The Room

DANCE TABS, By Bruce Marriott
US-based Helen Pickett is little known in the UK and won me over with her The Room in the first minute – probably one of the most intriguing dramatic starts to a piece I’ve seen in years and it really drew me in. The walls of the room are defined by light on the stage floor and the only furniture a contemporary sofa. Inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit it starts with a turquoise-suited man and a demon/valet character, there to drive the action forward. After a short while a woman in red walks in, (‘wife or lover’ you think), and the valet disappears for a while, returning with a second woman in green, (‘lover or wife’ you think), perfunctorily carried in as if a rolled-up rug. Four disparate and unhappy characters assembled to the majestic strains of Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto No 1.My goodness – she’s thought about this and how to grab the audience, I thought. Pickett’s pointe-based movement is angular, jerky and theatrical. Nobody ends happy as they shed their clothes, as if trying to find self-truth, and come together in abandoned, spirited duets. It ends after 8 minutes with a climax of movement as if the room is set to explode with unhappiness – and the lights go out. You are desperate to know what happens, to know the proper backstory and for there to be lots more acts. I gather the piece is going to be extended for Atlanta Ballet – lucky them. And I hope lucky us at some point as somebody hires Pickett to do a much longer piece. I love her sense of theatricality and think it would run well with our love of drama and dance.