Cowpuncher My Ass review

Choreographer Holly Blakey is one of the most fashionable dancemakers around. She has made her name creating ugly-sexy dances for music videos for Coldplay, Florence and the Machine and Young Fathers. Her style is a kind of post-punk, anti-dance, snatch-and-grab free-for-all that loots from a multitude of dance vocabularies, including ballet, showdance, jazz, freeform and – here, at least – synchronised line dancing.

The uber-diversification might have a higher purpose if there was a sense that Blakey was driven by anything other than the desire to challenge the status quo. She has no discernible philosophy beyond making dance as fashionable and ephemeral as possible. This latest iteration of a work created in 2018 and now extended to its current 75-minute format is formally inept and minimally challenging.

Fashionistas with stars in their eyes wet themselves over the costumes designed by Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood, though there is scant suggestion of the Wild West in the baggy pink suits and bum-revealing skirts. The achingly hip score by achingly hip composer Mica Levi is a cocktail of sonic bombardment; mutated Morricone guitar segues into massive blocks of squalling electronica before giving way to the jittery minimalism of Australian avant-garde jazz trio The Necks; there is even an amusing nod to 1960s Italian astro rock. The found sound of musique concrète, with cars whooshing by on a highway and the distorted tick-tock rhythm of clocks, is punctuated by abrupt silences during which the seven-strong cast stand, awaiting their next cue.

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