Marine Brutti, Jonathan Debrouwer and Arthur Harel are the French collective, (LA) Horde, who have been choreographing for the Ballet National de Marseilles since 2019. Drawing inspiration from youth and clubbing culture, the collective's collaborations with pop world royalty reads impressively from Madonna, Spike Jonze to Sam Smith, lending the ballet company a fan base that attracts the Gen Z crowd.
Tonight’s performance comprises of six short works in a nod to (LA) Horde’s collaborations with the ballet company offering a mixed bag of high energy, super sexualised, gyrating sequences that draw on ballet, grime, hip hop and contemporary dance in a programme that is often fun to watch, sometimes beautiful and sometimes confusing.
First up is Cecilia Bengolea and François Chaignaud’s Grime Ballet (Dance Because You Can’t Talk to Animals), four dancers, all on pointe, including the men, offer a synthesis of classical and contemporary moves with no musical accompaniment or staging, just a black background. Then, out of the blue, a recorded soundtrack blasts out techno beats and the movement changes to resemble a commercial dance video, pumping and thumping with arms swinging into hand waving gun gestures, the movement equivalent of karaoke night down the local pub.
Not that this is a criticism, it just comes unexpectedly and the dancers do give it their all, clearly enjoying the loose expression as a release from the constrictions of ballet language. Such energetic relish transmits offstage and into our laps with high entertainment value, apart from the men in pointe shoes, as feet without arches just don’t work with blocks. Ballet is an unforgiving art form in the sense that, anatomically, everything has to be in the right place or it just looks odd.
Next comes (LA) Horde's new piece, Weather Is Sweet, a glitzy, humping, hip-swinging, bumping and grinding series of duets for three couples that could be a Madonna video if you squint your eyes and catch a glimpse of the sequin-laden tops being thrown about. It’s sexually overt, yet weirdly not remotely sensual, as every movement is so exaggerated and hyper-extended that it feels somewhat comic, circus school inspired and acrobatic in its execution.
Oiwa, from the Belgian dance theatre company Peeping Tom, is extraordinarily visual. The imagery is inspired by Japanese ghost story Yotsuya Kaidan, a tale of desire and betrayal. As dry ice is pumped into the stalls and we are submerged, coughing and spluttering, haze clears allowing for glimpses of slithering bodies naked from the waist up, sliding across the stage until they meet their mates and are spun around by their male counterparts like rag dolls, manoeuvred at such speed, it's a worry they may dislocate limbs. I am reminded of the painting Rape of Lucretia or one of many renaissance paintings where women are depicted as mere objects of desire held captive in the frame of the male gaze.
While the work is a feast of awe-inspiring movement, there’s an imbalance between the dancers. The men performing are mostly standing upright, solidly planted like trees in the ground, while the women are being dragged, writhing, twisting, flaying around their solid bodies like chattel. Memories of middle eastern meat markets where raw flesh is swinging from hooks is front of mind. The quality of the female bodies, limply hanging off muscular male forms, fragile and vulnerable, is technically an incredible feat of endurance, but makes for unsettling optics.
Lucinda Childs Concerto sits like a shiny jewel in the crown. Clean and minimalistic, no fuss, just pure, elegantly executed sequences with six dancers donned in black. The choreography is beautifully structured around a series of repetitive steps that create shapes and patterns perfectly timed with Górecki’s harpsichord concerto. I love the continuous flow of movement and the shapes of dancers coming together, then breaking up into precise groups. It’s a joy to watch.
Les Indomptés (The Untamed), from 1992, a male duet created by Claude Brumachon and Benjamin Lamarche, is a blissfully elegiac slice of movement that takes your breath away in its purity and soulfulness. Performed by Jonathan Myhre Jorgensen and Titouan Crozier, there something delicate in the way they connect. The two men envelope, entwine, only to pull away, and there’s a beautiful parity in the choreography. There is also a play on stillness as they gaze, calm, before bodies meet, flirting, finding, conquering and letting go again.
An excerpt from (LA) Horde's Room with a View brings the evening to a close and sees the entire cast of twelve come together in an aggressive, pumping street dance piece that feels like an impending fight brewing. Some are dressed as '80s office workers, others in clubbing gear. Is it an after-work motive (gathering) or a political rally? Sarah Abicht stands out as the star of the piece, brazenly leading the gang as they beat and pulsate across the stage, moving as a pack. She’s brilliantly abrasive yet at the same time flimsy with legs and arms flying all over in response to RONE's music. How she achieves to appear both feisty aggressor but lyrical in her execution of movement is quite remarkable. The dancing troupe behind her are all excellent and the piece allows the company to shine with raw, youthful energy.