Venue: The Lowry
Date Reviewed: 13th October, 2008

Israeli dancer Hofesh Schechter is perhaps best known for choreographing ‘Maxxie’s dance’ in E4’s teen-drama Skins – which explains the coach-loads of teenagers who packed The Lowry for his opening night. It is a tribute to Schechter’s razor-sharp choreography, and his dancers’ impassioned performances that the school kids sat in (near) spellbound silence for the whole of the show.

The evening is split into two performances: In Your Rooms, which explores the isolation of modern society; and the shorter and less narrative focused piece, Uprising.

In the opening movement of Uprising seven men stride from the shadows and begin to writhe in unison: twisting their muscular bodies into increasingly improbable shapes while insistent drum beats and crackling white noise provide the only soundtrack.
There’s no obvious narrative here and the audience is left to piece together a story from the contorted torsos on stage.
This doesn’t present a problem, as there are glimpses of recognisable characters for the audience to cling to and moments of menacing beauty as the dancers swoop between roles – first circling the stage like macabre vultures and then scuttling across the floor as legless ladybirds.

The dancers lock antlers as dueling stags before eventually forming a tableau reminiscent of a war memorial, with a bloodied rag held aloft above the exhausted pack. And it is only in this final image that it becomes clear that Schechter’s choreography is as political as it is physical.

This is then accentuated by Uprising’s companion piece, In Your Rooms, in which a male and female ensemble act out a quasi-Marxist vision of a society alienated by labour and isolated from each other. Repetition is the name of the game here and the dance circles back on itself in simple repeated phrases, presumably to emphasise the drudgery of life.

But the problem is that when placed alongside the elliptical and intriguing Uprising, In Your Rooms seems didactic and a little laboured. Fortunately though, the sheer physical skill of the dancers is mesmerising and provides ample compensation for the simplistic plot. Every sinew of the ensemble moves in unison and the concentration and intensity that vibrates across the stage is exhilarating.

This is a physical tour-de-force that is breathtakingly well choreographed and visually striking – but the simplistic message detracts from the magnificent movement.

-Harriet Shawcross

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