Enter Achilles (DV8) Review - Laura Mathis

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Enter Achilles (DV8) Review – Laura Mathis

What a relief it is to be shown a piece of dance where the audience doesn’t spend the first ten minutes thinking: ‘what the hell is going on?’  Instead, DV8’s ‘Enter Achilles’ is drawn from everyday life with instantly recognizable references.

Now cut to a ‘marmalade’ of eight ‘straight’ men, confined within the four walls of a typical pub; pint in hand, football on screen, the jingle of a fruit machine underneath a cacophony of karaoke and screeching wolf whistles to the blondes outside.

   Choreographer Lloyd Newson creates an extremely clear interpretation of the typical British ‘norms’ and its stereotypical views towards the male sex, male behaviour and above all, male relationships. He asks you to consider: ‘why is it acceptable for men to do footwork around a football but not to do footwork in dance?’ And I ask you: ‘what is now classed as a social ‘norm’ for a man?’

This review will examine that question whilst also exploring the use of movement, technique and effect DV8 expose within their dance/video piece ‘Enter Achilles’.

   ‘Enter Achilles’ is a witty, striking and surreal exposure of masculinity, or the appearance of it, with a merge of violent dynamics against pedestrian actions and gestures which are manipulated in a ‘shabby, nicotine stained boozer’  manifested with paranoia, insecurity and denial. Newson’s raw approach to the taboo issue of sex; homosexual sex at that and the difference between male relationships and homosexual relationships restores the squalid truth of real life. In fact it is fair to say that Lloyd Newson uses the secrets of his own life as a springboard into this piece.

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   The simplicity of its pedestrian actions add and emphasize the reality of DV8’s themes and literal purposes allowing the audience to relate and comment freely to a piece that doesn’t masquerade the unrefined elements of (natural) human behaviour.

As a twitching, anxious man grips a microphone, the others caress their glasses, lifting them up and bringing them to their lips – sometimes crouched, sometimes missing their mouths but always portraying the simple action of drinking and always, ultimately portraying the behaviour of a typical ‘man’.

   Meanwhile, an unshaven twenty something, sporting nothing but a pair of ...

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