Jefta Van Dinther presents a dystopian breakdown of industry and capitalism in this ensemble led project. Brooding and highly captivating, the piece will make you question your own place within the ever moving world.
The stage is bare save for a large turntable, slowly rotating in the darkness. Figures sit monumental at intersections upon the mechanism, gradually revealing themselves to us in the dim lighting. They begin to sing, a song seemingly from long ago. As they do, their bodies start to rumble. Something is rising, progressing. A low, droning sound emerges, rhythmic but distorted. A call to begin work.
This is Remachine, a new work by Swedish-Dutch choreographer Jefta van Dinther, who is known for works which are political, and often bleak, depictions of modern life. Van Dinther describes Remachine as staging “inner friction, a space of limbo”. This certainly comes across. The dancers: Brittanie Brown, Gyung Moo Kim, Leah Marojevic, Manon Parent, Roger Sala Reyner and Sarah Stanley are seemingly workers, set to life their lives upon the ever-moving mechanism. They begin like factory workers on a production line, monotonously handing off invisible products, all the while the wheel turns, industry in motion. They continue to sing, the only shared unity they have left in a life of servitude. Soon this harmony is overtaken by the rumble of distant soundscape. This music, composed by David Kiers, is as ongoing as the turning of the machine, richly textured and pulsating, a three-dimensional environment of woe. The dancers move to the beat, writhing and distorting themselves, sometimes in sync and sometimes not. From here, Remachine trails through several movements, each starting slowly and building to crescendo, before fading into nothing again. The only constant is the ever-turning wheel.
The piece is produced with great success. The dancers perfectly inhibit the roles of lost beings, not just with how they move, but their facial expressions, and even when they sing, half wailing for freedom but with beautiful harmony and technical control. Towards the end of the piece, their voices are strained, journey worn. There is a great deal of vulnerability on show here, and the dancers are able to express struggle and strength all at once. They capture the spirit of the factory. Individualism is punished, and as the piece goes on, once fragmented movements become synchronised, as though the workers are slowly accepting their fates. At one point, they attach themselves physically to the mechanism, a beautiful yet slightly on the nose segment. To the skill and precision of the dancers, you often forget that they are on a turntable at all. To stage a piece often heavily reliant on the placement of people, while all the while battling a stage that wants to put you somewhere else entirely, is a testament to the dancer’s dexterity.
Jonatan Winbo’s lighting design, along with Cristine Nyffeler’s costumes, further add to the dark brooding atmosphere. The costumes are rugged and roughcut, muted colours and soft wool mixed with hard edges. The lighting is subtle, rising and falling in line with Kiers’ ominous tones.
The pacing of Remachine will leave some looking to their watches, as each fragment or movement of the work takes a while to settle in. Patterns of movements are reiterated to exhaustion, and though the performance itself is only an hour long, time feels stretched. However, this is not to Remachine’s detriment, as the whole purpose of the dance is to show an ever-constant struggle. Van Dither’s work is often described as “staged research of movement itself”, how bodies react to their environments and one another. Both dancer and audience are given the time to spectate this, and what is produced is hypnotic in nature. You simply cannot take your eyes away from the stage, you feel drawn into the horror of it all. The dancers and the wheel become as one, worker becomes cog, and audience become complicit.
Remachine plays at Sadler’s Wells East Stratford from 14-17th May.