Dance: Controlling emotions

Family Honour
A Spoken Movement production
artistic direction and choreography Kwame Asafo-Adjei
with Catrina Nisbett, Stefano A Addae, Kwame Asafo-Adjei
producer Deborah Bankole
dramaturg Morpheus
lighting Adam Carrée
sound composition Jack Hobbs, Stefano A Addae, Tyrone Isaac Stewart
Sadler's Wells, London • 14-15.Sep.22

There's a big emotional wave surging through this remarkable hour-long performance piece, which recreates familiar settings with intent. As director, choreographer and dancer, Kwame Asafo-Adjei offers a striking point of view into social issues that are instantly recognisable, performed with precision and skill to bring out some very deep issues relating to expectations that come from families, cultures and religion.

The primary setting is a dinner table, where characters prowl around each other, evoking larger feelings. There are moments of tension, negotiation and many different expressions of domestic violence that confront the audience with the complexities of love, anger, grief and even survival. Performers Nisbett, Addae and Asafo-Adjei take on multiple roles to create a range of interactions with movements that seem to shift back and forward in time, using their full physicality in shapes that create powerful resonance.

On a blank stage flanked by audience members who are encouraged not to just be observers, the performers work with tables, chairs, bowls, windows and doors, deploying them in unexpected ways to shift the attention and provide surprising impact. Their stylised physicality feels both expressive and exact, almost cinematic in the way it speeds up, slows down and echoes around itself, as if what we're watching has been edited somehow for maximum effect.

In addition to exploring how people manipulate and control each other in relationships, moments set in churches depict religious impulses that reflect joy, doubt and condemnation. As the thrumming soundscape adds a remarkably visceral tone to everything, there are also bursts of speech along the way, including preachers sermonising, pointed dialog and some poetic musings. None of this tells the audience how to interpret what's on stage, but it all works together to paint a picture that carries a strong punch to the gut.

photos by Von Fox Productions • 14.Sep.22