The language of this piece springs from an explosive mix: African and American street dance, postmodernism, but also martial arts, basketball and football, all resting on the technical background each performer brings. With Radioactive Practice, American choreographer Abby Zbikowski upends expectations and pays tribute to effort and to the instinct for survival. The four-sided staging places the audience as close as possible to the six dancers, who keep pushing their limits, physical as much as mental โ an intense, unsettling and often ecstatic experience that probes the contradictions of our times. The sequences fly past at full speed, each movement thought out and thrown down as if life or death were at stake.
Senegalese artist Momar Ndiaye is the dramaturg of this striking work. The slap of sneakers on the floor, the short breaths, the sighs of exhaustion, the encouragements the dancers toss back and forth as if in training all form a strange score, a rhythm the eye catches before the ear. So much energy spent โ and for what, in the end? "We're here for you," a voice shouts from the far side of the stage. Isn't that exactly what every one of us longs to hear?