Review: SHARP TEETH at Q THEATRE., Auckland

Sharp Teeth, presented by Dynamotion, is a bold, bristling piece of dance theatre that treats love not as neat romance but as something unruly, unpredictable, comic, tender, and sometimes dangerous. Created by Lara Fischel-Chisholm and Tom Sainsbury, the work unfolds through off-kilter vignettes rather than a conventional plot, using movement, character comedy, music, clever props such as pool noodles, costume, and theatrical surprise to probe the strange, spiky physics of attraction and heartbreak.

The show’s greatest strength is its tonal agility. One moment, it plunges into playful absurdity; the next, it catches on something raw, real, and recognisable. That collision of comedy and vulnerability gives the performance its pulse. Rather than explaining love, Sharp Teeth puts it in the body: bodies lunge, retreat, tangle, celebrate, splinter, and snap. The choreography is energetic and expressive, with the ensemble committing fully to a heightened world where emotions arrive oversized, overheated, and often overwhelming.

Sharp Teeth explores love through a whole litter of lively components, not just romance. There is familial affection, flirtatious fascination, comic craving, and even the curious, conditional love of an animal: the unreasonable cat who will eat you when you’re dead rather than mourn your passing. That feline example is funny, familiar, and quietly fierce, reminding us that love is not always loyal, linear, or logical. Sometimes it is selective, selfish, slippery, and still somehow irresistible.

Fischel-Chisholm and Sainsbury bring clear creative confidence to the piece. Their signature blend of dance and character-driven comedy is cleverly crafted, with its narrative line slipping into dreamier, darker, more emotionally charged territory.

The production’s symbolism gives love sharper shape and stronger sting. The black veil is particularly powerful because it captures the concept of the “sharp teeth” themselves: the hidden bite within love, the darkness beneath desire, and the pain that can sit beneath tenderness. It suggests the shadowed side of attraction: grief, jealousy, fear, obsession, and emotional danger. Rather than presenting love as purely romantic or beautiful, the veil becomes a visual warning that intimacy can obscure, entangle, and transform. Its darkness cuts across the show’s comic energy, giving the performance a keener edge and reinforcing the idea that love can be both alluring and alarming.

Overall, Sharp Teeth is playful, provocative, and visually vivid, balancing comedy with a genuine emotional bite. It is ideal for audiences who enjoy performance that is physical, surreal, and unafraid of silliness, but still sharp enough to leave a bruise. Love, in Dynamotion’s hands, is not soft-focus sentiment. It is bright, strange, funny, bruising, beautiful, and very much alive.