Dance Maximus @ Buzzcut

ATTENTION, WEAKLINGS! You fear the wrath of Dance Maximus…You can’t handle their thousand yard stares, their stomping feet… You don’t know how to deal with their voracious appetites for PAIN, you pathetic milksops. Dance Maximus are Louise Ahl and Rebekka Saeter, uber-goddesses who veer effortlessly between grace, clumsiness and cartoon violence.

There’s Pina Bausch, Monsieur Hulot; the jagged jerky choreography of Philippe Decoufle and the pratfalls of slapstick: a very European sensibility pervades the performance, albeit with an almost amphetamine-like energy. It is a double act that is fully-formed, challenging all the clichés of how dancers should behave on stage, stretching like Lycra the limitations imposed by some forms of (whisper it) contemporary dance.

There is nothing more potent than two women skewering the wrestlers of WWF’s macho posturing - their psyche-outs (of both each other and audience) are hilarious, reduced to an inarticulate caveman grunt, accompanied by the kind of exhausted breathing that follows a toddler’s tantrum. Yet amid the more knockabout elements lies a real sense of space and timing - a method to the madness. Each step is timed to perfection.

You will never think of Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters in quite the same way again. It is enough to make Henry Rollins weep - he once ate metal for breakfast; now he is crying into his bowl of Cheerios.

LISTEN UP! Dance Maximus are coming for you, your brothers and sisters - and your firstborn. Now, drop and give me 100...