Sometimes a dance production is so stunning it leaves your brain unable to engage with your tongue: this is such a show –
A bit rate of ideas running at 120 megabits per second.
It opens with a dark stage where the performers, each transfixed by the mobile phone held in front of their eyes, dance around the lit screens like moths. But this show is not a cold intellectual parody, programmatically reviewing the impact of mobile phones but is driven by intense creativity, excitement and passion.
There is a seemingly endless sequence of dance scenes involving different techniques and focusing on different themes – fantastic solos, intense duets, astounding quartets – supported by effective changes to the lighting and the dynamic, stirring music (excellent throughout).
The inventiveness of Wen-Jen Huang’s choreography is astonishing, with a bit rate of ideas running at 120 megabits per second. Faces distort in the lights of the phones – at one point the movement of the lights and bodies create a strobe effect that elongates mouths and eyes like a long exposure photograph. Bodies are distorted – or perhaps it is better said that new types of creature are being created – heads merge, torsos merge, arms merge; dancers combine into entities resembling deep sea creatures or space aliens. Shadows are used to create surreal bodies like Dali or H.R.Giger figures, or multi-limbed sculptures.
The dancers, powered by enough energy to run a data centre, move at fibre-optic speed through isolation, conflict, sharing and confinement – and not all connection is lost – there are also moments of affection and depth of relationship.
The intensity is so great that the 40 minutes of the piece seems to flash by in a heartbeat.
The exhilaration and joy of this show is to see mind-bogglingly imaginative dance performed at full five-bars exuberant tilt. An absolute treat.
