HKPAX: Uppercut Dance Theater's BENCHED

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Take a seat! SIT DOWN! You are on the bench! Time out! All in good time! Are you in the right place?

BENCHED is a brutally honest bodily tale about life’s big and very small questions. About settling down. About daring to sit in opposition, about sitting cross-legged, about being sat, put off or benched. About taking, creating, and giving space—and remembering to do so before falling on your ass where the bench ends.

We all have the right to the bench, can all relate to the bench, are all right on the bench. The bench breaks down barriers and differences. The bench brings us together. The bench invites reflection. The bench opens for conversation. We all have to sit on the bench sooner or later.

A notion of finding one’s place in life and settling down on the bench of life.

In BENCHED, five male dancers perform in Johan Kølkjær’s set design of oversized and mobile benches constantly being transformed. Award-winning choreographer Stephanie Thomasen has created the concept and choreography for the performance, where dancers with great musicality, physicality and interaction examine human relationships.

The dancers are fluent in a mix of contemporary dance, break, capoeira and street dance genres, all merging into a distinct expression of movement and physical theatre that Uppercut Dance Theater has sought to examine throughout its 40-year history as a dance company in Denmark.