Camden People’s Theatre, London
August 4, 2026
“I don’t care!” Not the exclamation of a recalcitrant teen but a new dance-theatre work by UK-based Chinese independent choreographer, dancer and dance-film director, Jie Zhou (周婕) for her Wuji Dance Company (雾汲舞蹈工作室).
How we see others is always shaped by dress, profession, societal and social expectations. But all those things also dictate to some extent, probably more than we care to admit, how we see ourselves. They can weigh heavily, can stop us leading a fuller life. The 25-minute I Don’t Care actually cares very much, both in terms of the detail of the choreography and how it explores and reflects on those issues.
It opens with Yen-ning Yi (易彥寧) entering wearing a smart stripy dress and shoes. Sure enough, the natural reaction is to read what you see. Almost immediately, however, a second dancer, clad only in skin-toned underwear, arrives on all-fours. As she follows the first around, moving almost insect-like, you wonder if she’s stalking or actually some sort of shadow or reflection.
Photo courtesy Wuji Dance Company
After all four dancers appear together, all neatly and sharply dressed, a section of jerky movement that leads to falling suggests their garments are in fact cloaking something beneath. It’s as if the real person hidden inside is trying to unconsciously get out.
After another quick costume change, there’s a very appealing and effective scene when, having stripped down to underwear, the other three return. In what I read as them being aspects of the first dancer’s inner self, they gather around the first dancer, their hands swarming around her as if encouraging her to undress, to remove her symbolic shell and reveal her real self.
It was about here that I started to notice the veined make-up. First on one dancer’s thigh, then on the limbs of all four. It was intriguing, not least as it was difficult to see it clearly, even sitting relatively close. It’s clearly suggestive of inner life, the being beneath the outer shell that is the skin, and also provides a neat link between the four performers.
Photo courtesy Wuji Dance Company
A couple of brief scenes in which all four walk very businesslike around the stage, again sharply dressed, again show what we expect, are less effective, but another under pulsing lights that could be a nightclub does show them ‘letting go’ quite well.
There really was much to like. The twenty-five minutes of I Don’t Care flew past. That says much for Jie Zhou’s approach and choreography, and the focus and movement quality of dancers Jiarong Yu (于佳蓉), Jiayu Zhou (周珈宇) and Yu-chen Chiu (邱祐晨), and Yen-ning Yi. In fact, if anything, and while brevity is often good, the work did feel a little rushed on occasion. There is certainly scope to maybe extend some scenes, certainly to slow things down a little here and there to allow images and thoughts to better permeate the mind.
Presented as part of the Camden Fringe.
I Don’t Care can next be seen at C Arts, Edinburgh as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe on August 15 and 16, 2026.