Content warning: this review refers to sexual assault and gendered violence. No one needed a pandemic to reveal that love is, as a wise teacher once told me, blood on the dancefloor. Since the lifting of lockdown restrictions last year, this proverbial blood-letting has shown no end: trends in sexual attitudes, practises and relationships have rapidly shifted in preference of the frequently casual but nonetheless close-between-the-sheets kind of encounter.
The status of the situationship has never been more popular or a more prominent position to find yourself in. She starts with what most first dates are known for: etiquette; the anxiety or excitement inducing preparations; the politesse of the first look, word and touch, before giddiness or tedium sets in. Women stride confidently forward from upstage and perform in a row the ritual of checking oneself in a mirror: exposed arms are held forward, palms placed up, hair pushed back, teeth checked, and the unappealing sag of a held-in stomach is revealed.
This custom is not, however, confined to them alone. Standing shoulder to shoulder, in a similar line downstage, the suited men repeat the same actions; they replicate the same seemingly mundane but self-cauterising motions in a bid to appear more attractive to a prospective other β or simply themselves. Gender, Bausch confirms from the start, is both a monotonous and spectacular performance; one that both binds and frees in the most vicious and captivating displays.
Rows, columns, processions and rounds of this contrived and exaggerated posturing occur throughout Kontakthof. Within the first 20 minutes a woman breaks out of this formation, screaming and fainting on the floor.
No one blinks, looks or dares to break the social compact of the dance, the expectation of conformity pulling the men and women further into the act of being just that: individuals playing their expected gender roles to an estranged and sometimes callous extreme.
