There are very few times I’ve been left speechless after a performance. Watching Rambert’s recent collaboration with French company (LA)HORDE is one of them.
(LA)HORDE is a Paris-based collective of artists — Marine Brutti, Jonathan Debrouwer, and Arthur Harel — who work across a variety of art forms and have served as artistic directors of the Ballet National de Marseille since 2019.
They describe their approach of using contemporary dance as a means of protest and connection as ‘post-internet dance,’ that is inclusive, political and uncompromisingly innovative. Bring Your Own, a programme of three pieces certainly fits into that vision.
The show opens with a new piece Hop(e)storm – with the emphasis on the hop. This is Lindy Hop, mixed with rave and created especially for the unbounded energy of the brilliant Rambert dancers. Watching it you can almost imagine yourself joining in. The kicking feet and low jumps appear easy moves. It’s how people feeling full of confidence on the dance floor think they look. In reality, this appearance of free and easy is so controlled and synchronised by the dancers it is amazing it is possible.
The strength and control of the dancers is pushed to the extreme in the remainder of the programme which features two restagings of (LA)Horde’s pieces Weather is Sweet and Room with a View.
Weather is Sweet is inspired by the LA club scene and invites questions about intimacy, consent and sex-positivity. This is the piece where you can see the 15+ age guidance is needed, with no holds barred approach to the sexual imagery on the stage. It doesn’t so much feel erotic as frenzied. At one point a dancer is pushing another dancer’s bottom down and from side to side as if playing basketball. We definitely need the interval break after that.
The final piece, A Room with a View leads with another highly charged emotion with the anger of injustice and protest coming to the fore. The imagery is chaotic, with dancers fighting (punching and biting each other), while others raise a defiant middle finger to the crowd. Much of this is choreographed with extremes of motion either ultra slow motion or frenetic high speed, to an increasingly loud electronic score from RONE. At times it becomes almost hypnotic and again the control of the dancers is phenomenal.
The whole evening feels like a hymn to youth, on display in all its rawness and brilliance – wow!
Rambert X (LA)HORDE is at Lowry, Salford from 16-18 September 2025.