Briefly: To the Sadler’s Wells last night to see The Condors, a Japanese all-male dance troupe with the reputation of being the Japanese Monty Python of dance. For once, a show lived up to its publicity. I’m not exagerrating when I say this was the funniest, strangest, most entertaining, novel dance show I’ve ever seen. I laughed til I cried almost without a break, and we all left the theatre bubbling with excitement and enthusiasm. I even gained a new enthusiasm for Guns N’ Roses. There were elements of Monty Python, but the humour was more contemporary than that – they were like the Green Wing, South Park and Smack the Pony of dance.
“By injecting humour into contemporary dance they have gone somewhere most western choreographers fear to tread.” says the Sadlers Wells blurb about them. It’s the age old question – why can’t contemporary dance have a sense of humour? Well now it has (though I now fully expect some contemporary dance person to say the Condors aren’t a contemporary dance company).
