This reminds me of Berlin, says my friend, watching the cool, beautiful bodies of L-E-V’s dancers in the brutalist setting of a multistorey car park, as cocktail-fuelled revelry rages upstairs and a stiff south London breeze sweeps through the gaps in the concrete.
Israeli choreographer Sharon Eyal is in residence at Bold Tendencies, the Peckham car park turned art gallery. The company’s presence amid the buzz of hipster nightlife makes sense, with work that carries echoes of the dancefloor, the dangerous edge of life after dark, and a co-director, Gai Behar, who is a former party producer.
This first of four programmes features extracts from Eyal’s repertoire, starting with a mesmeric solo that glues us to the slow movement of bones and muscles shifting under the skin: pelvises, shoulder blades, fascia being stretched, joints pushed out of line.
Eyal’s style is distinctive: model-like limbs indulgently elongated or corrugated into sharp angles; balletic control and flashes of classical lines; an underlying carnality, ultra-stylised, as in an expensive perfume campaign; and an aloofness that is magnetic, like the person you fancy more than they fancy you. Eyal knows how to make the body an object of desire, but with no obvious come-on; there’s deep sensuality, but androgynous detachment. And there is compelling movement, the eight immaculate dancers often in unison and always wedded to an insistent bass – one reason why the work has an accessible pull, even in its physical oddness.
There are more shows to come, including a new creation and a collaboration with record label Young Turks. It’s exciting if Eyal’s dance can reach new audiences here that wouldn’t go to Sadler’s Wells. They’ll be impressed.
The season continues at Bold Tendencies, London, until 18 August.
