Oona Doherty: Leather Jacket Review – dancers enjoy their sweaty work | Section

CWould it be a curse for an artist to knock it out of the park early in their career? Choreographer Oona Doherty’s amazing original work, Hope Hunt and Hard to be Softthey presented him as a unique voice (quick, unfiltered) moving in unknown territory. His results have been variable, although he has always been his wife.

Doherty’s last major piece, Specky Clarkit was a high opinion. The new international film, Leather Jacket, feels different, an incomplete idea. (I know, you can’t win.) Leather headdresses are worn by eight dancers. Under bright fluorescent lights in the concrete space of Bold Tendencies – a Peckham car park with many rooms turned theater – all the dancers shoot one foot on the floor with a heavy sound, and again, keeping the music guaranteed. It’s fun to be around as the foot slaps turn to hip-slapping, then jumping, then Doherty’s Irish step dance, matching and transitioning from electronic to Cormac Begley’s experimental Irish music. (The dancers have shed their jackets by now; they are wearing their underwear.)

Here is the joy of sharing music and common dance. This relationship is difficult, but it is always the idea of ​​being flesh and blood people, not a group. There is something sincere about this, the dancers exhaust themselves, and between the stages they rest, sweat, swim, laugh at each other (in the way: “Can you believe we’ve been through it!”). Their presence is real. And that’s what Doherty wants to show us: kick it, sweat it, get on with it. Dancing is a means to an end, and jackets only make it harder, sweatier work.

The move itself is not very exciting. There is an increasing amount of theatrics – one dancer, with his pants off, wearing sunglasses and smoking a cigarette, is a fun cool uniform. There is a slightly sinister noise as the dancers slap heavy jackets on the floor, creating a sound of opening and violent violence. You wonder if the mind suddenly turns, opening another world. But at a solid 45 minutes, this is none of that. It’s another unexpected turn in one of Doherty’s journeys.