Among the eclectic entries on Becky Namgauds’ CV are dancing for Harry Styles and Vivienne Westwood, and rolling around in mud in her outdoor festival piece Rodadoras. The Heat is something different again, a long way from Harry’s House – although the house bit is right, as it’s entirely set in one living room. But in this one a naked woman is crouched on all fours on the arm of the sofa, looking like things might go feral.
Namgauds is clearly a choreographer with vision, and this is dance-theatre that’s by turns unsettling, comic and mildly erotic. She is one of five female performers, of varying ages, inhabiting this domestic setting – sofa, coffee table, lamp, pot plant – where the ordinariness swerves into the surreal. Suddenly one woman is smooshing a tomato into her face. Another’s head becomes disjointed from her body in an amusing bit of optical illusion. There’s a blankness about these women, but also a hunger.
