In this highly energetic performance, dancer-actor John Macaulay welcomes the audience and ushers them in, attempting to build up a friendly rapport. It feels rather like stepping into a US shopping mall, where politeness and over-white-bright smiles glisten on the outside, and boredom and emptiness gape dark on the inside. This, it turns out, is exactly what the intention is.In this performance, dance, song and performance poetry (rather good performance poetry, as it happens) are used to make a hard-hitting social comment on materialistic values in contemporary society from credit crunch to catwalk; sales to self-worth. The conceit of having three mirrors in the background designed to reflect the audience and their values on stage is intriguing, but when the three female dancers appear, and are themselves reflected in the mirrors, the metaphor collapses. The mirrors are later covered up with white cloth.There is a certain lack of consistency in the production. While the costumes are worthy of special mention fashionable outfits in wonderfully coordinated pink and black, the dancers ensemble work is poor. Their singing works better in stylised numbers than in freeform scat passages. The dance number which has them wearing pink rubber gloves with one dancer parading the carcass of a chicken which has to be unwrapped from layers of cling film packaging, into which it is lovingly restored at the end of the number, falls short of being moving, shocking or funny. It has nothing of the raw quality of extreme Butoh, nor the gravity-defying quality of classical dance. The quality of the dance is eerie at best, but mostly bland maybe the chicken had cold feet. It was hard to tell what the concept behind this piece was. However, other numbers, particularly where the dancers use their eyelids and evoke belly dancing with the music, but play against that with their bodies, are very effective.The best part of this performance is the way the poetry is performed. John Macaulay brings Tawona Sitholés words to life, Sitholé bringing every trick out of the bag, allterating to the extreme, drawing on exaggeration, irony and hyperbole as if they are second nature to him. It is an impressive marriage of talents which results in a commanding performance.
