When you sit down in a theatre and there are 5 folks behind the stage laptops, you assume: what technical wizardry is about to occur? The wizardry comes, and it’s fairly cosmic when it does.
However Chieh-hua Hsieh’s Second Physique, the opening present of London’s first main Taiwanese modern arts pageant, is a gradual burn. To begin: darkness. The sound of wind, the circling of footsteps, the squeak of rubber soles. It’s a intelligent invitation to focus our consideration, shut out the skin world. Centre stage, there’s a lady (Ting-Ting Chao), in nude thong and blond wig, not precisely human. We watch her take a look at out this physique she has, a gradual train in oiling each hinge, axle and socket; fingers articulated, toes splayed, sculpted shoulder blades like alien protrusions beneath her pores and skin. The bare physique is susceptible and but impermeable, uncovered and but invisible as an individual.
So you will have a powerful introduction. And we all know we’re working in direction of some type of techy climax. However what do you place within the center? That is the choreographer’s conundrum. Projections unfold throughout the ground, wanting like dappled gentle, shimmering reflections on water, then turning into a grid-like map of metropolis streets – this rigidity between the natural, the human-made and the digital permeates the efficiency.
