Shechter II: From England with Love review

We’ve been here before, quite recently: Balletboyz’s England on Fire at the end of last year was a similar attempt to interrogate the state we’re in, and similarly stumbled into incoherence. In fact, there’s little that marks Shechter’s work out as specifically about England: blasts of English composers’ music, a royal wave, a momentary “teacup rattling” gesture from Eloy Cojal Mestre as the soundtrack veers into the shattering noises of a magnitude-ten earthquake.

It’s mainly bodies used as objects of amorphous protest, a rowdy clatter of movement into which Shechter’s young cohort impressively fling their all. They flex, crawl, scuttle, gyrate suggestively, bounce off each other with mosh-pit energy. Mestre’s furious extended solo is almost an act of self-harm. Rare moments of consolation crop up in echoes of folk dance and embracing circles, but it’s all absorbed back into the cacophony.

Tom Visser’s lighting design makes everything look good – particularly an extended sequence of filmic quick-changes that throw up arresting vignettes with each lights-up. The piece finishes in bright white light with the sound of birdsong, the dancers clustered (again) and silently regarding us. They start to leave the stage, but can’t bring themselves to do it and shuffle back, again and again. A visual representation of Shechter’s feelings for this country? Hard to say – there’s no clear trajectory or argument here, the intention remaining murky, the energy in a closed loop. You’re left feeling like a shut-out observer, wondering uneasily what it is you’ve witnessed and whether it was about you.