High fives

There is no doubt that BareBones’ The 5 Man Show will stay vividly in the memory of any dance-goer

There is no doubt that BareBones’ The 5 Man Show will stay vividly in the memory of any dance-goer — and for a long time, too. This fizzy, moving, hilarious, corrosive triple bill is an ideal celebration of the company’s fifth year. Its five artists — numerologists would have a field day with such a recurrence of ‘fives’ — hypnotise the audience from their very first appearance, taking each viewer through a cogently formulated rollercoaster of emotions and vibrating theatre images. More significantly, the whole programme restores the long-lost faith in contemporary dance, physical theatre and dance theatre, showing that somewhere art, whether it be with or without a capital ‘a’, is still vibrantly in the making.