A mix of mediation and exquisite dance that expands your consciousness
∞ {Infinite} is visionary dance company Humanhood’s first dance theatre meditation, leading the audience on a mystical journey through themes of movement and consciousness.
The sound of crickets and birds fills Sadler’s Wells East theatre as we wait for the piece to begin, accompanied by a lingering haze spread across the warm space, very different to the outside cold. This swells into the comforting sounds of a thunderstorm, building an ambient humidity as the lights dim.
Humanhood’s ∞ {Infinite} immediately draws you into a world of quiet, careful synchronicity between the dancers, grounding the audience in their meditative attention to one another. A hypnotic, poetic voiceover from co-Artistic Director Julia Robert calls upon the audience’s own sense of embodiment and awareness; our presence becomes part of the shared consciousness explored by the dance.
From initial stillness and small movements, ∞ {Infinite} grows into rhythmic, fluid, frenetic patterns that evoke the physics of the natural world, the ensemble of dancers moving as a collective. There is exquisite beauty in these ripples of shared motion, in glimpsing waves, leaves in a storm, cycles – many resonant shapes and energies translated into the flow of incredibly skilled dance.
∞ {Infinite} powerfully evolves into a conscious, playful choreography, becoming more ritualistic and gestural. The dance expresses a search for cosmic oneness and consciousness through human symbolism and spirituality, moving in its exploration of separation, resilience, and a different kind of repetition and cycle. In a moment alone on stage, Humanhood’s other Artistic Director, Rudi Cole, embodies the heartbreak of individuation alongside a vigour and yearning to be a part of something more. The other dancers waiting in the wings.
The piece holds the tenderness and unpredictability of life, offering an experience that is both restorative and expansive, framed by a world of light, silhouette, after-image, and immersive composition. It was a gorgeous reminder of who you are as a part of a connected whole, far beyond Sadler’s Wells East.