After watching Hofesh Schechter's Uprising/The Art of Not Looking Back last Wednesday, my mind keeps straying back to the performance.
'Uprising' is a wonderfully high-energy, sometimes comic, sometimes puzzling piece of work, simple and straightforward in some of its movements (we discussed afterwards whether some things would have been as impressive had it not been for the music), but undebatably beautiful. The men of the company are incredibly fluid, their ease of movement is breathtaking.
'The Art of Not Looking Back' is rather different. Very Pina Bausch. Again, the dancer's skill is undebatable, but the women in this piece are more symbols, whereas the men in 'Uprising' retain their individual character. Sadly, this piece lacked that je ne sais quoi its predecessor possessed, that something that draws the spectator into a trance and makes them forget time. Maybe it is the interrupting (and interrupted) narration that features as part of the soundtrack which inhibits this self-loss.
Perhaps this performance just had too much to live up to, since the last dance piece I saw before then was At Swim Two Boys by EarthFall, which was just so good that I didn't trust myself to write about it. I'm still puzzled how they got a stage with 5cm deep water and live music through Health&Safety regulations.
That performance was beyond words, Hofesh Shechter left me wondering and wishing for something more.
