Sadler’s Wells, London
May 11, 2023
Gothenburg’s Dance Company makes a welcome return to London. The company enjoys a position on the cutting edge of new dance and this programme proves its status.
Damien Jalet, choreographer of Skid, gravitates in a world of top creative minds working in a variety of mediums including film and opera. His vision of dance is borderless, and he seems the right man to place dance on a slippery slope and stimulate questions about the human condition.
In 2016 he created Thr(o)ugh also with New York designers Jim Hodges and Carlos Marques da Cruz. This work with a monumental cylinder placed centre stage also took its inspiration from the Onbashira Festival in Nagano, Japan where participants make life-threating slides down steep mountain slopes riding tree trunks. In Thr(o)ugh the dancers climb with daring skill over the rolling cylinder and in Skid he takes courage to a new level.
Photo Lennart Sjöberg
Jalet’s canvas is a square of brilliant white tilted at a 34-degree angle, a playground but not for the faint-hearted. The movement centres on surrender to gravity while exploring concepts of control and enjoying a lack of control. Surrounded by booming sounds from Christian Fennesz and Marhiko Hara, the dancers first investigate the downward slope. In playful mood they slide and tumble at high speed before disappearing silently, and hopefully cushioned, into the pit.
A brief blackout signals a change of direction as the dancers mass at the bottom of the slope and, to a martial rhythm, they start the uphill march with fierce determination. Uphill is a struggle, but it builds relationships, and the choreography finds heightened innovation in duets and groups. The lighting creates shadows sometimes menacing but also delicate lacy patterns that add to the complexity.
The closing scene centres on one remaining dancer, the sleeves of his jacket now stretched to either side, pinning him to the stage as he lies enmeshed in a womb-like bubble. He struggles to undress and free himself, then naked and alone he makes his final journey to the summit. It’s a painful and uncertain climb and, pausing at the pinnacle, he straightens up only to fall into the unknown.
Photo Tilo Stengel
Sharon Eyal’s SAABA is a variation on her distinctive, instantly recognisable style. The score from Ori Lichtik is a driving collage of dance rhythms while the bodies, gripped with tension teetering on demi-pointe, pulse to the staccato beat. The dancers pose in high camp extremis, lower spine arched, chests raised, hands spiky interpreting the choreographic material, a tight frame of repetitive moves, with trance-like devotion.
It is hypnotic, compulsive viewing supported by brilliant high-tech lighting from Alon Cohen that rings the changes, dissecting the stage along geometric lines, creating a colour coded mood or simply fading into misty gloom to mask the entrance of the dancers. In a dazzling finale the stage and surround are stained blood red. SAABA is difficult to ignore but could it be performed as well by AI clones?