Review: JASMIN VARDIMON: NOW, Sadler's Wells East

As Jasmin Vardimon Company reach their 25th anniversary, their latest production NOW "revisits favourite moments from the company repertoire, reflecting on them now, in our current time, while creating new material to interweave a new experience". Known for their beautiful movement, humour, and dramatic vignettes, the company's NOW invites us to consider the world we live in through a single 85 minute piece.

With NOW standing for many nows, thens, nowheres, future nows, past nows, and present nows, Jasmin Vardimon offers up revisited classic choreography fused with new material to create a beautiful and intense way to celebrate the company's 25th anniversary. Offering a window into the world through movement, music and video, NOW is a playful and political piece.

The show opens with 15 seconds of silence and darkness. A bold move before entering into the political sphere with an activist waving a large white flag. Her face is contorted with rage, she appears to be shouting, but her voice is unheard. Two workmen in hi-vis badged on the back with the words 'Now' and 'Then' lift, interrupt, and eventually gag the woman with tape, as she is joined by other, equally silenced protestors. 

It's a powerful opening, startling in its immediacy and simplicity. What is being protested, and why? The music accompanying this section is "Silence is Sexy" by German experimental band Einstürzende Neubauten. The combination is one that keeps you guessing, as metaphors of repression, caution, and interaction continue through the evening.

Forces of gravity, oppressive borders, stop signs, and the transient nature of both protest and provocation, feature throughout NOW, with the use of a vast video wall allowing us to see and not see that action can be both futile and deceptive. We see a pair climbing stairs we have seen created just moments before from a length of rope on the floor. The company of seven shuffle past a video camera mounted at the front of the stage on their bottoms.

The ideas are always original, and although near 90 minutes of movement must be tiring and take a toll on the body, the dancers engage our interest by making it fun while offering pointed comment on climate change, love (two sections stand out here, one with a paper bouquet and another with video work offering a literal change of heart), or the limits of what we can make real (what is the greatest nation? a slide asks at one point - imagination).

I enjoyed the choices of music which ranged from Shida Shahabi and Ichiko Aoba to The Haxan Cloak, Dom La Nena, and Donato Dozzy through classical pieces from Nigel Kennedy and the Budapest Scoring Orchestra. Set and video design by Guy Bar-Amotz and Vardimon allowed a vast space to take on many lives, while Teresa Pocas's costumes offered the casual and the chaotic to merge.

Andrew Crofts's lighting and projection design showcased spaces and places to bring us fights, staccato movement, flailing arms, a hand seeking a couple of spotlights, a menacing mob, a sole dancer unable to break through a cordon, a rush of happiness while trying to catch snowflakes. One dancer with a broom pursues another, goading him into movement. Another almost develops a sign language with his legs and body while speaking; yet another pleads for a message of peace to be left unerased.

The co-creators and dancers (Evie Hart, Sean Moss, Hobie Schouppe, Juliette Tellier, Donny Beau Ferris, Risa Maki & Andre Rebello) perform individually and as an ensemble, even spelling out their thanks at the curtain call. Their enthusiasm becomes ours in this imaginative space of illusions, in a celebration not just of Jasmin Vardimon's company, but of all of humanity.

JASMIN VARDIMON: NOW at Sadler's Wells East until 8 March 2025 as part of a UK tour.