In the Spirit of Diaghilev
Sadler’s Wells
Inbal Pinto & Avshalom Pollak Dance Company: Hydra
Queen Elizabeth Hall
In a dance world asphyxiated by a lack of inventiveness, it is refreshing to be confronted by creations that can still provoke, shock and amuse. This is the case with Javier De Frutos’s Eternal Damnation to Sancho and Sanchez, premièred last week at Sadler’s Wells amid audible and visible signs of disapproval and approval. Regarded by some as a gratuitously offensive publicity-seeking stunt, the work is more than a mere succès de scandale. The graphic sex, the near-blasphemous use of religious motifs, the phallic-centered iconography of Katrina Lindsay’s sets, and the in-your-face violence are but developments of thematic features that have always been part of De Frutos’s aesthetic. Think, for instance, of the memorably gut-wrenching, dramatically powerful, blood-soaked naked male duet at the end of Grass.
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