The newest work from young choreographer Becky Namgauds, this hair-raising movement theatre piece uncorks the forces burning and churning under the suffocating veneer of quiet domestic life
Upon returning home from seeing choreographer Becky Namgauds’s newest piece The Heat at the Lilian Baylis Studio, I set down my keys and looked at the couch in my living room, realizing that I would never be able to look at it the same way again.
With the slick, ever-transforming, and otherworldly atmosphere of a womb, The Heat inventively gives birth to a new perspective of a staple domestic space. From its first pulses, the piece painstakingly unwraps the seeming comforts of a traditional feminine domain, transforming them quickly, mercilessly into disturbing horrors. Like grotesque canines, Namgauds’s creatures lurk just under the carpet, between the couch cushions, and behind the curtains. In the end, the line between nightmare and reality seems to have disappeared entirely.
Namgauds defines herself as a multidisciplinary artist, drawing not just on her movement background but also other media foreign to her expertise. This particular piece was inspired by Portuguese artist Paula Rego’s Dog Woman paintings, a series in which Rego sought to show the physical strength of women by presenting them in dog-like poses. Many of the women Rego depicts suggest that they’ve succumbed to an animalistic desire of some kind – legs, toes, and arms splayed. Certainly a comment on societal norms surrounding “proper” feminine sexual behavior. Not having familiarized myself with Rego’s paintings beforehand, it was incredible to go back to these paintings and be reminded viscerally of some of the images conjured in the piece. Namgauds is clearly and genuinely taking her cues from a different medium entirely, demonstrating not only the effective importance of her multimedia approach but also her own unique skill in bridging distinct media, from paintings and pastels to dance.
And yes, there is, of course, a very satisfying, very cheeky, and very masterfully clever nod to the yogic pose “downward-facing dog.”
Namgauds transforms these women into creatures we simultaneously hope never find a way out of their haunting living room (especially that bottomless couch) but also that we find somehow comforting in their childlike absurdity. At one point, one woman triggers a vibrator and places it casually on a table, paying it little attention as it wobbles about. Until suddenly all of the creatures are transformed into masturbating vibrators themselves, using anything available – the banana plant, the hoover, the magazine, the flower pitcher – to get themselves off.
Even as a non-dancer, I was able to appreciate the specific motifs that Namgauds’ uses in order to unravel a piece as richly as she does in The Heat. Bordering on contortion, the dancers’ bodies oscillate between overextension (their heads hanging behind them) and contraction (their loose hair falling over their faces). Very rarely do you see Namgauds’ dancers’ faces. They also share parts of their bodies, like their arms and hair – again, drawing out a playful childlike thread in the piece.
Through Namgauds’ remarkably intentional choreography, these characters very effectively flop and sag into a creature-like realm that at once demonizes the environment that does this to the female soul while also emphasizing the animal strength and supple grace of the female body itself. The Heat doesn’t hold back from the horrors of feminine sexual and emotional suppression. But as spooked as I was, I would willingly re-enter that living room if it meant I could see and feel it all again.
I just won’t sit on that couch.