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“Is this not the coolest thing you’ve done on Southbank?” said the young American woman beside me. We were leaning over a balcony at the Royal Festival Hall, watching dancers bust tight club moves on the ballroom floor. Nose rings, moustaches and mullets were out in force. Southbank buzzed like the Thameside people’s palace it was always designed to be. Yeah, it was pretty cool.
Over three hours, you can roam across all six floors of the RFH, not to mention the neighbouring riverside terrace and Queen Elizabeth Hall. There’s a power kink duet in a steam-smeared rooftop room (ushers cover your phone camera and warn against touching the glass: “it’s sticky”). Ensemble works ease over the stages, and little dance doings scuttle through the foyers. Dance films loop wherever there’s space to stick a screen.
What’s it about? Well, the title was a favourite line of Hollywood legend Gene Kelly, apparently vexed that Neil Armstrong’s one small step wasn’t a poetic dance move, but a thudding moonboot. It led (La)Horde, the French creative collective, to ponder the limits of tech, America’s grip on our imaginations and the trademark moves of film musicals and action movies. Cannes saw a first iteration of this immersive “choreographic exhibition” in 2022.
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(La)Horde talk a good concept, but I’m not convinced it plays out. Sure, some small works capture our doomscroll present. A dancer stumbles past, eyes fixed on multiple phones. Zombie influencers tread heavily, lost in their screens and selfies. Outside, women spray protest graffiti, despite the street-cleaning trucks that trundle after them.
But all the stuff about American hegemony and movie motifs? I don’t buy it. The dance films are thinly imagined filler, but the scorching live performances are the evening’s thudding heart, an irresistible rush of horny vibes. Come for discourse, but stay for sex and sociability, the skill and the sweat.
Over 50 dancers – from the terrific Ballet national de Marseille and Rambert, plus additional students and community performers, all in fabulous costumes – rotate through the works. Imagine the spreadsheets! The ballroom stage offers Oona Doherty’s lads-and-liturgy piece Lazarus and a fierce male quartet by Cecilia Bengolea and François Chaignaud. This sends grime to ballet class, accessorised by finger guns and peekaboo lycra. Even when the music fades, the flirt goes on.
Over in QEH, the elegant severity of Lucinda Childs’ Concerto (set to Gorecki’s jangling strings) is all patterns, geometry in motion. And (La)Horde’s own slappity line dance gives amped-up lindy hop, beats that rattle your ribcage and moves that are kicky with adrenalin. Rambert’s ridiculously watchable dancers tear into it, and meld with the Marseille crew for a wild finale.
Rambert, for too long a company of dutiful prestige, have become masters of cracking events. With this one, they own their Southbank home and make it dance.
Southbank Centre, to September 6; southbankcentre.co.uk
