Impermanence Dance Theatre, SEXBOX

Impermanence Dance Theatre, SEXBOX (The Garden of Orgonon), October 15, Ugly Duck, London

Members of Impermanence Dance Theatre in SEXBOX (photo: Jeremy Reider)

“Pleasure cannot be shared; like pain, it can only be experienced or inflicted, and when we give pleasure to our lovers or bestow charity upon the needy, we do so, not to gratify the object of our benevolence, but only ourselves.” – Aldous Huxley

Bristol-based Impermanence Dance Theatre is a controlling mistress; in their dungeon loft your eyes are softly spanked for 60 minutes with a series of carefully crafted and choreographed episodes of pleasure. Played in the round at the top of Ugly Duck, SEXBOX is a feast of punctuated movements and sticky visual images from seven dancers with exceptional musicality.

SEXBOX is inspired by the pioneering but little-known German electronic musician, Ursula Bogner and her fascination with the writings of Wilhelm Reich, a controversial feminist psychoanalyst for whom a healthy discharge of sexual energy was the crux of humanity’s salvation. (There is rumour a-plenty about the existence of Bogner and whether or not she is the construction of veteran electronic music producer Jan Jelinek; it is at the edges of bliss and untruth that SEXBOX exists.)

“We live in a community of people not so that we can suppress and dominate each other or make each other miserable but so that we can better and more reliably satisfy all life’s healthy needs.” – Wilhelm Reich

The seven dancers met at the Rambert School 10 years ago and are now exploring new models of non-hierarchical collaboration; with SEXBOX they achieve an impressive visual cohesion and choreographic consistency. The costumes and characters could have stepped out of Reich’s Orgone Accumulator with their 60s sci-fi futurism from the palette of costume designer Pam Tait: unitards, reflective white plastic, and silver cheek-heightening makeup are tailored for ease of movement and for the accentuation of the body. Each of the fragments of pleasure (this would make an interesting response work to Pop-Up-Duets by Janis Claxton Dance) features duets, trios or the entire company and their pacing is exquisite; when interest almost begins to wane or is in danger of repetition, extra bodies are injected into the scene to shift focus, add texture and intelligently puncture (sometimes for just a few seconds) our visual rhythm.

With lingering hands and crotches itching to play with each other, six pairs of gnashing teeth hungry for the sex box of the carcass of another, and all manner of exposed and freshly-squeezed cheeks on display, there’s a controlled depravity across the dozen-plus episodes without a full-on BDSM experience. I left not sullied by SEXBOX but in state of visual buzz having witnessed seven accomplished performers in complete control of their material and their audience.

“Sex without love is as hollow and ridiculous as love without sex.” – Hunter S. Thompson

The memory of pleasure and the pleasure of memory is something I’ve been wrestling with; part of the reason for the delay in publishing is my endeavour to see how SEXBOX fits into my own internal reward memory system. I have memories of mirth and appreciation on the night yet it is difficult to re-create those same feelings on the page. Did it stimulate the eye? Yes. The images were sharp, transitions were electric and the lip-syncing film recreation was a hoot. Did it stimulate the heart? I don’t think so but I don’t think that was its intention. What SEXBOX has done is reinforce my belief in Impermanence as a company that creates work that is impressive, controlled and quite unique in the dance/theatre ecology of the UK. Wilhelm Reich was once denounced as the orchestrator of a cult of sex and anarchy; with SEXBOX, Impermanence takes on that mantle and becomes a throbbing cult of pleasure, anarchy and dance.