Choreographer: Mufutau Yusuf
Not being seen is one of the key messages in Mufutau Yusuf’s Impasse, performed at Sadler’s Wells for two nights as the duo of dancers keep their faces obscured from the audience for two-thirds of the performance. Continually, they are either actively masked, covering their features with their hands or dancing with their backs to the audience. This 60-minute piece about identity and existence in transitory states takes a while to warm up but ultimately reflects on the physicality of Black bodies and their imprint on modern societies.
Danced by Yusuf and Lukah Katangila, there are distinct phases to this performance, which opens with Yusuf fully encased in a costume designed by Alison Brown made from plastic laundry bags referencing the movement of people through diaspora that Yusuf discusses in the freesheet accompanying this show. As Yusuf very slowly stands, the pile of bags emerges as the headpiece of a ceremonial costume combining colours, patterns and materials that celebrate cultures and bodies shaped by symbolic travel around the room that starts to take up and use the space.
There is a long middle section with a far more obscure meaning as Yusuf is joined by Katangila, and their movements are choreographed to a variety of creaking sounds that develop in pitch and style. From scraping doors to crackling tree roots, ripped tape sounds to stone obelisks sliding into place, Tom Lane’s sound design is interesting and perfectly aligned to the stretching, contorted gestures that Yusuf and Katangila create, but the repetition becomes a little frustrating, especially when crowd, storm and possibly even war sounds, along with echoes of funeral music, occasionally appear but never coalesce.
Repetition is used to more pointed effect in the later section as both dancers – still without revealing their faces – fall into a consistent side-by-side running pattern that demands considerable stamina to maintain the exact syncopation. Both add little flourishes to their foot movement for variety, yet the rhythmic insistence of this whole section is really strong, particularly as they start to shift around one another to create patterns and movement that eventually evolves into a much more frenetic pace for Impasse.
During this part of the dance, Yusuf and Katangila finally face the audience, exploring their connection more broadly before Yusuf takes the limelight to close Impasse on a more restrained note. There is a lot going on here, both in the philosophy behind the show and the different techniques employed to convey that messaging. Some, like the black chalk dust that is trodden through and across the white flooring, speak for themselves as these creatives leave trails of their movement; other parts of the show require greater mediation through the programme notes and Yusuf’s commentary to fully decode their meaning.
But there is range and a lot of content in Impasse that makes its various phases engaging and expressive in ways that change and evolve across what is an intensive performance hour for the dancers.
Runs until 15 November 2024
The Reviews Hub Score
Intensive identity
