Review - CRACKz performed by Grupo de Rua at Sadler's Wells - LIFT 2014

Composed as part of the LIFT Critical Writing workshops with Maddy Costa, via IdeasTap.  The rest of the group, and words on other exciting things, here: http://welcometodialogue.com/projects/liftideastap-critical-writing/


I read an article once discussing what an audience actually gets in return for their theatre ticket. A playwright was quoted in it, saying he made an active decision not to put 'silence' into his stage directions, because an audience is paying to hear words, not watch actors standing around on stage.

Interesting.

This came to mind while I was watching Grupo de Rua perform CRACKz as part of LIFT at Sadler's Wells. It is a dance piece, blending hip hop with contemporary dance to 'deconstruct' hip hop, to 'challenge the stereotype' and 'question the status of art in a digital era'. (Sounds like a pretty good funding application, right? Tick tick tick.) Regardless of what it was about, I was expecting to see some dance. Instead, the lights dimmed, the music started, and we waited in pitch black for something to happen....

And we waited...

And I listened to the music, great music, composed by the Vladislav Delay Quartet, with a gritty, dirty, humming undertone and a lilting jazz beat on top...

Until at last a spot of light fell upon a corner of the stage and dancers whirled into it, bent at the waist and spinning across the stage. They looked like insects, appearing and disappearing out of the ground. The lights dimmed. Another spot of light came up, and this little routine continued...

And continued...

And I wondered if the point was for us to get so bored of seeing the same thing over and over again that we, as an audience, became numb to it and achieved a heightened state of mind, within which we had a unanimous epiphany and recognised the deeper meaning of the piece.

For me, this didn't happen.

The movement changed. The dancers stood up, held out their arms – but dear god they were spinning again. This time faster, more stomach churning, and still with the same infuriating lights-up-lights-down routine. I was begging for them to stop spinning, stop stopping, and breathe into a neat little ensemble piece that would be slick and clever in the way that hip hop normally is. I know Bruno Beltrão was seeking to deconstruct hip hop, but I didn't realise he was taking out what was fundamentally good about it.

To mark the end of this section, the music stopped, all of the lights came up and the dancers continued to dance, (as an ensemble, at last!) but the only sound was of their breath and their trainers squeaking on the stage floor. This made me feel weird, and a little insecure, in a really brilliant way. Where did the music go? Here, I did have a minor epiphany: "What is dance without music? This is clearly a deconstruction of hip hop. It's clearly challenging the stereotype. I wonder what the status of art is in a digital era?"

I'm being facetious. But apart from this moment, I just had no idea what was going on in the piece. There was a section in which the dancers were chasing each other with 'guns', another when they were all backed up against the wall, and many where they walked slowly – but purposefully – towards each other. But there wasn’t enough physical dialogue for me to find my own narrative. In duets there seemed to be a really powerful conversation happening between the dancers, charged with intent: I didn't know what that intent was, but I was desperate to see the conversation unfold.

At the end of the piece, after the curtain call, the music returned and we clapped along while the dancers freestyled. First thought? "Oh, this is cheesy." Second thought? "Oh, they can actually dance! That choreography did them a disservice." Third thought: "I am clapping along to the music while super-cool Brazilian street dancers stand on their heads. I have probably never felt more white/British/middle class in my life. Well done, Sadler's Wells. This is why I love you."

When I pay to see dance, I pay to see well-trained dancers do amazing things, to see a 'story' unfold and to feel/think slightly differently about how I move through life as a human being. CRACKz made me feel perhaps 50% of each thing, most of which was after the curtain call.