on the other side of the Sharon Eyal divide are you busy? To her fans, she is an innovator, a master technician, using her brutal, futuristic choreography to portray the bodies of her dancers in radical ways. But for others, her works can be a frustrating experience: repetitive, aloof, even frigid, despite often focusing on the themes of love and loss. Yes, it’s all technically impressive, so the complaints go, but where’s the heart?
Everyone on the fence should watch the Israeli choreographer’s latest shows at peckham‘s Bold Tendenciesa multi-storey car park converted into an arts center and hipster hangout, where Eyal and her company LEV have been returning since 2019.
It’s a space that fits perfectly with the aesthetic of the group’s club culture, with its smoke-covered dance floor, abrasive strobe lighting and gloomy corner bar. But it also gives the audience, who are just inches from the action, a chance to notice the small details that sometimes don’t translate into a larger space. Eyal has always been a dance maker who packages her creations with intricate details – now, away from the proscenium arch, we can properly register them.
For this year’s three-day run, Eyal planned to showcase House from 2011, which has never been performed in the UK before. Inspired by the stark concrete spaces of Bold Tendencies’ Brutalist design, she instead turned to her back catalog and reworked three pieces (House, 2016’s OCD Love and 2022’s Wet) in this site-specific program that runs in two distinctive parts is split up.
Sharon Eyal in the shocking pink hallway of Bold Tendencies
/ Matt WritePart I is a 40-minute study in the dark, in which seven dancers – each dressed in Eyal’s obligatory black body stocking – are placed against puffs of dry ice and muted white spotlights. The language is classic, but undermined – pliés with overstretched knees, bourrées on sickle feet and sweeping port de bras with broken wrists and elbows provide much of the choreographic texture. Individual performers occasionally melt away from the group to make their mark in small solos (notably Darren Devaney and Alice Godfrey), but the overall effect is one of cohesion, of the dancers moving, amoeba-like, as a whole.
This sense of group dynamics continues in Part II, a pop-video-style display with soft lighting in baby pink, leaf green and letterbox red. All the Eyal signatures are here – the runway strutting, facemasks and black bodysuit, this time in laddered, peekaboo lace – and like Part I, the action is propelled by the relentless techno soundscape. But while the big trance-like set pieces are exciting, it’s still the subtler touches that captivate: closing eyes with an artist, hearing a muttered curse. This is dance up close and personal – and it’s hard to imagine seeing Eyal any other way now.
Bold Tendencies, see you Saturday; boldtendencies.com