"uprooted, they become giant props for performers to illuminate and edit the action on a vast stage with its wings exposed and no artificial backdrop. A suspicious figure roams the outskirts with a torch; another drives a vehicle back and forth in the distance. One long-necked light snakes down from above like a tendril, its glow deepening the chiaroscuro. Bodies melt and morph. It is as if a film noir has caught fire in the projector, distorting each scene."
"Horses starts with the house lights up and a solo with instinctive flinches and hoof-like hands suggesting hunter and hunted before a second dancer arrives nose-first, as if led by scent. The animality briefly evokes NDT's Figures in Extinction but this is an acutely urban nightmare, with humans' survival skills put to the test. Suddenly, the auditorium's doors slam shut and we are plunged into darkness."
Suited dancers swing around streetlights that multiply into uprooted, giant props on a raw stage with exposed wings and no backdrop. Lighting by Tom Visser and Max Glaenzel's set create deep chiaroscuro with long-necked lights and a tendril-like glow. Sound design layers Andrzej Panufnik's unsettling strings with heavy breathing, canned laughter, and comic splashes to heighten vaudeville vignettes of peril. Choreography suggests animality and limb betrayals, with hoof-like hands, instinctive flinches, angular thrusts and cradling that transform bodies into melting, morphing forms. The production evokes an acutely urban nightmare, theatrical artifice and a film-noir distorted into disquiet.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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