Sweat pools, hands rise in the air, buttocks twerk like there’s no tomorrow. It’s late at night and people are dancing, each lost in a world of their own. Emma Martin’s Night Dances, first seen in Dublin in 2021, is about the ecstasy of moving on a dancefloor that time forgot.
A huge circular light hangs above the stage and Stephen Dodd’s lighting stains the powdery air in deep tones of scarlet and maraschino. Three musicians (led by Daniel Fox of Gilla Band) stand at the back, metallic, electric and deafening: ushers hand out earplugs. It feels subterranean, nocturnal, all a bit David Lynch, where time loses its meaning and the uncanny is unleashed.
Four successive sequences show people absorbed in their own rhythms. A shirtless man in blue trackies with an unnerving stare and a giraffe tattoo paces as we arrive, then starts throwing shapes in the muted light. Arms lifted, he moves to a soundtrack in his head, fighting, falling and folding in on himself.
Suddenly, a young girl in sugar pink appears, and the man slinks off. The girl parks her gum on the side of the keyboard and, with her dance troupe in gym shorts and ponytails, launches into a ferocious routine – all bend and snap, a fusillade of synchronised rolls, kicks and cartwheels. Unfazed by the scuzzy wall of sound, they’re mesmerising but unsettling at this late hour.
Next, another flailing bloke, guitar riffs staggering him off balance. Finally, three women (Robyn Byrne, Aoife McAtamney and Jessie Thompson) appear, veiled head to toe. As the chords screech and you feel the reverb in your belly, the women shrug off the veils and go for it with unbridled fervour. They thrash and judder with jackknife intensity under the strobe lights, stomping and lunging, faster and wilder. They’re not messing.
You might wish these different kinds of dancers could share the floor, or that we sensed what awaits them in the bleary morning light – but Martin doesn’t go there. There’s just the sweat and the groove, nothing else in the world.
Night Dances is at Zoo Southside, Edinburgh, until 28 August.
