The Violent Beauty of Botis Seva’s BLKDOG

When the usher at the Joyce Theater handed me a program for the long-awaited U.S. premiere of British choreographer Botis Seva’s BLKDOG, he warned, “It gets louder in the second half, and it’s pretty violent.” This wasn’t news to me, but his grimace made me wonder if it would all be a bit too much.

I was nervous as the house lights went down and the curtain went up. The music comes first—an atmospheric hum and then bass so deep I can feel it through the floor. In a dim flood light, someone sits alone on the stage, their back to us, their hood up. A deep voice booms: “Maybe we should start with how you’re feeling.” More bass, more stillness. Then a child’s voice asks, “Daddy, can you read me a story?” More stillness, more bass, then the blast of a gunshot and the seated figure falls over. The lights brighten to reveal a group of similarly dressed people standing across the stage. The fallen-over body army crawls to the group, the music bends into a steady beat, and the dancing really begins.

Seva’s London-based Far From The Norm (FFTN) is a Hip-Hop dance theater company that is indeed far from the norm. The artists come from the world of street dance and excel in a range of styles from Popping to Breaking to Krump to House. Yet Seva’s choreography is decidedly contemporary, mixing a Hip-Hop physicality with a postmodern sensibility and a theatrical narrative drive.

The movement style throughout the evening-length work is sharp and clean—the unison flawless, the gestures exact. But the movements themselves are wild and the emotions raw. The dancers jab their elbows like martial artists, heave on all fours, flail their limbs in a storm of grief and then drop on the beat. They skitter around, crouched like scarab beetles, then sway into a slow Russian-style kick dance. They are impressive, playful and brutal.

As for BLKDOG’s narrative, it delves into the deep, dark depths of childhood trauma and grief. There are content advisories galore: depictions of sexual assault, abuse, gun violence, and depression. And yet it is all so hallucinatory, so nightmarish and abstract that it is—for me, at least—palatable. In the program note, Seva writes: “My hope for making BLKDOG was to find healing but also to connect with people who are struggling with daily life and to encourage them to hold onto faith.” The healing comes in the form of not only facing but animating one’s demons. Taking them into the body and dancing them out. It is, in a way, a performative exorcism, and there is a real catharsis in that—for the performers, whose personal stories are woven throughout the piece, and for the viewers as well.

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The original score, which composer Torben Sylvest aptly calls a soundtrack, is incredible. It mixes Hip-Hop-adjacent electronic music with text and sound. There are noises that translate in my ears as insects scratching, as monster-dog breaths, as moans. Like Seva’s choreography, the score blends childhood memories with adult prowess. It’s at once unsettling and gorgeous.

Ryan Dawson Laight’s costumes maintain the same aesthetics—the hooded sweatsuits are familiar and anonymous, the second half’s spiky costumes reminiscent of Where the Wild Things Are.

The lighting, by Tom Visser, is a true collaborator in the show. It matches the score and choreography perfectly. The stage is often so dimly lit that it creates a middle-of-the-night disorientation, a nightlight-in-the-hallway atmosphere. The work would not have as profound an effect, I believe, without Visser’s design.

Toward the end of BLKDOG, the voice says, “It’s okay, you’re just like me.” The dancers finally take off their hoods, but we still can’t quite see them. They could be anyone. They could be you.

At a curtain chat after the performance, Seva said about the piece, “For some people, it’s triggering. For some people, it’s just a dance full of events. If it hits that one person, that one person knows what I’m talking about when they watch this piece. There’s that one person in the room who sits there and goes, ‘I know exactly what happened. Exactly everything. I feel it.’ It’s that person…The piece was always for that person.”

When the chat opened to Q&A, an audience member commented that he thought the violence—(“And I’ve never thought this before,” he clarified)—was beautiful. I thought of the usher, of his warning. He’d been right, of course, but I’d watch it again if I could. I’d watch it again and again and again.

BLKDOG is at the Joyce Theater through October 13.