I Made You A Mixtape
Response Theatre Company
Venue: theSpaceTriplex
Time: 7pm
Duration: 50 minutes
Rating: ★★★★★ (5/5)
Reviewed by: Jo Sansom
This is not a play, not a dance show and definitely not a musical.
It is a show bursting with joy, female friendship and vitality.
The audience are welcomed into the space by live musicians playing along to Cher, and straight away the tone is set for the evening: this is going to be loud, energetic and hopefully a little bit nostalgic.
We are immediately engaged with deciding the direction of the performance as we are asked to select from numbered cards on the stage. This is where the show holds a great deal of aliveness, as the conditions and opportunities change every evening, providing a completely new experience for each crowd.
The premise for the show is a group of nine female college students throwing their final dorm party before their lives move on into adulthood. On the cusp of something new, the audience can feel that, just like in the show itself, anything could happen.
The cast of dancers enter in some truly fabulous nineties outfits (think crop tops, tracksuit pants, chokers and giant scrunchies!).
We are led through a playlist of some of the most iconic nineties songs, from Alanis Morissette to Gwen Stefani, Nirvana to Green Day, and the musicians on stage add such an amazing energy and vividness to the music without pulling any focus away from the drama and movement on stage.
With each new song comes a chance for individual dancers to demonstrate their skills in a solo capacity. As they are presented with their storyline for the evening, they respond in real time and create an emotional language through movement.
With the girls balancing on the line between girlhood and womanhood, they navigate various defining experiences such as lost visas, dropping out of school, an affair and exciting job opportunities.
The movement is a joyous ripple that regularly builds to an explosive, full-ensemble wave of energy. The female dancers move with their whole bodies, and the dance reaches their faces, which are full of hope, joy, frustration and trepidation.
The audience are firmly part of the party and are invited up to play beer pong (a classic), dance and dress up with the girls on stage. It was the happiest crowd I’ve been a part of during this year’s Fringe; there wasn’t a hint of nonchalance or cynicism as everyone let the party vibes take them to the nineties.
I was fascinated by how Response Theatre Company created their work and the movement methodology they use, which gives the dancers the freedom on stage to build relationships between cast members, react to the music impulsively in real time and be present in the performance. This method clearly built a great deal of trust and connection between the dancers, who moved between choreographed ensemble sections and more impulsive, reactive solo movement with sparkling confidence. This spontaneous aspect gives the show such an intangible, unpredictable quality that is rare to find in movement-based shows.
What struck me halfway through, while wondering at the joy of sisterhood on stage, was how different interactions felt in the nineties when screens were not the main form of entertainment. As the girls bear witness to each other’s highs and lows, music is the soundtrack to friendship.
The movement itself was stunning: high-energy contemporary dance performed so skilfully. Each dancer had their own personality and variation in style that they brought to the piece. Some performers created very acrobatic solos, whereas others used long, lyrical sequences or a variety of lifts and jumps. The movement really communicated the intensity of the transitional nature of being a young adult.
As all the women in the audience are invited up to dance in the latter half of the production, I was already fangirling pretty hard for this theatre company… but looking around at the other women who had happily jumped up, all dancing around me, it really reminded me of the power that performance and movement has to transform us through collective experience.
This kind of show is very hard to find!
My only regret is that I didn’t see this show earlier on in the festival, otherwise I would’ve been back multiple times with all my female friends, all wearing giant scrunchies and crop tops, obviously!
The choreographer said that their aim was to ‘make people feel alive’, and what better mission statement is there?
