When in need of hope, it’s common to look to the young. You’ll find the next generation of choreographers and dancers in two laudable initiatives from Sadler’s Wells: the Young Associates, four choreographers in their early 20s; and the ambitious National Youth Dance Company, all aged 15 to 24, here performing Madhead by 27-year-old Botis Seva. Look at the dance they produce and it’s clear these young people have a message, but that message seems to be: we’re doomed.
Environmentalism is strong in the Young Associates show. “You set planet Earth on fire!” accuses Ruby Portus’s retro-futurist activist-comedy Port Manteau, while Wilhelmina Ojanen’s confident Land gives us dreamy forest people who lose their earth, trees, community and trust. People crumble too, lost and despairing in Christopher Thomas’s To the Ocean Floor. Anthony Matsena’s happy tribe disintegrates into darkness in Vessels of Affliction, individuals destroyed by the system (a piece with too many ideas thrown at it, but a strong central performance from Kennedy Muntanga).
The works are wildly varied in style, but perhaps the main takeaway is just how hard it is to make choreography, even when you’re this talented. Jokes don’t quite come off, voices are not yet found, drama is undercooked or overdone. Still, Young Associates have skill, energy and ideas to build on.
Botis Seva is a more established choreographer, and his experience is clear. Seva comes out of east London’s hip-hop scene and makes powerful work that sparks with friction, disaffection, mental struggle and the gregarious energy of youth reined in with tight discipline.
His style centres on the physical contradiction between frozen tension and explosive pugnacity, manifesting as the inevitable eruptions of fear and frustration that people try to keep clamped inside. Madhead uses the seriously impressive NYDC dancers in tight militaristic manoeuvres. They’re taking aim, but who the enemy is isn’t clear. Individual moments of human connection and compelling short solos resonate against the ensemble’s sometimes repetitive routines. It’s a work that could be stronger at half the length, but Seva creates striking dance and an all-consuming (if unvaried) atmosphere.
All these works may need honing, developing or editing, but in terms of dance’s future, we’re not doomed.
