Young, dynamic and exploratory. This latest piece from choreographer, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is a breath of fresh air from a choreographer known for her sparse creations. In EXIT ABOVE, the floodgates open in a gush of a confusingly playful 90 minutes of movement that lends space and voice to 13 youthful dancers, shining a light on individual talents outside of the collective (where the cast have clearly had creative input).
Tonight’s performance feels like a fun, slightly manic playground, set up for the cast to enjoy, while the audience are left to grapple with meaning. There are lots of primary school moments, from waggling tongues and animal impersonations as hands transform into claws and eyes rolling back to reveal whites of eyes, as well as a range of fabulously guttural screams and fake vomiting.
Subtitled after the tempest, in the first few minutes, the scene is set with a large sheet blowing upwards powered by a wind machine, as dancer Solal Mariotte, stuck underneath, struggles for oxygen. The rest of the cast stare out at us, stock still, as if we are the intruders. Outside of this picturesque reference, it’s easy to lose the Shakespearean thread as the piece hurtles along with oblique references buried into its dramatic code.
The programme notes say for EXIT ABOVE, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker "retraces her steps to the roots of dance and the roots of Western pop music." So the piece is meant to be about how the two relate. She says, "my walking is my dancing... walking as a primary form of movement, so familiar that we hardly stop to think about it." I'm not sure how much we think about the act of walking tonight apart from noticing that there's a lot of it.
The scene is set. The stage is a bare vessel. There is nothing but black walls and metal, and we watch a good 20 minutes of choreography mostly comprising walking, that soon becomes running. The simple concept is also borrowed from Paul Klee’s “taking a line for a walk,” projected on the cloth backdrop, and there are even geometric lines chalked onto the stage in case you miss this giveaway clue.
As the cast stride in straight lines, diagonals, geometric formations, they mirror the chalk and then walk backwards as well as circling around the periphery. There are selfie moments aplenty when the dancers draw into organised formations, framing silliness and seriousness. It feels a bit like a frozen statues game at a birthday party as the cast stare out, brazenly challenging us. I find myself trying to work out if there are rules of a game, like not stepping on the lines or perhaps staying inside the squares.
Then, as a welcome break from walking, it's heartening to see solo artists break off from the huddle to show their mettle. I think of street entertainment where we encircle the action as dancers are head-spinning, whooping and shouting out in a childish abandon.
There are standout performances from Abigail Aleksander, who turbocharges around the stage at nifty speed only to fall into a beautifully executed solo of sharp lines, swings and graceful movements in a welcome passage of contemporary dance, as does hip-hop dancer Mariotte, when he head-spins and b-boys his way around the stage encouraged by whoops and yeses from the stage and audience.
The music is at the beating heart of the piece, with Robert Johnson’s toe-tapping song Walking Blues driving the action forward. This new version is a group collaboration, written by Meskerem Mees, who is a genuine surprise gem as she breaks into sublime song echoing a lark at sunrise and even joins dancing with Jean-Marie Aerts and the onstage guitarist-dancer Carlos Garbin, both excellent. And in case you don’t make the connection, prose and lyrics are projected onto the cloth backdrop, a bit like Operatic surtitles.
As we move towards the finale, Mees lyricism vacillates from melodic and sonorous blues to rapid-fire raps about hellfire and burning in the depths of evil. The house dancing becomes frantic, waving fire torches with much vibrating, shaking and screeching as the dancers eventually fall into a messy pile of limbs, vomiting over edge of the stage, veering dangerously close to row A, stripped down to their bras.
Tonight, walking has been a jumping-off point for multiple physical explorations and outpourings, but in terms of taking away deeper commentary about the relationship to movement and music, I'm unsure. Still, the performance is full of gusto and the dancers are clearly having a ball. I just think it looks a lot more fun to be onstage, especially when things get clubby, than sitting still in my seat.