Review: R.O.S.E, Sadler’s Wells East
Photo credit: Johan Persson
Co-created by award-winning choreographer Sharon Eyal, a Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist, and nightlife producer Gai Behar, R.O.S.E is a collaboration with Caius Pawson of the music and arts organisation Young, featuring live music by Call Super. It’s part-club night, part-performance, part-collective fever dream, and completely unforgettable. It is a conceptual and immersive experience that literally turns Sadler’s Wells East into a nightclub.
You enter the work by walking down a dark staircase, bass pumping, and once in the open space, for a good while, you're just waiting, charged with anticipation. A night full of sweat and dance awaits – but, so far, it’s unknown how.
The audience begins as the performers. Some already moving, some watching those who do. Then, without warning, a bug-like group of dancers, enveloped in beige lace, emerges through the crowd. With no force, just instinct, they move through the audience who, in response, ebbs and flows to make way. The dancers, hyper-controlled and alive with intricate, engaged muscle in every part of their bodies, embody the pumping music in their veins. Their movement resembles ballet, contemporary, and salsa, but is - at the same time - something else entirely.
Then, they vanish. And the focus shifts back to us – the audience in a dark space, with immersive sound consuming us.
At first, we found ourselves asking: ok, what is this trying to say? It feels conceptual. Are we just meant to take the dancers in, then dance ourselves? Ok? Fine. But no – the cycle continues. Each reappearance of the dancers grows in intensity. The gaps between their dispersed performances, which take place randomly amongst us, shorten, becoming more assertive, more intimate, and the space they take up, bigger. The dancers (Alice Godfrey, Clyde Emmanuel Archer, Darren Devaney, Gregory Lau, Héloïse Jocqueviel, Juan Gil, Johnny McMillan and Keren Lurie Pardes) all find unison and otherworldly individuality in the most satisfying way!
Audience members begin to mirror the dancers, and grotesque, beautiful, abstract gestures drawn from club culture are held onto even after the performers disappear. We're engaged with our own bodies just as much as with the dancers themselves. We are eager to see their bodies and it’s a treat when we do but as the night goes on, we enjoy our own bodies just as much. The parallel and transposition of club culture into this space is so clever. It’s intimidating, sometimes uncomfortable but the payoff is thrilling.
DJ, Call Super, is incredible, reading the dark space, feeding off it, and shaping it. He’s not just the soundtrack, he’s part of the piece. The stage managers elegantly guide the room for added support without taking focus, while the lighting reveals just enough and hides what it needs to. The whole thing is poetic.
The costumes, designed by Maria Grazia Chiuri for Dior, are again something else. The lace that clings to the performers’ skin, with jewellery and body piercings adding an edginess is sexy, textural, and contradicting, just like the experience on a dance floor can feel.
R.O.S.E doesn’t just invite you to watch, you are actively involved. As you sweat, sense the performers without always seeing them, you become more than audience, less than cast and fully immersed. It’s not a night at the theatre, it is a beautiful example of a conceptual immersive experience that works!
***** Five stars
Reviewed by: Stephanie Osztreicher