieval virus that means they can’t stop dancing, Shechter’s performers move to the same rhythm, a pulsating beat that has the dancers jerking their shoulders or throwing their hands in the air. They dance mostly together, tightly packed like a shoal of fish. Occasionally, they break into two groups, each half doing its own version of pulses and stomps under Tom Visser’s lights that sometimes throw them in total darkness.
Here and there are flashes of the macabre comedy seen in earlier shows such as Clowns where the dancers are caught in a cycle in which murder is their sport. In Contemporary Dance 2.0, four standing dancers mime whipping the other four who are half-prone on the floor. Occasionally, limp dancers are dragged off the stage as they have fainted, or died.
But there is also a lighter, more playful tone to the hour-long piece. Dancers come to the front of the stage to play air guitar, while they skip and dash around the stage as if they are in Fame, or a similar TV dance academy. The performers, in bright colours and hot lycra designed by Osnat Kelner, are certainly dressed the part as if it’s their first day in the dance studio, eager to impress and intimidate their colleagues.
Usually, Shechter’s dancers wear complementing colours, often white with red accessories, but here only one performer appears to be wearing the old uniform. In a white shirt and grey shorts, Oscar Jinghu Li stands out from the others. For an ensemble piece, he nevertheless less appears to be the lead dancer, coming to the front, eyeballing the audience with glorious disdain.
In contrast, the always-smiling Alex Haskins ensures that he makes his own mark, and his moves, especially, seem unbelievably easy, but, of course, they are not. Taking things more seriously is Chanel Vyent, and she dances as if in a trance, in thrall to Shechter’s mix of original and classical music. The beat never stops and nor does she.
None of them stops, and Contemporary Dance 2.0 is a feat of endurance for the dancers, and yet at curtain call they seem ready to do the whole thing again. With their talent and stamina, we have to hope that their next visit to the BAC will be a much longer one.
Runs until 29 October 2022 and then at Dance XChange Birmingham on 24-25 November
The Reviews Hub Score
Playful
