Review: Into The Hairy by S-E-D // Sharon Eyal, Sadler’s Wells

Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar’s baby, the S-E-D Dance Company, and their work outside it are the stylish pointed toe between the worlds of fashion, music and experimental dance. I mean, the costumes are regularly done by Maria Grazia Chiuri for Dior’s sake! Today is no exception, and we get the dancers’ tight forms wound even tighter in layers of black webbing, with heavy slept-in, tear-stained make-up from Noa Eyal Behar. As with past shows, they look as though they could easily wander on and off the runways and dance floors of Europe’s coolest spots.

This is the first full-length collaboration between Eyal and the Welsh musician Koreless, and it premiered this very year in the Netherlands. Alongside the expected à la mode visuals, the sounds are a bone-cracking, water-dribbling, kinetic landscape: inventive, uncomfortable, lyrical if a little self-consuming. But then repetition is most likely a musical refrain, as it certainly is a choreographic one.

But Itsy Bitsy’s dance party is not all dead flies and undisturbed corners. Designer Alon Cohen favours bland washes of colour that, coupled with the black box, flatten and banalise the action. A blood-red floor light pointed upwards is the only moment when we get the angles and profiles we are craving, and what the dramatic costumes and make-up cry out for. We want the dancers exploding out of the gloom, not shaking in almost house lights in what looks like a rehearsal room.

There are some nice flashes: the group upstage as if holding in a wee, tottering like a flock of oil-slicked flamingos as they stagger twitching across the stage. Kicking limbs again bring the hairy eight-leggers to mind, but they’re not mentioned in the blurb, so clearly I’m a child or an idiot. It just doesn’t go anywhere; there is little crescendo and no arcs or markers to signpost to us mortals what we are watching or why.

I found myself planning my outfit for an upcoming wedding and wondering if the rain had stopped as Koreless’s cascading clicking prickled around me. It’s all too vague, too over-styled, too much slow posing. Not all shows must be fire and fury, but leaving you with more than a pronounced case of arachnophobia would be nice.

Dancers: Darren Devaney, Juan Gil, Alice Godfrey, Johnny McMillan, Keren Lurie Pardes, Nitzan Ressler, Héloïse Jocqueviel, Gregory Lau

Choreography/created/directed: Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar S-E-D Dance Company
Music: Koreless
Lead light designer, technical director: Alon Cohen
Costumes: Maria Grazia Chiuri – Christian Dior Couture
Makeup & Jewellery Design: Noa Eyal Behar

Into The Hairy plays at Sadler’s Wells until Saturdsy 15 November.