Selfridges Loading Bay, London
October 21, 2021.
Sharon Eyal offers more than dance, seeing her company, L-E-V, in action is a full-scale experience. Programmed by Bold Tendencies for Selfridges Super Culture, this time the unlikely art venue is the loading bay at the famous Oxford Street department store: totally brutal and very cold as the temperature plummeted. It is an extraordinary venue for a compelling and other worldly dance language.
Covid wreaked havoc on the advertised programme of OCD and the UK premiere of Soul Chain. The revised programme opened on Family. Not the happy variety nor, thankfully, the Manson variety, but a family bonding with religious fervour. Huddled in a group the detail is exact, the timing precise and while physically close there is little love to share. In the closing moment a woman embraces her partner tightly while his arms remain stiffly stretched, reaching to who knows what.
Programmed by Bold Tendencies for Selfridges Super Culture
Photo Bold Tendencies/Damian Griffiths
Love Chapter 2 is a gruelling 55-minute marathon with the six dancers on stage and moving for the entirety. The torsos ripple like waves and arms stretch with sinew-cracking intensity, the body language is guarded and the knot of tension, deep in the gut never fully releases. The mincing steps on high demi-pointe give a sense of fragility and unease and combined with the relentless repetition it is one of the most compelling of choreographic styles.
Like all good practitioners of minimalism, Eyal structures her works to ring the changes. The dancers synchronise but never exactly allowing individuals to break loose from the pack and tell a personal story. Occasionally it is violent with virtuosic turns and jumps, most often the deviation remains in the same mood and tendency, so the movement stays both hypnotic and compulsive. Dressed in simple leotards, the fabric as thin as a second skin, the dancers appear strangely vulnerable despite their muscled bodies, a quality echoed in their questioning and edgy gaze.
Eyal is riding a tsunami of popularity. Her dancers are top quality, translating her choreography into amazingly weird body shapes and, accompanied by Ori Lichtik’s thumping club vibes, she creates a magic mix that has her aficionados enthralled. Love her or loathe her, Eyal is impossible to ignore.