What is it about rabbits? From Harvey through Donnie Darko to Lewis Carroll and Watership Down, these small furry creatures have carried all manner of psychological significance. The Swedish choreographer Pontus Lidberg has already made one work called Rabbit, featuring men dressed in long ears and bunny masks, for BalletBoyz in 2016. That carried the compelling logic of a dream. The much-anticipated world premiere of On the Nature of Rabbits at the Venice Dance Biennale, in which Lidberg himself performs alongside a cast of four men and one woman, feels more like stepping into someone’s nightmare.
In a series of fragmented scenes, he creates disturbing vignettes: a boy sleeps while a rabbit attaches blue balloons to his body; a family dances in fluent unison until its youngest member puts on a blue-cheeked mask; a bare-chested man lies on the stage like a pietà; another man weeps through a balloon, the water spurting into a glass that the woman drinks.
