Last Updated on July 26, 2026
A New High-Octane Work for the Young Dancers of Shechter II
4.0 out of 5.0 starsPart rave, part ritual, relentlessly physical and danced to loud, throbbing music, Hofesh Shechter’s In the Brain is a high-energy, pulsating work, the kind that we’ve come to expect from this choreographer, showing many of his characteristic tropes, yet somehow fresh and newly engaging – hypnotic, even.
In The Brain started life as a shorter piece, CAVE, which Shechter created for The Martha Graham Dance Company four years ago; he has now developed it into a one-hour work for Shechter II, his junior company, or, to use Shechter’s own definition, his professional development programme for exceptional, emerging artists aged 18-25. Picked out of literally 1,000 + applicants, the current cohort of four women and four men are outstanding performers, all completely attuned to Shechter’s style, all endowed with tremendous talent and seemingly inexhaustible stamina.
In The Brain opens in darkness, your senses engaged only by a low rumble that evolves into the sound of water burbling underground. Gradually, dusky lighting outlines a cave within which a seemingly amorphous mass quivers. Slowly you discern eight bodies, struggling to emerge from the group; and as the sound score becomes thumping music, they emerge, full individuals, but still connected to the collective. They are dressed individually by Osnat Kelner, in slightly outlandish costumes that range from a sequinned evening top over an elegant pleated skirt to a plain, shapeless, off-white robe and a lot else in between.
Tom Visser’s expert and hugely effective lighting design creates a variety of settings, all hazy, all crepuscular, as if the freedom the dancers now feel to move were still confined to an underground space – or a club. Light changes respond to cues in the loud, percussive and repetitive music, composed by Shechter with additions by Âme, the dialogue between lighting and sound establishing its own subliminal dance.
Shechter’s choreography drinks from a variety of sources, including Jewish folk dances. At intervals the dancers hold hands with arms raised at shoulder level to form a line, hopping rhythmically as they lift alternate legs forward. Often, too, they look up to heaven, arms spread out, as if pleading with god, or berating him for untold ills.
From contemporary dance, Shechter lifts the abdominal contract/release that determines much of his movement and is particularly effective here, for example, in the sequence where all the dancers lie down on their backs and arch upwards, their bodies creating the shape of waves.
And this time around, too, Shechter makes a light, though unmistakable, reference to the collective challenges of hip hop, when his dancers form a semi-circle into which individuals take turns to show off their own individual prowess in short exhibition solos that mimic the improv of street dance.
As in previous pieces, Shechter uses blackouts to move dancers from one formation to an unexpected one, as when a sequence of energetic dance disappears from sight only to reappear elsewhere on stage as a static line.
The overall feel is still, always, very much Shechter, his unique way of combining the euphoria that comes from abandoning yourself to powerful movement with the impeccable discipline of collective dance. As the piece builds up, there are orgiastic sequences of absolute outward freedom; then the dancers appear to fall into a deep interior trance. There is darkness, both physical and of the soul, yet there are also explosions of joy.
It’s dance as release, and it’s strangely contagious, partly because of the effect of the repetitive beat of the music, but principally because the dancers’ total immersion in their performance really draws you in.
We know what to expect from Shechter, and yet the appeal of his unique brand of dance, so emphatically presented by his hand-picked dancers, never fades. On press night, the packed Queen Elizabeth Hall afforded In The Brain an enthusiastic and well-deserved standing ovation.
Hofesh Shechter; In the Brain is at the Queen Elizabeth Hall 22 – 25 July at 7.30 pm. Sat mat at 2.30 pm
Dur.: 55 mins no interval Tickets £22 to £46 (+booking fee)
Queen Elizabeth Hall
Southbank Centre
Belvedere Road
London SE1 8XX.
Check our London Dance Previews for more to see in the next few months
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