Social Beast

The quite extraordinary Social Beast – a physical theatre/dance phenomenon – plays differently each night.  On stage there are five physically very varied, highly individual dancers: Liv Bell, Michelle McCowage, Michelle Mayumi Chinen, Jet Min and Sophia Derkenne.  Each wear quite different dance rehearsal clothing. Each of them is the epitome of contained focused energy as they move to Moses Carr’s dynamic live score.

The very differences among the dancers emphasise one of the themes of Social Beast.  Despite the heterogeneity of the performers, what we see is a controlled and as if chosen conformity.  

The show begins with a close order drill that continues to the level of our tolerance; the dancers move as one – marching, then dancing, jumping, gesturing, miming – blank faced, as tight as any chorus line but generating a far more chilling, almost inhuman kind of tension.  To see them in lockstep, turning as one unit at the corners of the playing space calls to mind an inexorable militarism.  The dance shoes and sneakers become jackboots in our minds...

The dancers’ repetitious movements in total synch also call to mind the Wuppertal Tanztheater of Pina Bausch.  But where her choreography was also a critique of her time, it had a sort of elegance and sad, black humour; Social Beast is aggressive, more threatening – especially when the audience is on all four sides of the dancers – and very close.  Bausch meets the more brutal present.    

There are other sequences – director Lily Fish calls them ‘scores’ – where things fall apart.  In one ‘score’ the dancers become frantic office workers, typing, checking, comparing, scurrying about, distressed and as if on the edge of panic – and all without a word.  In yet another, they are animals – tigers, warring apes – attacking each other with vicious fury – and here for the only time, the dancers growl and scream.  And so we infer that the frustrations of the group – or herd – break out only to have them turn upon themselves.

But the most poignant yet frightening moments come as one or other of the dancers attempt to break free from the oppressive but safe uniformity and groupthink.  Within moments the escapee is crouched, bowed down, alienated and longing to return.

To see fifty minutes of this intricate, unbroken, utterly precise choreography, you might marvel that the dancers can maintain focus as they retain it and repeat it.  In fact, there is improvisation throughout and there is interchange among the dancers, as well as with Moses Carr’s music mix. It changes with every performance too – as does Hannah Willoughby’s lights.

But there is a framework – and a spine - brilliantly worked out and set by Fish, within which the dancers all play...  Carr’s music is highly percussive, ranging between darkly dramatic and quietly lyrical.  The music can dictate or signal a change in the ‘score’ or in the way a ‘score’ is executed – or the dancers’ decisions on stage can change or affect the music.  Meanwhile, Willoughby’s lighting too keeps changing – dazzling to nightscape to blood red.  The coordination and collaboration of all within Fish’s concept and creation is astonishing.  It’s not random, it is coherent despite improvisation, it all makes sense, and it has something important to say.

Of the ‘scores’, Fish says, some are thematic, others are purely movement based.  One section is ‘Open’ in which the dancers can use any combination of ‘scoures’ that emerge in the moment.  As such, ‘Open’ is most subject to change show to show.

Fish has been thinking about this kind of theatre and how to employ it in her own work for years.  What we see now is the result of that thinking. 

Initially puzzling, even frustrating in its repetitions and the dancers’ apparent blank obedience to what looks like some external control, it’s when the intentions and the themes begin to emerge and take hold that Social Beast - the paradoxical title is just right – is gripping, its tension and our anxiety become powerful.  We might marvel at the dancers’ stamina and focus (by the end they’re sheened with sweat), but we must admire them and the work of the ‘creatives’ in making this coherent, pointed work that needs no words.

Michael Brindley

Photographer: Kate Longley