Five blurry, indistinct figures slowly gather on stage. Pools of light shimmering at the back of darkness. Slowly and softly, light filters into their space and we see five people, two men and three women, dressed in the most basic and rudimentary of dance outfits. They begin to move, fluid and undulating, to the densely rhythmic soundscape which churns out around them.
This is Roam, the latest collaborative venture between choreographer Tom Dale and the cutting edges of British urban electronica, following his previous work on Eddystone Raver with Tom Jenkinson aka Squarepusher. Roam finds Dale operating within the sub-bass sonic structures of dubstep and drum & bass, using specially commissioned pieces from the likes of Shackleton and Sion alongside spoken word passages intoned over the soundsystem by poet Rick Holland.
Roam is appropriately titled, seemingly depicting a shared human journey through both inward and outward experience, sometimes alone and sometimes perilously intertwined with others. The five dancers perform in numerous permutations. Introverted solo turns expand into passionately aggressive duets and then further into the explosive vitality of having all five on stage at once. Their bodies bounce off each other with savage grace before retreating into their own hermetic entities.
While the dancing is fantastic, it is the music which really makes Roam. A pulsing, dub mix which veers between ominous ambient hiss and furiously clattering industrial percussiveness. There are moments when human performer and accompanying electronic sound warp reaches up to feverish levels, as though a solid electrical charge were being whipped up.
At the end of the fifty minute piece, the five dancers turn away from us and, huddled together, slowly scuttle off stage. The cacophonous accompaniment filters down to an agonized, ebbing fade-out. A fittingly emotional end to a marvellously visceral work.