© Iwona & Jaros'aw Cielikowscy Hofesh Shechter 'Cult' reviews Hofesh Shechter 'Fragments' reviews Hofesh Shechter 'Uprising' reviews recent Hofesh Shechter reviews more Graham Watts reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months)

The first of this triple bill - ‘Cult’ – was the audience’s favourite work over the ten nights of The Place Prize in 2004 and it was followed by ‘Fragments’, his duet that won the Diaghilev Choreographic competition in Poland, earlier that same year. These prize-winning dances retain their freshness, illustrating very well both Schechter’s command of space and time and the expansiveness of his movement. The opening of ‘Cult’ cleverly brings dancers gradually into focus from the invisibility of a black stage. Six performers, equally split into two groups by gender, perform uniform movements: at first governed by the womens’ gentle, swaying motion developing into flowing turns, steps and stretches before journeying towards jerkier, dissonant actions as the male group takes over. Eventually the sexes merge with the drabness of the mens’ nondescript clothing emphasizing the vibrancy of the womens’ flame-red shift dresses just as their wider arc of movement has contrasted with the more centred actions of the men.

The rich quality and diversity in the range of movement used by Schechter for his ensemble in ‘Cult’ continues unabated into ‘Fragments’, the shorter duet that follows in this programme. Apart from the very different direction taken by the soundscape (also created by Schechter, as is the norm for his work) - which manages to meld together Bach and Eric Idle’s ‘Always look on the bright side of life’ - the movement in this piece draws from a similarly broad palette. The ongoing presence of Claire-Laure Berthier, remaining in her ‘Cult’ dress, also links the two dances into a unified whole.
 

Hofesh Shechter
© Iwona & Jaros'aw Cielikowscy

That these two earlier works enhance one another so well only serves to exacerbate my disappointment at the ordinariness of Schechter’s premiered work, ‘Uprising’. It begins with a backlit square of brightness into which seven men march with aggressive intent and the machismo never subsides throughout 25 minutes of virile intensity. Two men fight like rutting stags; the deep bass booming music is, at times, ear-achingly uncomfortable; and, if the floodlit square doesn’t conjure up the image of a football pitch, there are various incarnations of the kind of macho celebratory actions that often accompany goals scored.

This uprising was like watching a choreographed version of football hooliganism – or any other gang dynamic – and the process was unrelenting with no light to balance the gloom. Despite the audience’s rapturous approval, an evening that started with such soaring brilliance degenerated into a disappointing own goal at its end.