-Walking towards the theatre from the tube, we realise we are part of a middle class flock. People are very well dressed. Their shoes are shiny and their teeth are white. I have a split in my jeans that extends from the front of my crotch down and round and up to my right buttock.
-The only previous time I've been in Sadler's Wells I was in the upper circle looking down on the stage from a height that made me feel nauseous. I had to keep reminding myself that it was really interesting to be watching something from above. E. has press tickets so we have seats near the stage. I imagine sweat flicking off the dancers and hitting us in the face.
-I remember going to see a theatre production of Button Moon when I was four or five and being scared of the theatre seats (I thought they were going to swallow me).
-The stage is massive and empty. We are in a physically huge space.
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-The lights cut and a lot of people in the audience gasp.
-Suddenly the stage is backlit and a lot of people in the audience gasp.
-Loads of male dancers stride up to the front of the stage and are spotlit.
-E.'s friend, who is dancing, is not spotlit. E. gleefully points out that he has missed his mark, but is then unsure of whether or not it is intentional.
-All the dancers are wearing cargo trousers and long sleeved t-shirts.
-I once went to see Paul Daniels at a theatre when I was about nine, and Debbie Mcgee really scared me because I found her so beautiful. I thought she was going to invite me on stage and kiss me.
-The male dancers are doing really male dancing.
-One of the dancers has dreadlocks and is white and I inwardly cringe.
-The music could be described as 'tribal'.
-There is simulated dance fighting.
-In no way is this production worried about, or critically conscious of, its use of theatrical lighting, dance 'acting', or sheer spectacle.
-I keep thinking of the words 'normal sized penis' and imagining contemporary teenage boys doing google image searches (safe search: off) for 'normal sized penis'.
-The dancers do a move that reminds me of being on pills in a really bad drum and bass club in Bristol, surrounded by white people with dreadlocks.
-White noise is used to signify nothingness or emptiness.
-I think about oukontic and meontic nothingness. Oukontic nothingness is the nothing we can know - so like, 'What's in the fruit bowl?' 'Nothing' i.e., no fruit. But meontic nothingness is like the nothing that isn't even nothing, so like, 'what is outside of the universe?' 'Nothing'.
-The amazing thing about dance is that it points towards there always being movement, even in stillness. This dance never lets there be stillness (which is, as it were, an oukontic stillness - a stillness within movement which is never really still). When the dancers aren't dancing, they are sort of moving on the spot, as if to make a point of how there is always movement, even in stillness, which defeats the whole point of stillness inevitably making this point anyway.
-I am not bored at all. Not for one single second.
-A big problem for some philosophy is how to account for change, like, how do things move from one state to another without some external magical force? (It would have been God in medieval philosophy.) Dance points out the possibility that every object is always already interpreting and adjusting to other objects (so, the body is always already adjusting its position in relation to the ground). Change could be the constant, the immediate product of objects being in the world. So maybe the problem is how to account for identity, rather than change.
-I remember trying to wear a short sleeved t-shirt over a long sleeved t-shirt as a teenager and it making me look very thin. I also remember my mum buying me a special t-shirt that looked like a short sleeved t-shirt over a long sleeved t-shirt but was actually just one piece of clothing.
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-In the interval I drink a beer very fast. E. has to review this show for a website and I talk loudly about the meaning of reviews, 'Who reads reviews?' I say. 'Who are they for?' I say. 'Why do reviews exist other than to perpetuate the system of production they pretend to critique?' I say. 'I might write a review' I say.
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-A male voice comes through the speakers, talking about how his mother left him. I assume it must be the choreographer's voice, but then feel really presumptuous and think of it as an acted character. (Later I find out it is the choreographer's voice.)
-The voice makes loads of shouty mouth noises and screams, run through a distortion effect. It sounds like the worst bits of a nu-metal band I used to like called KoRn.
-This piece seems so explicitly fucked in terms of its attitude to gender that I assume it must be taking some sort of reflexive, critical position. The voiceover (disembodied male) is speaking about his attitude to women via the absent figure of his mother, and the female dancers respond violently and compulsively to these words and occasional noises. The lighting sometimes switches to single spotlights and the female dancers sort of put their hands up as though it is God.
-The female dancers do this movement with their hands banging on their legs which sort of looks like a swear word, or groin based cuss. Like how Italians have those hand movements that mean things like 'I had sex with your wife', or, 'I will open up your anus (and put my foot inside it)'.
-It is really impressive when lots of people do things at the same time.
-I've been reading about Lacan's graphs of sexuation, about how male sexual identity is formed by an external (mythical), contradictory, totalising force, but how female sexual identity is not formed by any external totalising force and is instead fuelled by an internal, directly contradictory set of conditions. I don't really understand it, but it seems relevant, as in, this piece explicitly imposes an external, totalising (male) force on a group of women.
-The female dancers do this movement where they lift up their dresses and half-simulate masturbation or orgasm.
-A single female dancer comes to the front of the stage and is spotlit and the voiceover says 'I won't forgive you' or 'I will never forgive you' or something like that and the female dancer looks scared.
-A woman in front of us is putting her head down beneath the seat in front of her. I assume it is because she is offended or embarrassed by the open misogyny of the piece, but later I realise she is crying because she is overcome with emotion.
-Sometimes its hard to remember that other disciplines have histories that they know intimately and are always responding to.
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-I keep turning around in the lobby and seeing people do the hand on thigh, groin based cuss movement from the female dance. It happens like six or seven times.
-We crash the aftershow drinks and I drink three beers and eat two bowls of free food. I talk loudly about what I thought of the work and E. points out that the choreographer is behind me so I change tack and start praising the piece.
-E. sees her friend who danced in the male piece and laughs at him about him missing his mark for the spotlights. I am totally shocked that this is the first thing she says to him.
-I wrongly assume that every male dancer I meet is gay, and then feel really embarrassed and prejudiced when I realise they aren't.