Words by Stella Rousham.
“I was often told that my dancing wasn’t masculine enough.”
Daniel Hay-Gordon’s pre-recorded reflections seep out to the audience as he takes centre stage wearing what he describes as rehearsal clothes: plain black sports shorts and a top. A soft yellow light casts down on him from the side, like sunbeams peeping through cracks in a window. Shivers run down my spine as he effortlessly chaînés to the delicate tingles of Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto. In defiance of balletic binaries, it’s clear that dance comes naturally to Hay-Gordon.
Queering assumptions of what is natural/unnatural, accepted/rejected, lovable/disposable, is at the heart of Natural Behaviour – a variety show by dance-duo Daniel Hay-Gordon and El Perry (AKA Thick & Tight) which premiered at Battersea Arts Centre.
From a tap-dancing Donald Trump as a fluorescent-orange pantomime horse, whose face periodically peeps from his posterior to sing “Drill, baby, drill” in a revised chorus of Disco Inferno, to Annie Edwards’ elegiac flutters, leaps and twirls in an dance-ode to soon-to-be-extinct birds, Natural Behaviour expertly captures the contradictions and absurdities of the 21st century through a masterful balance of humour, entertainment and critical social commentary.
Framed by the impending climate apocalypse, Natural Behaviour inverts so-called “natural” social hierarchies: honouring the overlooked – such as Perry and Hay-Gordon’s rhapsodic and twitchy homage to moths – and ridiculing the powerful, as seen in Luigi Nardone’s silly-yet-sinister embodiment of a leopard (garbed, of course, in a bejewelled catsuit and gold knee-high boots). In this eclectic petri dish of acts, all things weird, wonderful, and absurd are welcome. Even a tableau of Perry and Hay-Gordon dressed as flies-on-the-wall aboard the Blue Origin Space Shuttle — hovering over a big red ‘eject’ button while Katy Perry drivels on about space travel — finds its place.
Music and movement in each act are introduced by a carefully scripted voiceover and captions projected onto the back wall. Crucial for accessibility, the audio descriptions are also deeply poetic – narrating, for instance, fading music as “the silence of birds facing extinction.” These interventions underscore how inclusive practice can enrich the experience for all audience members. A show bursting with cultural witticisms – including a nod to 1970s scientific research on same-sex animal pairings, represented through two (lesbian) seagull figurines eating chips – does require some explanation. In doing so, Thick & Tight exemplify how to embrace accessibility as a choreographic tool, rather than a logistical afterthought.
Whilst admirable, at times the multi-media approach made it difficult to know what to concentrate on. In a sketch titled Dust, my attention was torn between the witty film featuring learning disabled artists from the Camberwell Incredibles and Jahmarley Bachelor’s slick and sultry impersonation of queer icon, Quentin Crisp. Such tension testifies to the richness of Thick & Tight’s work and I’m nevertheless left excited by the creative possibilities of multi-disciplinary, inclusive performance.
For Thick & Tight, queerness is not just an identity but a subversive and creative praxis, evident through their collaborative solidarity with artists across disciplines and social status. The finale, for instance, showcases performers from disability-led, Corali Dance Company. Clad head-to-toe as cockroaches, the five dancers wave their two arms – and two additional puppet-like limbs – in menacing unison. The repeated voiceover – “I don’t want to set the world on fire” – blasts through the theatre, striking at the core of Thick & Tight’s message. What society deems insignificant pests are, in fact, radical life forms that can teach humans a great deal about non-hierarchical, non-colonial survival. It is perhaps only through mutual collaboration and playful rejection of rigid categorisation that we find the side of human nature worth saving.
Catch the next performance of Natural Behaviour at the Lowry Theatre from the 10 – 11th June and keep up to date with Thick & Tight online and on Instagram @thicktightdance.
Header image by Rosie Powell. Performers Daniel Hay-Gordon & El Perry.