4 weeks ago
22
This could be the definition of leaving it all on the floor. The performance has begun before the audience are given wristbands and enter the room. The stage is like a nightclub, a table filled with water cups to one side and a floor spotlight in the corner. Beneath an array of suspended tube lights, forming a kind of ramshackle roof, are three people lost in music: Oli Mathiesen, Lucy Lynch and Sharvon Mortimer. We are hearing Nocturbulous Behaviour by Detroit techno giant Suburban Knight. It is relentless, as are the dancers.
For the next hour, you are seated spectators at a rave. The opening minutes seem impenetrable, as if the trio are surrounded by a force field, but your passivity melts away as the music shudders through us all and they respond to our whoops. Those screams disappear into a soundscape that includes sirens, punishing drums, insistent beats and otherworldly bleeps. The accompaniment is loud, heavy, an assault. But the dancers are incredibly light on their feet – butterflies who float while the music stings like a bee. They add a touch of humour, too, akin to Matteo Haitzmann’s similarly unremitting trio performance Make It Count.
At times, it is as if the fug and scrum of a club has cleared, leaving just three isolated dancers – or as if they have ascended to a podium. They often use familiar techno or street dance moves but the choreography grows increasingly sophisticated as the trio snake from one routine to the next, barely pausing for water breaks. Side steps suggest the swaggering attack of warriors or boxers and that drilled momentum abates for body ripples, elasticated legs, disco arms and blissed out reverie – even a few gestures towards line dancing. When exercise equipment is brought on, it morphs into a Hiit workout. All three don rave gloves like lightning mimes.
The heat rises in the room. The dancers, clad in athleisure and cargo pants, shed bits of clothing. Their focus is absolute, switching between responding to the music and almost controlling it, only to occasionally recoil under strobes (part of Shanell Bielawa’s lighting design) from its shattering power. Frequently in triangular formation, their bond is as mesmerising as their compulsion to keep going, even if there’s no space for a deeper narrative or emotional nuance in the piece’s audacity.
Choreographed by the trio (from a concept by Mathiesen and featuring Celia Hext as an occasional alternate performer), the show is billed as endurance art because it condenses a three-day rave into 60 minutes. It’s a testament to their stamina – but there is pure pleasure here, too. The lasting impression is of transcendence and when those red cups start glowing like votive candles, it almost attains a spiritual quality.
At Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 25 August
