In The Bushes clowns around with existentialism at The Place
Léa Tirabasso’s In the Bushes could well be a very different show when performed for the wrong crowd. The show feels part of the legacy of the be-ins and tanztheater works of the past, with movement and voices coming together to interrogate the banality of existence. Thankfully, Tirabasso gives us full permission to laugh as dancers shriek, cavort, and hump each other with gusto throughout the UK premiere of this frisky, hour-long work. Within the first few minutes the auditorium of The Place began to fill with snorts, snickers, and chuckles — we were game.
In the Bushes ‘explores the grotesque notion of human exceptionalism’, according to Tirabasso. It’s a daunting subject for most, but she has worked with philosophers and geneticists alike, even hosting talks with medical students just down the road in UCL. The theme suitably fits her medical, physical, and philosophical curiosities.
A cast of six stumble onto the stage like babbling infants initially speaking in only squeaks and giggles, their bodies twitching with nerves and excitement. As these ragtag newborns grow, Tirabasso employs an approach of detachment. Rarely verbally coherent and acting in an uncanny, heightened manner, they are not immediately relatable. Like Jane Woodall, we are observing a group of odd apes, a world of unexplainable rituals. In their little biome they perform for us peeping anthropologists the curious innovations of the human species: art, music, religion, sex.
The movement style is cheeky and a little off kilter. Dancers scurry and bounce awkwardly, they hesitate, and when they’re ready for some mincing they give it hell. One scene of faux-gymnastics is particularly funny as a dancer struts, wriggling and flicking arms as if in the middle of a floor routine, before taking off with semi-confidence that he will land his cartwheels without taking any casualties with him. The clownish antics get laughs, but the schtick does wear thin in saggier moments. And I mean this literally. One dancer, unsatisfied with her developing body, stuffs her top, creating heaving mounds, and invites a gang of eager motorboaters to have a go.
The irreverence is a little jarring, at times the characters are so animated one feels like they’re watching a garish children’s cartoon in some strange country with an especially pervy sense of humour. This foreignness works when highlighting Tirabasso’s satire of that bizarre ‘human exceptionalism’ our species is so guilty of. But the insistence on such heightened mannerisms turns the piece from delightful, to droll, to verging on dull.
Late in the show when the gimmick is dropped momentarily, a real thing of beauty emerges as our bald chimps discover death. They softly guide the spirit of the deceased through the hazy space to Mozart’s Lacrimosa — it’s a cliche but hey, it works. With this moment of touching meditation, Léa Tirabasso has me intrigued for what else she has up her sleeve.