In Your Rooms

Published Thursday 29 March 2007 at 17:25 by Katie Colombus

A voice over proclaims: “I think I can do better than that. No, no. I can’t.” Israeli choreographer Hofesh Shechter’s self-deprecating wit gives a nod to the expectations heaped upon him by the dance world to live up to his previous choreographic successes. This new work has been commissioned with support from the Arts Council to fast track a major choreographic talent and investigate the overlap between audiences in small, middle and large-scale dance venues.

He also references his last piece Uprising, a dark, brooding all-male work which ends in a socialist montage of solidarity, a red flag raised high. In Your Rooms sees a similar group of men clambering into the flag scene,and performing similarly tightly furled, insular movements in a line-up at the front of the stage, along with flowing group work between periods of blackout and blasts of light.

There is the same intensity of performance, hunched shoulders and stooped postures, the same viscerous movements. Small pulses of electricity seem to shoot through fingertips and toes. Deep, slinky, almost balletic moments are performed with savage grace.

Entering and exiting through three dark doorways either side of the stage and crossing a thin white line of powder that cuts the stage in half, the company of strong khaki clad dancers move with relentless attack and a biting energy, veering between desperate aggression and inertia, all the while, every sinew intent upon its task.

Shechter, always an eye magnet when he performs, is sadly absent here. Yet he has found a prodigy in Christopher Evans, who perfectly fits the rolling, willowy, hunched and fluid movements of Shechter’s style.

In Your Rooms is edgy, fascinating and all embracing, both danced and directed with a raw sophistication.

Post premiere at The Place, it will be performed with added live music at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, and again with a further expanded version, with additional dancers and live music, at Sadler’s Wells.