Jasmin Vardimon Company marks 25 years with NOW

Theatre Royal, York
February 8, 2025

How to capture the current moment, while acknowledging that it is ever moving? The highly accoladed Jasmin Vardimon Company seeks to strike this balance in its 25th anniversary celebration performance, NOW, which revisits repertoire highlights while pondering the restless present.

Two white flags open the piece, instantly implying peaceful surrender. The calm, however, is short-lived. Protesters bounce up and down in split-jumps, flags held rigidly, until caught mid-air by workers in hard hats and high vis, triggering giggles from the audience.

Violence becomes a pervading theme, though the specifics of who and where are kept tactfully vague. Performer Donny Beau Ferris, despite his unthreatening disposition, has a particularly rough time as the victim of a bullish cast, who come together in various forms of a mob. Costumes change from streetwear to anonymising boiler suits, but the mob push forward with imaginary guns and thrusting chests, emitting militant hostility.

Beau Ferris is spun, kicked, and swept by the hurricane winds of a weaponised flag in the hands of a fellow performer. Vardimon’s performers have always been most comfortable in floorwork and are notoriously well practised in an ability to throw themselves through the air, landing in a way that convinces us of an unseen force, but without injuring themselves. Such quality lends itself to the power plays, blind obedience, and voodoo doll manipulation all heavily featured in NOW.

Choreography falls short in duet work, being most successful when the performers imitate contact instead, victims to the forces of one another despite not actually touching. Group sequences mesmerise with collective movement that faces audience head on and never finds its end, legs undulating, arms snaking and flowing in the alluring flourishes characteristic to Vardimon.

Whether protesting for peace or instigating war, censorship is rife and often reflected in STOP signs worn as masks. When not on the topic of climate change, contemplating the future takes both lighter tones, as the performers speak in mellow statements about our differing life paths, and sarcastic ones, as they follow a ‘Happiness this way’ sign.  

Camerawork is the highlight, both the voyeuristic webcam downstage, and the ceiling camera with its illusory effects. The dancers advance along a rope laid across the stage. To do this, they wriggle on their fronts and backs, but when filmed from above and projected onto the back wall, the result is an entire cast on a tightrope, suspended sky high. Everyone crosses it differently, all at unique points in their journeys. Perhaps this tightrope is life, otherwise, this illusion adds little more to the NOW than technological spectacle, albeit an incredibly joyous one.

As NOW progresses, it sacrifices cohesion for visual effects, be it props, torch light or projections; in one moment, a digital, beating heart is passed from one chest to another.

Inter-generational audiences flock to Jasmin Vardimon’s work for fiercely physical narratives and evocative visuals. While NOW is not narrative as such, its theatrical innovation continues to captivate, even when strung together like a scrapbook.

In times of relentless uncertainty and conflict, NOW chooses to reference general themes rather than assert details, remaining open enough for the audience to decide on their own time and place. As the piece closes in serene candlelight, a collective longing for peace is at least one feeling we can all agree on.

NOW by Jasmin Vardimon Company continues on tour. Click here for dates and venues.