Founded in 1999, Krement X have swiftly grown to become Norway's shining contemporary star, touring extensively with their own exciting brand of choreographic theatre. With unrelenting energy, performers Morten Traavik and Anna Dworak (who also conceived and directed One Night Stand) savagely chew over the details of an affair from its inception through to its brutally comic decline. With its varied and sometimes frantic pace, I was drawn voyeuristically into the world of their tormented dating game: from lust through love and out the other side.
An effectively minimal set portrayed the passage of time – the spinning glitterball of courtship taken down and replaced by the hanging upright vacuum cleaner of nest building. Even good sex gets boring after a while, and the torrid shag-fest is replaced with household maintenance, the heart relegated to doorknobs on the matching his and hers flat-packed wardrobe and bedside drawers. Ultimately, replacement synthetic lovers/confidantes are found, until the secrets that come tumbling out of the closet bring the relationship to a destructive conclusion.
This examination of one tortured couple was achingly familiar in many of its observations and much of its humour. At one point I, along with other squirming spectators, was dragged into the bickering and forced to take sides over whether Anna has lost her voluptuous appearance and grown too thin, a transparent attempt on Morten's part to end the relationship he has grown weary of. Solid, insightful performances and that delicious laughter that comes from a slightly uncomfortable place conspired to make the hour with this pair seem far shorter and, like all brief liaisons, the echoes and ghosts remain.