INTO THE HAIRY PULLS YOU INTO ITS STRANGE, FEVERISH ECOSYSTEM AND REFUSES TO LET GO

By Madeleine Anderson ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Press Invite

Into the Hairy lands at Sadler’s Wells with an uncanny, extraterrestrial charge, as the S-E-D ensemble move through a world just askew from our own.

Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar’s Into the Hairy has arrived at Sadler’s Wells with the dark force of an alien visitation. Eyal’s dancers, here the superb French ensemble S-E-D, seem to inhabit a world slightly adjacent to ours, their bodies charged with an otherworldly tension from the moment the lights come up. Premiered at Montpellier Danse in 2023, the work continues Eyal and Behar’s long-standing collaboration, with a chilling score by Koreless, creepy costumes from Dior’s Maria Grazia Chiuri, and Alon Cohen’s sharp lighting design.

Although the choreographer’s signature vocabulary is instantly recognisable, with torsos warped into unusual spider-like forms, and sudden twitches and trembles, the production is mesmerising (and a little scary too). The opening alone is arresting: the distant sound of dripping of water, a hum of voices, and the metallic groan of unseen machinery create a sense of entering a performance that is totally alive.

The dancers, wearing dark lace bodysuits and eerie black makeup, begin with minimal, contained gestures. Over the 45-minute piece, the atmosphere tightens like a coil. Arms slice upward without warning, individuals burst from the collective only to be reabsorbed, and the group’s precarious balance, sometimes standing in a thin line downstage and sometimes clustering like a murmuration, keeps the audience locked in complete concentration. The ensemble’s synchronicity is astonishing, their movements so interlinked that they resemble a single organism flexing and convulsing across the stage.

Eyal’s choreography often skirts the unsettling, and Into the Hairy is no exception. There are moments that feel ritualistic, almost threatening, with wide eyed stares that stand out on the almost inky-black lighting of the stage.

There isn’t always much ‘point’ to the jarring motions performed by the dances on stage, but that doesn’t mean the performance is without purpose.What audiences leave with is the almost bodily sense of having witnessed a fiercely committed group of eight dancers surrender to a demanding, immersive physical world. For 45 fast minutes, Into the Hairy pulls you into its strange, feverish ecosystem and refuses to let go.

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Photo Credit: Katerina Jebb