Botis Seva has made quite a name for himself and his hip hop dance theatre company, Far From The Norm, over the past decade. By his own account, Until We Sleep is a ‘culmination’ of his ‘choreographic evolution’, fusing ‘the rebellious energy of his early work with the refined methodology and personal growth developed over the past 14 years’. I sincerely hope that it isn’t a culmination but rather an important stepping stone in the career development of one of the UK’s hottest dance properties.
I found Until We Sleep to be very hit and miss in its various outcomes. Although never less than intriguing with exceptional movement quality amongst the seven dancers, it was too loud and too dark.
More often than not I find my eyes watering at dance shows as I try to suppress the cough that may ruin the magic for those around me. Here, in the cavernous space of Sadler’s Wells East, I could have coughed to my heart’s content, and no-one would have heard due to the intense amplification of Torben Sylvest’s otherwise excellent score. It was so loud that the thumping bass line reverberated inside my chest!
Noise levels aside, Sylvest’s score was a fascinating mix of woodwind, piano and strings with a heavy foot-tapping (or rather chest-palpitating) beat with a few dog whistles and indistinguishable spoken text thrown in. It was a fascinating anthemic mix that I would really like to hear again, albeit reduced by a few decibels.
The work is relentlessly atmospheric with lighting levels so low that the dancers seemed androgynous, their physicality was impressive but, from my seat, it was initially hard to distinguish men from women (not that this particularly mattered). It wasn’t until there was a long emotional clinch with the smallest dancer clamped around the tallest with her legs wrapped around his waist, arms clasped around the partner’s neck, that I realised there was a gender mix. Unusually there was no curtain call: the dancers just dissolved into the backdrop with music fading out and the house lights coming on.
I’m usually a huge fan of Tom Visser’s lighting designs (he has just won, very deservedly, a National Dance Award for his outstanding work) and I loved the 23 long, thin LED strips that framed the stage in a curved line with each light diagonally arched over the space. It presented several options with the long strips of white light breaking up into dots and dashes and as the 65-minute work progressed the light variables increased, including at the work’s culmination what seemed like shooting stars falling to earth.
Although this unusual lighting feature was impressive, it didn’t prevent the overall darkness of the work. We, the audience, seemed like secret spies observing some underground ritual in very dim light, which prevented any individual identification of the dancers who were characterless as a result. The costumes by Ryan Dawson Laight were similarly unremarkable, although the layering of material seemed heavy in the darkness, until one dancer slithered onto the stage with obvious scales on their back, introducing an animalistic element to the proceedings.
Against these negatives comes the huge positive of the dancers’ outstanding movement quality, given full vent by Seva’s adventurous choreography. When all seven dancers frequently moved together, either in unison or more often in closely coordinated individual sequences, it was an absorbing spectacle, even in (and sometimes enhanced by) the atmospheric environment. Two years’ ago, I was privileged to see native Americans of the Northern Cheyenne and Oglala Lakota tribes perform traditional tribal dances known as Fancy Dances in Yellowstone and there was something in Seva’s hopping, locking, skipping movement motifs that reminded me of that experience.
Until We Sleep appears to be a thematic journey into a colonial past. The occasional sound of creaking wooden planks, punctuating the score, was eerily reminiscent of slave ships crossing the Atlantic; and in a rare use of a visual aid, one performer used a replica of a vintage musket to shoot at various targets as if killing runaway slaves. In another powerful scene, dancers slid through small spaces between Visser’s light stands only to be viciously pulled back into the darkness. It was powerful and poignant stuff.
Looking back at the performance on the following day, I concede that much of the work’s power came from the artistic choices regarding the loudness of the amplified sound, the bareness of the set, the dark environment and the anonymity throughout the small ensemble. It’s certainly an appealing and absorbing work that provokes a lot of fascinating and lasting imagery.
