Choreographers Chan and Cunningham want to show you their inner dance and say that ‘dance is more than aesthetics’. Unfortunately, this show lacks all aesthetics. I was excited to see the mixture between two great choreographers and expected a powerful combination of dance techniques from the East and West. Instead I felt it was pretentious and pointless. The dancers are probably very good, as is listed in the extensive program handed out at the beginning of the show, they just don’t get to shine.This is a show about schizophrenia and is based on dance movement psychotherapy and the healing power of dance. Although it has the best intentions and a good concept, the result is that you feel like you are watching dance exercises on stage. There is quite a lot of sitting around, for example, when the dancers are copying each other, sticking out their tongues and making childish sounds. It makes me wonder if it is therapeutic for the dancers involved or if it is supposed to benefit the audience. If that is the case, I hope the dancers felt good, because it didn’t reach the audience.The show starts with three performers entering the stage singing/whispering Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Somehow this song has become a theme tune for every performance dealing with mental issues, a bit of a cliché. Two more dancers appear and all of them start to perform twitching and robotic movements, without a doubt symbolising how hard it is for some people to make a connection. The concept of feeling alienated and cut off from society is then explored when one dancer loses touch with the others.The second half of the show involves Cunningham sitting on stage performing spoken word along with a video projection of herself, it is far removed from the first half, showing how different her mind is from Chan’s. Repetition is used, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star appears again, and Chan and Cunningham repeatedly ask the question ‘What are you doing?’; I asked myself the same question on the way out.
