Review: Ocean Hester Stefan Chillingworth, Blood Show, Battersea Arts Centre, 12-23 November 2024: Transition, violence, and the choreographic

Abstract

Ocean Hester Stefan Chillingworth and Craig Hamblin face one another. Ocean is covered from head to toe in fake blood: an exuberance of concocted liquid pain. Craig is caked in clown white. They stand within an arm’s distance of each other; noiseless, expectant. Craig raises his hand to check the quality of the gap between them, one of the many gestures which comprise the durational score that both dancers will repeat on loop throughout the performance. A breath. Suspension. Until the sickening crack of contact breaks the silence. A slap, which moves them both into the concussive rhythm of a sequence of fight choreography which rotates around the space. Navigating a set of modernist design pieces – a white sofa, a white potted plant, a large white rug, a small white table on which sits a water urn (filled with blood) and plastic cups (to hold this blood) – the performers describe broken noses, teeth clamping down into flesh, knees colliding with ribs. As they move there is a transfer of sweaty materiality, red streaks across Craig’s neck, marks on the back of his white jumpsuit where Ocean held on for balance, painting the objects and one another as, negotiating the planar folds of bodies in motion, or redirecting force to sketch the trajectory of a wound, they leave traces. Simultaneously, they offer to us the tender revelation of flesh and musculature underneath blood red, bone white. Two bodies begin to heave and sweat alabaster, sweat crimson, under the heat and pressure of death.