Shechter is a magnificent, one-of-a-kind choreographer. The movement in Sun is complex and gorgeous, weaving extremely disparate physical languages into seamless, tightly-woven phrases. Lindy hop, 18th and 19th century classical ballet, belly dancing, Balkan circle, MTV-style group choreography, mystic dances and religious gestures are all in evidence.
Sun bypasses both quiet contemplation and intellectual analysis – it is experienced directly as an unrelenting series of visceral stimuli; the audience perched, breathless. The parts, however, exceed the whole. While much of contemporary dance remains abstracted, Shechter forces his choreographies to assume an overtly narrative form, but has yet to do so entirely satisfactorily.The piece is interesting in terms of form: it opens with a cheeky preview of the end, "so you know where this is going and that it's all going to be OK", then launches into a furious barrage of short episodes, some merely seconds long, which brainstorm situations. These range from the genteel and aristocratic, to religious, romantic and graphically violent, closing with a peculiar scene of plaintive sheep in the field, facing a fox. The scene repeats, this time as an indigenous person faces a European coloniser, and suddenly a very heavy silence descends on the auditorium.
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