See You by Hung Dance – Dancebase, Edinburgh

Hung Dance are a Taiwanese company, and their production at Dancebase of choreographer’s Lai Hung-Chung’s See You is an awesome demonstration of their quality. On a black box stage eight dancers, four men and four women dressed in white dance as one. The piece explores the difficulty of maintaining connections between people, triggered by a car accidents Hung-Chung witnessed. This is represented in the opening scenes, where a dancers writhes above a sea of bodies, buffeted by a collision, and then becomes a terrifyingly dead weight as she collapses. See You is all about dancing together, and the coordination of the performers is remarkable. They move in the kind of close proximity that requires precision rehearsal, and produce a series of technically astonishing sequences. There are also duets and solo sequences that show the dancers have everything in their collective lockers. The work is beautiful and sometimes funny, such as when the dancers line up queue-style and twitch their heads and bodies around each other to see ahead, moving faster and faster. Much of the work is danced in languorous slow motion as they weave around one another, apparently effortlessly. the controlled power and physicality on display holds the audience in a spell, and at the end of the hour there is no doubt we have witnessed a real tour de force.