Hofesh Shechter: Political Mother Unplugged

Yesterday we went to see Hofesh Shechter's Political Mother Unplugged - a reworking of his work Political Mother from over 10 years ago, for nine young dancers from his apprentice company, at DanceEast in Ipswich. We are so grateful to have such incredible work available for us to experience, in the intimacy of a studio theatre, so close to home. Some apprentices - the dancers were outstanding, and the piece intense, emotional, at times painful. 

I spend so much of my time working with words - writing, reading, editing, sharing stories and using words to analyse and persuade. As often, it took some time for me to turn off my word-brain and allow the non-verbal world of movement to sweep me under. The wonder of dance and music is, for me, the chance to do without words, without analysis, for an experience that can mean something completely different to each person on the audience. Once in that world, it is hard to decompress afterwards and try to put words to what has been experienced. I struggle with the post-show small talk, to say anything other than the obvious about the technique and the commitment of the dancers, some comments about the sound or the lighting.

The piece was intense, and halfway through I felt that it was going to be especially hard to re-enter the world of small talk. But it ended in a surprising sequence that surfaced the audience back to the present in a way that reminded me of how Shakespeare often ended plays. His epilogues - where a character breaks out of the frame of the play to address the audience directly - or the final scenes that sometimes feel almost banal in their tidying-up of unfinished business or their crowning of the next king with hackneyed ritual - serve a purpose in bringing the audience back to earth, and the plays where this doesn't occur - Hamlet, for example - are the more devastating for the lack. The ending of Political Mother used a simple device to remind the audience that we were, after all, only watching a performance and that the real world was still out there waiting for us, more troubling for being real and therefore never coming to a neat conclusion.

It was an emotional conclusion nonetheless,  with performers in tears at the curtain call for other reasons. The show was in preparation in early 2020 and was cancelled at the last minute due to the pandemic and the sudden shutdown of all live performance. It was due to premiere at DanceEast, and now, was finally being performed there at the end of its post-pandemic run. Live art has suffered so much over the last two years, and brave, bold performers like these deserve all our support.