Choreographer Hofesh Schechter is a former Brighton Festival guest director and he has stormed back with a deeply disturbing but relevant dance programme.
Double Murder opens with a wonderfully funny and energetic little number to Offenbach’s Can Can, but the mood soon darkens to his company’s first full-length offering Clowns. To a soundscape also created by Schechter whose rhythmic drum heartbeats get more loud and insistent, we are treated to ever-changing tableaux of chaos and violent murder – well executions actually.
Schechter is the puppet-master, controlling the slaughter but also being a recurrent victim of it. The meaning is clearly that the more we are exposed to violence and death in society the more we become used to it – emphasised by the jolly jigging steps of the executioners.
It’s visually stunning and deeply disturbing. The absolutely brilliant lighting programme gives us split-second snapshots of the action, matched by the 10 dancers’ ability to get into new scenarios almost instantly. Schechter’s signature movements – loping bent over ape like motions and reptilian writhings are truly shocking but scarily entertaining.
The second offering The Fix is altogether more meditative and calming. A highly distressed individual is calmed and comforted and eventually put into a front row stalls seat. This is followed by this piece’s 7 dancers going out into the auditorium, warmly hugging the audience and making a post-Covid point of our new normal.
It’s a truly imaginative, emotional and ultimately uplifting evening.
Double Murder was at Brighton Dome as part of Brighton Festival.
Check out Schechter company shows at Hofesh.co.uk and other Festival shows at Brightonfestival.org
