A black stretch limo is parked beside the Thames. Blank-faced characters, dressed as if walking home from the night before, repeatedly spray-paint slogans on the pavement (“Tomorrow is cancelled”) before they’re wiped away. A film of a staged riot gives La Haine vibes. Political impotence cast through a bleak filter – that’s the intro to a takeover of the whole Southbank Centre by French dance collective (La)Horde. It puts films and live performances by a cast of 80 (with dancers from Ballet National de Marseille and Rambert) all over the complex’s buildings for a buzzing three hours.
That’s as overtly political as it gets, though, because in (La)Horde’s world, everyone is too distracted by screens to engage, including a guy who walks around with a rig holding 40 phones, like a tourist with an elaborate selfie stick. In one piece called Deep Stream, the dancers, like avatars, go through the human motions, but it’s all fake laughter and glazed gazes. Across a lot of these performances, the mood is of eerie disconnect, joyless sex, aloofness, sadness. Is anyone happy in (La)Horde’s world? It’s a troubling depiction of gen Z. (The finale, though, offers a blast of primal energy that’s a thrilling tonic.)
