Creators and directors Sean Kempton and Michaela O’Connor face a number of challenges with Sand. Dance is a medium traditionally used to convey grand, large-scale, emotions such as love and hate rather than intimate ones like marital contentment being devastated by the dawning realisation a partner’s mental health is declining. Ambitiously, the co-creators also use acrobatics and juggling, which are rarely employed as storytelling techniques, to demonstrate the emotional impact of one person becoming unable to function as a member of a team.
The juggling between husband and wife Dylan (Myles MacDonald) and Heather (Dilly Taylor) displays the well-worn intimacy of their relationship, relaxed, unchallenging, almost a form of foreplay. But there are signs of trouble on the horizon: when Dylan makes coffee, sand pours from the cup and from the water jug used to mop up the mess. Rather than cornflakes, Dylan puts his house keys in his breakfast bowl. Desperate to maintain a connection, the couple look back on their youth remembering their first meeting and trying to imagine their bleak future.
Juggling is how the couple first met—Young Dylan (Alvaro Grande) comically fails to impress supermarket worker Young Heather (Ebony Gumbs) with his skills as he clumsily knocks over the foodstuffs which have been painstakingly gathered.
The choice of backing music adds to the sense of impeding gloom, moving from the bland complacency of The Electric Light Orchestra to a sneaky disturbing version of "Making Plans for Nigel".
Dylan’s dementia is portrayed as the character becoming increasingly alienated from the rest of the group. Taylor, Grande and Gumbs move together in perfect unison, playing and relaxing in the sand, meanwhile MacDonald is isolated at the rear of the stage looking through memorabilia or struggling to put on his jumper. Symbolically, the wooden post which Dylan and Heather erect at the start of the dance is regularly knocked over.
Taylor and Gumbs replicate each other’s movements in a way that suggests Heather is unchanged over the years, while Dylan has become distant from his younger self. Yet there is still a lingering connection: when Alvaro Grande climbs down from an acrobatic human pyramid, Myles MacDonald compulsively sneaks a hug.
The rapidity of Dylan’s deterioration becomes apparent as he spoils a juggling routine by setting too rapid a pace and finally knocking over the instruments.
There is a strong sense of joy evaporating. Dilly Taylor’s languid, sensual movements suggest warmth and relaxation like an enormous cat yawning, stretching turns into a handstand / tumble into a roll. Yet as the stress of coping with Dylan’s worsening health intensifies, her dancing becomes more jagged, abrupt and desperate: sitting on chairs which do not exist or being so tired as to behave like a robot and having her limbs moved by other people.
The show features a highly unusual example of audience participation. Trying to hold the relationship together is likened to keeping feathers in the air using your breath not your hands—a process in which the audience is invited to join.
Dylan’s heart-breaking situation—seeking to come to terms with the decline in his health by using his professional skills in a failed attempt to prove nothing has changed—is beautifully visualised by Myles MacDonald trying to juggle, but instead crushing, balls made out of sand.
The innovative storytelling adopted by Kook Ensemble ensures Sand is visually as well as emotionally engaging.