Bad Nature

Contemporary dance has steadily evolved over the years through alternative techniques that challenged the ideals of classical ballet. Where ballet reached to the heavens in search of transcendence, pioneers such as Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, and José Limón grounded movement, exploring weight, gravity, and earthbound expression. This influence is unmistakable in Bad Nature: bodies twist, writhe, and unfold in sculptural forms, a stark contrast to the lofty elegance of tradition.

With a cast of twelve dancers, six each from CG&R and ADC, the production draws on a wide range of international influences, though the imprint of Dutch contemporary dance and music is especially vivid. Having spent much of my career in Europe as a pianist for dance classes led by these very traditions, I was struck by echoes of the 1970s and 80s particularly in the complex use of polyrhythms and sound layering, the era when Nederlands Dans Theatre, for example, was a prominent contributor. The score blends the organic and the synthetic, conjuring something both animalistic and futuristic. It is a soundscape that suggests we are suspended between two realities: the primal and the technological, the natural and the alien.

At its heart, the work examines how our relationship with nature is reshaped by technology. The human choreography is intricate, visceral, and deeply physical, yet it is often overshadowed by the sheer scale of the technological elements: the complex musical score, the lightscape, the shifting sense of space. This tension raises questions — is technology enriching human creativity, or diminishing our fragility in the process?

The staging is a feat of collaboration and I marvel at how the creative team put it all together. Choreographers/ADs Roni Haver (Club Guy & Roni), Amy Hollingsworth (ADC), and Guy Weizman, with contributions from ADC Associate AD Jack Lister, weave their visions seamlessly with a score by Louis-Frère Harvey (also performing live) and Frank Wienk. Additional on-stage musicians Max Frimout and Nils Mliefste (HIIIT) deepen the work’s immersive power with an ‘electric’ performance.

Renowned Set, Lighting, and Sound Designer Boris Acket, along with Lighting Designer Ben Hughes, are well and truly in the spotlight (pardon the pun if you see the show) with some roller-coaster drone-like movement from a myriad of lights, creating a miraculous impact of ultra-dimensional, somewhat kaleidoscopic effects, all quite mesmerizing, pushing the production onto another level, quite literally, whilst engulfing the audience in a shifting, multi-sensory world.

Yet the show is not without its provocations. For all its on-going phases of repetition, the scale of technology sometimes risks overwhelming the human body — a tension that feels deliberate, but leaves one wondering whether the dancers are protagonists or mere counterparts to the machinery around them. This ambiguity is where Bad Nature truly lives: in the space between awe and unease, between human expression and technological spectacle.

The result is a compact, dazzling 60 minutes of artistic fusion — dance, music, movement, light, and sound in remarkable interplay. The title Bad Nature is apt, hinting at both humanity’s uneasy relationship with the natural world and the ways in which technology reshapes it. For artists of any discipline, this is a production worth seeing, a must, not only for its sheer craft, but for the unsettling and enchanting hopeful questions it leaves lingering long after the final light fades: are we watching the future of dance, or the future of ourselves?

Brian Adamson

Photographer: David Kelly