Dance review: Sharon Eyal’s Into the Hairy is organic orgasmic ~ Sadler’s Wells

Into the Hairy is billed as a ‘sensual’ experience delivered by eight dancers, but it would be wrong to write it off as an expression of sexuality.

Made by Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist Sharon Eyal //S-E-D, and co-created by Gai Behar, the show is a well-formed organic whole, made cohesive by clever choreography, a symphonic approach to music and sculptural lighting.

Intricate light by Alon Cohen plays a huge role in painting bodies that are presented in a symbiotic clump, sometimes resembling the symmetry of organs, other times – the ovaries and stigma of an exotic plant or a tarantula.

But the beating heart of this many-figured organism is a clicking beat that the dancers, in close-knitted, lace catsuits move to in the ‘unnatural’ affectation of automated dolls. Their limbs have manipulated rules – forearms and hands often inverting and outstretched in a manner of carrying, begging, skulking. Layering this range of stilted isolations, mixed with structured flow, is make-up reminiscent of the Mexican Lady of the Dead.

The effect is of vulnerable bodies – unrestricted by costumes, restricted by their own embodied puppetry.

Music is an engine of the piece, guiding changes in formation against a continuous black backdrop. Koreless introduces an added nuance of melodic, Hispanic strings, leading the eight through light-hearted explorations, including a Halloween-esque, single-file parade and tableaux that evoke biblical horror of Catholic alter paintings.

Harmonic singing, associated with the figures to the point of ethereal lip-syncing, deepens the drama of the piece as individual egos break out of the organism. Notably – a male figure lunging into deep plie and moving fingers as if passing a thread through his genitals –  in the only overtly sexualised moment of the show.

Throughout, a male and female figure take turns in being elevated, extended and released from the sinuous group, culminating in final few seconds, in which the female wraps her arm around the prone back of the male, her face popping up at the centre of the collective bodies.

Inferences to reproductive systems and the mechanics of hapless human socialising – tango-dancing – succeed in lending very gentle comedy to this show, which tonally lingers in the imagination. Although the piece plays with the biology of sex, it is more referential than provocative – an organic rather than ‘orgasmic’ show.

In a national landscape that struggles with a deficit of women in leading choreographic roles, it is always a pleasure to see a visiting female choreographer with an indelibly strong offer, not least as a rallying call for more UK-based awards designed to redress this imbalance.

TF

(Photos by Katerina Jebb)