Review: ZONA FRANCA, Southbank Centre

A bicycle is ridden around the stage before a dancer flips it over, pumps the pedals and then uses a spoon to make noises from the spokes and rubber tyre. Elsewhere, four others are in some kind of human caterpillar which ends in joyfully chaotic play fighting. In the background, two more are having a long, slow snog.

Welcome to Zona Franca, a show created by Brazilian choreographer Alice Ripoll and dance company Cia Suave that does its level best to defy being pigeonholed. Can this even be called a dance production if only about a third of the time is spent on hip-shaking and booty-waving? 

Thematically, this is something of a hot mess. It describes itself as “poetic and political” and, while there’s a certain physical poetry to some of the more unusual set pieces, the political aspects alluded to online (including the end of the Bolsanaro era and the return of Lula) are ostensibly missing in this barely structured work. The often-simultaneous casual and seemingly unco-ordinated physical vignettes make it difficult to pick out any deeper meaning than, say, gazing at a Rothko or a Pollock from a distance.

Raphael Elias’ stage design is inventive and fluid in a charming lo-fi way. Overhead balloons are popped and rain down containing glitter and small lights onto the floor; later, dancers roll about, knocking the lights around and covering themselves in glitter. The troupe play around with conventional instruments like drums and unconventional equipment like the aforementioned bike or a football which is kicked into the audience. A trolley table is gently pushed along, aboard which a couple explore their oral fixations - hand, foot, elbow - while their colleagues illuminate them with mobile phone lights.

When bouts of dancing do break out, it is fun to see how the different styles are deployed and intertwined. Lithe women twerk away in groups or alone while doing the splits. Brazilian styles like the passinho and styles from northern and north-east Brazil like brega funk and pisadinha are explored to sounds ranging from pounding Afro-house to pure silence.

An interesting contrast is another South American production opening in London this week. Matías Jaime’s Argentinian hit show Malevo combines a massive wall of rhythmic sound with a regimented group of musician-dancers stomping and tapping their way through malambo sequences; it is a powerful effect albeit one which soon becomes repetitive. Zona Franca, on the other hand, is relaxed and light on its feet, always unpredictable and with a sweet but flimsy candy floss-like structure holding it together.

Like Trajal Harrell’s critically-derided Porca Miseria earlier this year, the chief barrier to greater enjoyment is not the quantity of the ideas but the quality of the vision. It is always exciting seeing a choreographer of Ripoll’s talents ripping up the rulebook but her freeform direction invites a free-for-all range of interpretations, not all of which speak to its “poetical” or “political” concepts.

Zona Franca continues at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre until 4 November.

Photo credit: Renato Mangolin

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