‘No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves. That’s all.’
Three young people negotiate the urban environment. A man in a red hoodie rolls across the ground (‘Like the rolling saint of India!’ says my companion). A woman with strawberry-blonde plaits scales the wall of a building, creating a window-frame with her arms. A different man in a roll-neck, quiet and lithe as a cat, walks across a narrow ledge from one building to the next. Brickwork, guttering, grafitti – all is highlighted, framed, as the three move around, by, through, the spaces in-between. The dancers bodies meet the concrete harshness of pavements, walls, alleyways, and staircases with an astonishing softness and suppleness, alternating between melting into the urban landscape and standing out against it. Often they move calmly, quietly. Sometimes they break into a run.
‘Chance encounters are what keep us going.’
Occasionally they encounter other humans – a man sitting on a bench eating a take-out salad; another just sitting and watching. These people are sat next to, leant upon, danced around.
‘What we call the present is given shape by an accumulation of the past.’
Always we feel that our three protagonists are existing in an alternate reality – they connect, but they are on another plane. They have slipped through the cracks into a world where (perhaps) the streets rearrange themselves, cats can talk, and love affairs can be kindled with ghosts.
‘Whatever it is you’re seeking won’t come in the form you’re expecting.’
Murikamification by Dutch choreographer Eric Kaiel (who makes a Hitchcock-style appearance in his own work as a map-reading tourist) is a promenade piece using dance and parkour that takes us on a journey through the backstreets of the North Laine area of Brighton. It’s a piece that’s been shown in cities across the world, and is justifiably well received wherever it goes. There’s no denying its beauty, its accomplished choreography, and its wonderful interaction with the environment. As for the title and theme: I spent the first part of the show seeking out the Murakami references – I’m a keen fan of the Japanese author. They are not overt, unless I missed something. But I ended up feeling that the spirit of Murakami’s books has been served well. Triangular relationships, brief encounters between strangers filled with poignancy, cities that shape-shift. The magic realism of everyday life, there and visible if we just re-focus our eyes. The feeling that there is something strange just around the corner. The discovery that familiar urban landmarks take on a different light if viewed from another angle. The notion that the streets we walk every day might suddenly twist into new shapes. Was that gap in the wall always there? What’s under that manhole cover? And where does that metal staircase lead to?
‘If you can’t understand it without an explanation, you can’t understand it with an explanation.’
There’s nothing more wondrous than looking at something we think we know well through re-tuned eyes and re-programmed brains. No need to understand. Just be.