Lorna Irvine reviews 'something unique, awkward, thought-provoking and joyful'.
Choreographer Jerome Bel's devised work with Zurich-based disabled company Theater Hora is a multi-layered, complex piece designed to toy with and challenge preconceptions of political correctness. Here, the audience is presented with eleven ''actors'', not dancers, as they define themselves, who introduce themselves (translated by Simone Truong,who acts as a narrator of sorts) and stand for one minute, staring out defiantly, making the audience complicit in judgment, like a subversion of the talent show format.
Indeed, it is the awkwardness that Bel addresses. When asked what they think, some question the theatricality of what they are doing, and others say their families are not comfortable with it, turning dance into a ''freak show''. Yet, a confrontational spirit remains: ''I have Downes Syndrome- so what''.
Remo Bueggert's chair dancing to Euro techno is full-on, with macho posturing, head-banging and chair as prop: real showmanship in the execution, compounded by a cheeky grin. Julia Hausermann, so shy as she introduces herself, performs a graceful routine to Michael Jackson's They Don't Care About Us which becomes a whirling, hair flying tribute with glove and splits—and some Jacksonesque crotch-grabbing. Damian Bright spins to Crazy Frog; Matthias Grandjean throws vaudevillian shapes to jazz. Matthias Brucker strips to the waist and gives us his Charles Atlas poses. Tiziana Pagliaro and Nikolai Gralak just want to rock out.
It's not the disabilities which shape and define these people, but their dances, as individual as finger prints. Art is after all an external, living breathing thing outside of us, and dance is a free, universal language binding everyone together. Jerome Bel has created something unique, awkward, thought-provoking and joyful. But it would be nice to never hear Crazy Frog again.
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