It was a post-lockdown cliche to say we were reawakened to the importance of touch after having been starved of contact for so long. For dancers especially, touch is an essential part of their work, and it’s the theme for choreographer Charlotte Spencer’s latest piece, but there’s nothing cliched about her meditation on this sometimes sidelined sense.
Written in the Body is a gentle, quietly intelligent probing of our experience of the world via our bodies, skin and hands, guided by performers Petra Söör and Louise Tanoto. Sometimes it’s like playing with a four-year-old. “I want you to pull me backwards by my feet,” says one. “Put all your weight on me” becomes a reminder of how easily we forget the land of complete sensation young children live in.
More often it’s a delve into memories: of bodies gathered in protest, of intimate bodies full and satisfied, of dancing bodies moved by vibrations from a speaker, of awkward hand-holding and unwanted touch. All the while, the dancers’ present bodies feel their way through those fragments of history (with backup from Alberto Ruiz Soler’s sympathetic soundtrack). It’s subtle, sensitive, edging towards the profound.
This piece is a return to the stage for Spencer, who has spent the last decade making site-specific events, often involving the audience as participants heightening their own senses. The theatre setting puts distance between dancers and viewers, but some of these recollections are vivid enough to close the gap. Tanoto describes being heavily pregnant on the hottest day of the year, sweating from every pore, the feeling of skin on cotton on green plastic chair, not wanting any part of her body touching another – and you can almost feel it.
Until 25 May, brightonfestival.org; 3-4 November, Sadler’s Wells, London
