The Place, London
January 16, 2026
Triple bills often work like tasting menus: three different flavours, one aftertaste. This Resolution 26 programme leaves me with a clear one. I see skill in abundance, but I leave with almost nothing to hold onto.
The evening begins with Doom Box by ZhouXin Theater, a duet that merges live performance and installation. Two women move with solid technique and confident partnering. A paper effigy hangs above the space, with a crude seated mannequin like a discarded substitute. There are amplified breaths, repeated cheek-kissing, frequent blown kisses, and a final burst of French song.
I register the elements, I register the craft, and yet my mind stays blank. In a strange way, the programme note is the most honest thing about it: a “poetic field of nothingness,” fragmentation, collage, a body released from discourse. Doom Box delivers exactly that. It gives me physicality without meaning, and the only verdict I can offer is simple: the dancers dance well.
Photo Jemima Yong
Woven Souls by Babyteeth (Amber Lew and Lucia Taylor) gives me two dancers and a duet format, but no relationship. Touch happens, lifts happen, synchrony happens, yet nothing accumulates. It is contact without consequence, proximity without exchange. The choreography functions, but the bond does not.
The final work, Immuto by West London arts collective DREAM, comes at me like a rush of adrenaline. It leans into speed, volume, and proximity, using the audience’s nerves as part of the score. The performers are fearless and physically capable, but the work relies so heavily on impact that it forgets to build a destination. I am startled, impressed, even briefly energised, yet I am not led anywhere beyond momentum.
If there is a shared theme tonight, it is not transformation, co-dependency, or the ineffable. It is the gap between movement and meaning. All three pieces show performers with ability and intent, but none of them offers a thread I can follow.
I leave with three performances in my eyes, and nothing in my hands.
Resolution 26 continues at The Place to February 25, 2026.