The Show Must Go On
Tramway, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
FIVE STARS
He's a bit of a prankster, is Jerome Bel. But as Candoco's full-on,fabulous delivery of The Show Must Go On makes abundantly clear, this radical French choreographer has the knack of using wayward humour to challenge how we perceive other people, not least in terms of physical aesthetic. Candoco's core group of disabled and able-bodied professional dancers has been extended by a dozen or so recruits for this re-staging of Bel's 2001 work about art and bodies, and the irresistible appeal of pop music.
There's no set design, no special costumes, no hoo-hah. A DJ sits at the front of the stage, armed with a clutch of CD's: everything from show tunes to rock. If the Beatles' Come Together is what gets everyone drifting on-stage, it's Bowie's Let's Dance that gets them boogie-ing - but only to the chorus. The rest of the time, they gaze steadily out at us: the lean dude with afro hair, the girl on crutches, the wiry fellow with - as we discover - whole body tattoos. He'll strip off and display them when "I like to Move It, Move It!" hits the deck and idiosyncratic abandon hits the group: the man with the beer belly jiggles it like naked jelly, there's twerking and grooving and it's all joyful. Familiar lyrics become the stuff of genuinely moving sequences - Nick Cave's Into My Arms sees bodies melt into embraces, Killing Me Softly mischievously floors and flattens everyone. We watch, we sing along to Simon and Garfunkel through total darkness, we'd get up and dance with them if space allowed - it's life-affirming, it's powered by a generous and humbling energy and it's the very essence of what DIG (Dance International Glasgow) is about. Play it again, please.
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