Ockham’s Razor: Collaborator

The Place, London
January 29, 2026

For 20 years, Ockham’s Razor co-founders and co-artistic directors Alex Harvey and Charlotte Mooney have been creating works that fuse circus and theatre. In what they say will be the final time they perform together, Collaborator (choreography by Nathan Johnston) sees the couple step back onto the stage in a very appealing and always engaging 55-minute look at what it really takes to work creatively with another person.

It’s a very personal and very intimate piece, a sometimes irreverent, often highly physical, always deeply felt look at the relationships and negotiations that are inevitably involved in making art. But while specifically about making circus-dance work, anyone who has ever tried to create something with someone else, work closely on a project with someone else, will surely recognise much of what is described. Collaborator is as much about life in general as art.

Very early, Mooney describes ‘constructive interference,’ which happens when two waves overlap in such a way that they combine to create a larger wave. Destructive interference occurs when two waves overlap in such a way that they cancel each other out. She illustrates the concepts using the story of the collapse of the Angers or Basse-Chaine Bridge, which fell into the River Mayenne on April 16, 1850 as a squadron of hussars was marching across, killing 223 and injuring many more. One of the causes was determined to be the resonating effect of soldiers marching in step, their wave, being in sync with that of the water on the structure itself. Just as when making art, being absolutely in sync with others is not always good.

Harvey and Mooney go on to illustrate the various types of day creators experience. It’s Day One, Mooney tells us. The couple start on a frame high above the stage floor. It’s difficult. There’s a lot of unspoken negotiation as they work out how to do things, how to work with each other.

Then there are those days when they are sometimes in step, sometimes not. They run. Sometimes in different directions. They pull away. They push against each other. Lots of days are like this, we are told.

Most if not all projects, collaborative or not, choreography or not, have dark days, maybe those days when you can’t find the ‘answer’ to something. Here, Harvey and Mooney don woolly hats suggesting they can be cold days too. We watch as they feel and fight their way through the darkness but, and as always seems to happen, they do eventually reach the light.

All choreographers have their moments when answers, that light bulb, is elusive. But it does generally appear. The natural reaction is to fight and force the issue, but give it time is usually the best approach. It does come.

Two pendulums are used to illustrate how energy can transfer, how, when one stops, the other keeps going and can even transfer energy to the other. the props and movement making their points far more eloquently than the speech.

Collaborator ends with a return to that hanging frame, where it has to be said, Harvey and Mooney always look truly at home. In what is aesthetically the most appealing part of the show, legs wrap around each other and bodies are supported in myriad ways. The strength, the grace, the trust, are all amazing.

Presented at The Place as part of MimeLondon 2026 Collaborator by Ockham’s Razor is next on at Lowry, Salford (February 5-7, 2026) and Corn Exchange, Newbury (March 11).