Hofesh Shechter’s frenetic danse macabre

Robert Tanitch reviews Grand Finale at Sadler’s Wells, London EC1

Those who have seen and enjoyed Hofesh Shechter’s Political Mother and his trilogy Barbarians will be eager to see Grand Finale which had its world premiere in Paris a few months ago.

Shechter’s work is part dance, part gig, part immersive theatre and Shechter’s audiences will be expecting something extraordinary and powerful and very loud with plenty of frenetic energy, black-outs and jump cuts.

The theatre foyer was full of young people.

“Things get out of control and people get panicked,” says Shechter, talking about Grand Finale in an interview recorded in the programme.

“It’s a chaotic state, it’s an apocalypse and yet there is something amusing about it,” he says “Things collapse and then we build them up again.”

There are ten dancers and six musicians. The dancers come from Taiwan, France, USA, Korea, Holland, Albania, Hungary and Portugal. The musicians come from UK, Scotland, Iran and Poland.

Grand Finale has no narrative as such. It is a frenetic danse macabre. The dancers in baggy trousers and sleeves rolled up are in perpetual turmoil. The choreography, which often has them bunched together, is relentlessly aggressive.

Arms and hands are waved furiously. Breasts are beaten in a Middle Eastern folk dance way. Mouths gape wide open. The screams are silent.

Lifeless bodies are dragged across the stage only to rise and collapse ad infinitum. The electronic score pounds away, sometimes deafeningly.

Dead bodies are swung like a pendulum to a familiar waltz tune played live by the band down stage. Soap bubbles drop from the flies.

There are enormous rectangular structures which slide across the stage. Imagine Stonehenge on the move. Tom Scutt’s settings, together with Tom Vissor’s lighting and his darkness, create spaces which are solid yet fluid. Dancers are occasional glimpsed, trapped between the slabs.