Karrasekare: Igor x Moreno – The Place, London

Choreographers and Directors: Moreno Solinas and Igor Urzelai Hernando

For the first 20 minutes of Moreno Solinas and Igor Urzelai Hernando’s challenging 85-minute dance piece, it may be difficult to apply the title Karrasekare or carnival to the extended mournfulness that blends religious symbolism, men and women weeping hopelessly and a soundtrack of ear-bursting wailing that persists and persists. Over time, this evolutionary story starts to celebrate the rituals, energy and instinctual dominance of human creatures as the dancers find strength in their connection to each other. But while there are flashes of brilliance this indulgent performance art piece will often test your patience as well.

Karrasekare: Igor x Moreno opens with a standing figure in a landscape of implied waves or rocky terrain imaginatively designed by KASPERSOPHIE but nothing much happens for a long time. A clever piece of technical trick lifts a layer of this surface to reveal a scrunched white canvas across which a naked ‘Adam’ figure picks his way through the rough surface. As an ‘Eve’ emerges too, the overall shape of Solinas and Hernando’s dance starts to emerge. Although the piece is not without its digressions and fruitless cul-de-sacs, this progressive impression of humanity told through behaviours is one of the show’s strengths.

And it gives Karrasekare a number of phases that work quite cleverly in the management of dance and movement to tell this developmental story. The segue from existential despair to comedy violence is weak but there is real power in the circular movement the group adopt to slowly and deliberately collect up the rumpled sheet covering the floor, incrementally reducing its mass with shuffles and rotation until it becomes a tidy pile around which the dancers can link arms. The metaphor of human dominance over nature is strongly conveyed as the landscape that characters once gently stepped through is utterly dominated by the collective human desire to reduce and contain it.

The subsequent section involving ritual, make-up and costume also has a strong purpose, as the performers take over the remaining space to dance and celebrate their freedom. This gets a little scrappy and unpolished as the dancers tire, but the energetic chaos of the choreography and the idea that having reached peak influence, the subjects regress to earlier forms of behaviour reflected in the more scattered and disconnected nature of the dance is an interesting commentary on social disintegration.

But Karrasekare is also a highly frustrating experience, one that feels undisciplined in the application of too many ideas in a single show whereas a much tighter 50–60-minute timeframe would better serve the concepts and the performers. Too many of its sections are overlong or require extended transitions that leave the audience in limbo for several minutes while scenes are set or performers dress for the next section. It is in the performance art sections where the purpose of the show feels most adrift with the lengthy opener adding very little, while an equally baffling final section involving a long section of nakedness and water dripping from a bundle of hoisted material lasts interminably as lights go up and down for many minutes.

Despite signs indicating that no photography or video is permitted, it is unfortunate at the press showing, members of the audience were using their phones throughout and often obscuring and distracting from the performance – in a show with a great deal of nudity, greater attentiveness to the performers’ safety and consent is vital.

Runs until 11 May 204