Electric Hotel is a site-specific work for seven dancers directed by David Rosenberg and choreographed by Frauke Requardt. The producers, Kate McGrath and Louise Blackwell of Fuel, have built a striking four-storey set among the decommissioned gasworks on the King's Cross development site. As darkness falls, spectators take their place, wearing "binaural" headsets which create an intense auditory experience to accompany the events unfolding in front of them. And these are strange indeed.
On the hotel's top floor are a swimming pool and tawdry nightclub. Below these is a succession of cramped rooms linked by stairways in which various bleakly atomised characters enact their personal psychodramas. There is a pregnant woman and her ineffectual partner, an air-guitar wielding fantasist, a glamorous middle‑aged woman who has seen better days, and a pair of briskly pessimistic maids. At intervals, as events unfold, and unexplained screams ring out, the hotel is visited by an enigmatic cycle courier and a series of sinister, voyeuristic figures in brown.
Like the film work of David Lynch, to which it's more than a little indebted, Electric Hotel is long on suggestive atmosphere and short on explanation, but razor-sharp performances by the dancers ensure an eerily compelling experience.
