Chunky Move in 4/4

Melbourne based Chunky Move bring their new 4/4 to London’s Southbank Centre…

Chunky Move in 4/4. © Gianna Rizzo

Chunky Move
4/4
★★✰✰✰
London, Queen Elizabeth Hall
8 November 2024
chunkymove.com
www.southbankcentre.co.uk

‘Eight dancers perform a symphony of mesmerising movement in Antony Hamilton’s blueprint for choreographic precision and physical endurance.’ says the headline marketing blurb for Melbourne based Chunky Move’s visit to London’s Southbank Centre.

And about halfway through the 55-minute show, still waiting for things to really get going and seeing the dancers relax into some aimless strolling and noodling, I wrote in my notebook, “I so want to go on stage, shake them, and shout ’Get the f**k on with it’“!

As nights go, it could have started better. The audience was only allowed in a few minutes before curtain-up, confronted by a dark auditorium and the dancers moodily stretching and standing around on stage. Cue everybody using light from their mobile phones and much stumbling around to find seats. As one Usher understatedly put it, “It’s not awfully helpful, is it”. Eventually, house management got their act together, and the house lights were switched on.

Chunky Move’s 4/4 sees the Queen Elizabeth Hall stripped back to a black box stage, dancers all in black, much downlighting, occasional lacklustre black and white backcloth projections, and two low plinths that can wander the stage. The eight dancers are split into two cohorts of four and work in pairs, mirroring their movement. The movement, a mix of contemporary and street dance, is largely precise, if not amazingly so. Driving the show is an electronic score (Alisdair Macindoe), which provides a strong, persistent beat, like a metronome. It can phase interestingly in and out as the sounds echo around the space. There’s an almost obligatory section of foundation-shaking bass. I’ll be glad when sound designers move on.

The dancers rather come over as zombies inhabiting some MC Escher world - they move steadily and methodically through their routines, but it doesn’t ever seem to build into something that demands attention. The two plinths move, two more plinths join, they rotate (individually and together), they lean, they stack, and two black boxes get added on for dancers to stand on. Put like that, it might sound rather interesting, surely? But the reality is just a lot of humdrum movement, steadily delivered without joy, personality or obvious intent. Unless, of course, the intention was to be low-key, introspective and largely stolid.

I’m not sure if it was intended, but in a sea of abstract movement there was one point where the dancers combined individually to show something like a shipwreck, and The Raft of the Medusa came to mind. Welcome, but how it fitted in I know not. But largely, my mind wandered into spying on the health and safety aspects of dancers working with plinths and perching on boxes. That, and looking at my watch.

The dancers are, I’m sure, capable of generating much excitement, but here, co-credited for the choreography, they appear to have kept themselves on some artificial leash that merely seemed to detract and dumped us a good way short of mesmerising.