Last time Jules Cunningham worked with a famous musician it was dancing with Spice Girl Mel C on How Did We Get Here? This time, it’s Le Tigre’s JD Samson. A genre swerve on the collab front, but all the while, Cunningham stays true to their own path as a creator of very formal, understated dance that invariably piques your curiosity.
In Crow, Samson is installed behind a mixing desk on the vast Sadler’s Wells East stage, playing bubbling electronics, fizzy sounds and pulsating bass. Cunningham and dancer Harry Alexander meanwhile are dressed in long boots and short dresses, warming up with a strut. Crow is inspired by queer American composers Pauline Oliveros and Julius Eastman and a particular (undocumented) performance of theirs from the 1970s. Cunningham takes the idea of outsiders and marginalisation, and compares it to birds living in hostile urban spaces. At one stage the three performers gather and turn an inquisitive and accusatory stare on the audience; it is very much like being eyeballed by a gang of crows.
