by Betty Sweetlove, Aug 2023

A highly compelling visual and auditory experience, SUB highlights the stark realities of climate despair and the threads of hopefulness found in connection to others and the body.

On entry, four figures are scattered through a landscape strewn with objects. Pulleys, cords and ropes attach each performer to strange but familiar items. Gleaming pieces of silver foil duct pipe hang from the ceiling; a huge, bright orange tarpaulin unfurls slowly as the performer attached to it begins to move. The air is charged with a mix of abandonment and discovery. A strangely enthralling industrial playground, SUB invites its audience to enter this new world, and find out together what connections might still be possible.

Lending the performance its deep sense of urgency is a live and ever-shifting soundscape. Oscillating between moments of explosion and respite, microphones are used like tools to dig up the earth. A siren rings out intermittently, contrasted with soft, entangled movements, as the performers carry a megaphone through scenes of gentle connection. The show exposes its inner workings: sound and lighting operators stand onstage, costume pieces are discarded and found again, props are moved and packed away. This openness invites us into the deep, to be in closer relationship with what we might find there.

SUB explores the profound possibilities of contact and connection despite, or perhaps because of, an indefinable atmosphere of chaos and disrepair. The dancer’s moments of embrace burst with joy, innocence, and possibility. An enthralling, deeply conceptualised work which softly layers themes of care, relationship and climate responsibility. I’m profoundly grateful to have seen this work premiere here in Mparntwe.