Putting a shirtless young man on your advertising is never likely to harm ticket sales. It’s a truism that is addressed immediately by Max Percy, the 29-year-old dancer who is pictured sniffing a running shoe on the posters for his solo show Baklâ. He may be wearing a T-shirt right now, he reassures us as the lights dim, but don’t worry: it will be gone before the hour is up.
What sounds like a throwaway piece of comic flirting establishes a power dynamic that crackles throughout the rest of this devilishly smart physical theatre piece, which is named after the Tagalog term for a third gender, a word that doubles also as a homophobic insult. The audience is treated variously as co-conspirators, voyeurs, clients and finally something close to oppressors. The intimate lecture-theatre seating – four raked semi-circular rows overlooking the performance space – enhances the sensation that we are witnessing an anatomical dissection, but Percy laces his serious themes with teasing and tomfoolery.
In acknowledging that he has effectively sold his body for the show, Percy sets up an idea that ricochets within the piece. The action flits back and forth from the Philippines in the 16th century, brutally colonised by the Spanish, to an ostensibly liberated 21st-century dancefloor where a teenage virgin is drawn to a man with a bad reputation. These leaps in time, coupled with video clips including mobile-phone footage and Filipino TV ads, sometimes make it feel as if we are fast-forwarding through Cloud Atlas, commercial breaks and all.
But if the ideas come thick and fast, they cohere satisfyingly into a reflection on how trauma reverberates down the generations. A handful of props are audaciously deployed: there are mask games and mirror games, rope-work and soap-work. The floor is slippery by the end but Percy’s grip on his material couldn’t be firmer.
At Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 27 August
