Boys Who Like to Play With Dolls: 4 star review by Hannah Lucy Baker

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By Hannah Lucy Baker
|
25th Aug 2015
|
★★★★

This two-person dance and physical piece is performed and choreographed by Tereza Ondrová and Peter Šavel, a male-female duo who have worked successfully both separately and together for many years now. Boys Who Like To Play With Dolls is based on the borders within gender identity, and aims to show how easily our definition of physicality can be challenged. By using basic travelling sequences, voice and dance and then pairing it with other basal forms and guttural noises, we see each dancer transform in front of us.

This show has received acclaim all over the world and it's not hard to see why.

What is unique about this piece is how quickly you feel your own perceptions being challenged. Their strong physiques and gender neutral costumes and appearance help this, but it is due in most part to their precise ability to adapt their own bodies between a masculine and feminine shape. As they cross over, switch and swap between the swaggering male stereotype and the tip-toed female strut in front of your eyes, it's nothing short of fascinating.

Some of the phrases felt a little too drawn out and other decisions felt perhaps a little self indulgent. Aside from this the music and sound choices were really interesting, and the motif of being covered in graffiti depicting others people's expectations was used very well.

This show has received acclaim all over the world and it's not hard to see why. Despite some of the dynamic of the piece being lost a little when certain sections went on a bit too long, this is a really interesting piece that is perfectly performed.

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Performances

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The Blurb

Welcome to a fantasy world in which masculinity and femininity are unrelated to male and female physical forms. Two distinctive, compelling European dancers, Ondrová and Šavel, morph from one body to another, attacking the conventions, norms and clichés of gender. Movement and dance become an expression of the contrast between the identity of body and soul, and between genetic givens and social prejudices, attempting to challenge the various social stereotypes and explore the theme of gender in a language of pure physicality. European Top 20 Priority Companies 2014 selected by Aerowaves.