Electric Hotel

Requardt’s choreography blends sharp angles with a
free form lucidity that both attracts and repels. We watch as a couple are
repeatedly drawn into a fight; a maid with an unnerving sense of over-familiarity bustles rather threateningly from room to room; a man alternates
between ‘rocking out’ and boyishly playing ‘Indians’; and a desperately lonely
woman tries to make connections.

It is not only the dreamlike images that conjure a
Lynchian feel, but also Ben and Max Ringham’s meticulously crafted and
evocative soundtrack, which is played into individual headsets. The level of
sophistication within this sound design is magical, at times breathtaking,
tricking the brain with disconcerting regularity. As our strangers pace their
airless glass cages we are at once pulled into these claustrophobic
environments and, as the wind whips around us, distinctly kept at arm’s
length.

Electric Hotel may not be as
poignant as the creators want it to be, or as illuminating about ‘life’. But
afterwards it leaves palpable traces, with every sound and lighting state
heightened for the walk home. It is a unique and rather uplifting experience
and, for the visual and aural dexterity alone, you don’t want to be the one that hasn’t seen
it.

– Honour Bayes