HEX

HEX is voodoo played with a straight face. The dancers move as though something else is driving — jerked, dropped, snapped upright again, always arriving a beat before the decision to move could have been made.

It is fast, and it is exact. Unison locks, breaks and locks again; a gesture begun by one body finishes in another.

Who is holding whom?

Then the direction reverses. Whatever has hold of the dancers starts reaching past the front row — because a spell has to go somewhere, and the audience is the nearest available body.

None of it is solemn. A curse in shirts and waistcoats, delivered deadpan to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, is a joke the piece is entirely willing to make. It just makes it at speed.