IN REALNESS

In reality Dam van Huynh in collaboration with Tommaso Petrolo create a disquieting work of dance/theatre of epic proportions. An extraordinary feat of physical intensity that borders on the operatic. Petrolo not only performing a punishingly demanding piece of dance but also a vocal score of equally exacting intensity.

For the audience it is equally intense and demanding, there is little relief from this visual and aural explosion that mixes and delivers texts from a number of writers and artists. It opens with a defiant and confrontational stillness and near quiet in which we the audience become the observed, reversing the convention of audience and performer. We are slowly scrutinised, it becomes uncomfortable and uneasy. “resist much, obey little” as if we have any choice, eyes wide open, ears pinned back we are connected.

This is passionate stuff, uneasily questioning gender identity, queerness, eroticism, control and submission. This is the work of two brilliant artists pushing themselves and pushing the way we see them and absorb their story. I felt sure that what I was feeling and experiencing might not be the same as any other member of the audience. It became sharply personal and at times uncomfortably so. I wanted to look away but felt compelled to watch.

Petrolo’s command of the space, his body and his voice is exceptional, a tour de force not dependent on bold strokes and extremes but also on stillness and quiet. Van Huynh and Petrolo created the work mainly in the COVID pandemic, in isolation and across many miles using the internet and Zoom to engage. That sense of need and needing to communicate, beyond the isolation of oppression clearly manifests itself in this demanding and defiant work.

Andrew Kay

13 March

Brighton Dome Studio

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