Rambert x (LA) HORDE: Bring Your Own Review 4*
Rambert x (LA) HORDE, a timely collaboration, offers a pulsating, if uneven, triple bill at the QEH, Southbank
Rambert is the UK’s foremost contemporary dance company and under the direction of Benoit Swan Pouffer an increasingly daring, inquisitive, boundary-busting outfit.
(LA) HORDE is a three-person collective currently in charge of Ballet National de Marseille, whose challenging choreographic work draws from the raw energy of youth and street culture.
A collaboration between the two was naturally a matter of when, not if.
It resulted in Bring Your Own, a triple bill which premiered at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in the Southbank.
The first piece, Hop(e)storm, was created for Rambert and in collaboration with its dancers; the subsequent two – Weather is Sweet and A Room With a View – were borrowed from the repertoire of Ballet National de Marseille.
The first thing to note is how absolutely the dancers of Rambert adapted to (LA) HORDE’s style bringing vim and conviction, as well as remarkable technical prowess, to their performances.
Hop(e)storm is vibrant hybrid of Lindy Hop (a swing instructor, Simon Salmon, is credited) and contemporary rave culture for 12 dancers set to a pulsating score by Pierre Aviat.
The group comes together in an imaginary dance hall, gradually coalescing into codified collective Lindy Hop dances, boosted with very now rave energy. The way in which this piece fuses a 19040s feel with recognisable contemporaneity is very clever indeed.
They dance in twos or in intersecting lines, their unison impressive and totally engaging. It was by far my favourite piece of the evening.
After that Weather is Sweet proved a bit of a let down. Purporting to raise “the most pressing questions of our time about intimacy, consent and sex-positivity”, its repeated graphic sexual moves – hip rotations, pelvis thrusts, masturbatory sequences, couples’ prolonged simulated sex – looked more like gratuitous provocations than a serious attempt at tackling those “pressing questions.”
A Room With a View encapsulates, in often uncomfortable ways, the anarchic spirit of nihilistic youth, symbolised by the recurrent middle finger gesture they throw at the audience and generally at the world beyond.
The way in which the dancers handle each other, fearlessly throwing each other around, forming human towers made me fear for their physical integrity; the whole thing, abetted by RONE’S aggressive, accelerating score, felt like an irresistible build up to a moment of collective release.
And finally, as they clustered together downstage lightly bouncing, performing perfectly synchronised ritualistic movements, it felt as if they had entered a collective trance, a sort of cleansing coming of age ritual.
The fact that some of that dancers were wiping tears as they took their bows attested to the deep impact the work had on dancers and audience alike.
Like it or hate it (and I did like it), Bring Your Own is a powerful hymn to the vitality of youth, and Rambert’s young dancers were truly awesome.
© Teresa Guerreiro
(Banner image credit: Rambert in Hop(e)storm by (LA)HORDE. Photo: Hugo Glendinning)
Rambert x (LA) HORDE Bring Your Own is a the QEH 7 – 10 May 2025. Details and tickets here