Fuerzabruta
This is a show so different and wonderful, ""it's like trying to describe a colour""
| 08 Aug 2007
Fuerzabruta is without a doubt the most hyped-up show of this year's Festival, with adverts plastered on nearly every possible wall, publication and webpage. If you've been unaware of the Black Tent sitting opposite Leith’s Ocean Terminal, you might well have been comatose for the past month. Waiting by the bar in the foyer before being led into the performance arena there is a tension in the audience, a nervous excitement: nearly everyone has heard something about what Fuerzabruta is, always premised by “it’s kind of…” No one really knows what is going to happen, but the anticipation electrifies the atmosphere.
As everyone trickles out an hour later, there is a palpable sense of bemusement as the audience try to come to terms with what they have just seen and express it in words. This is a show that is almost impossible to describe; as a friend said outside “it's like trying to describe a colour.” Even couching it in comparative terms does not provide an adequate description. There is no use for Hume’s principle of the ‘different shade of blue’: Fuerzabruta is something that must be experienced.
This is hardly surprising given that the company claims its objective is “to break intellectual submission of the language [sic],” to create “a space where the pressure of the senses affect the mind.” Fuerzabruta does not ask you to understand, it asks you to experience, to become part of the performance. It defies categorisation because it has no raison d’etre: as the performers themselves state, “Fuerzabruta doesn’t have a purpose. It is.”
Once within the all-standing, blacked-out performance space, attendees are led around by ushers. Almost instantly, the audience is parted as a white-suited man enters on a giant treadmill, dodging chairs, tables and people that come hurtling towards him before he crashes through stacked confetti-filled boxes.
When a foil sheet is drawn around the auditorium to make a billowing wall with two girls running around it, or when two people scramble on either side of what seems like a spinning sail, Fuerzabruta becomes like a finely tuned, technical circus. Moments when a giant transparent water-filled pool containing semi-naked girls is lowered above audience’s head become explorations into light and space, rather than a simple performance.
Fuerzabruta is an all consuming sensory experience; a soundtrack that could fill the dance floor of any nightclub accompanies the performance, complete with strobe light overload. Indeed the unabashed hedonism of Fuerzabruta bears much in common with clubbing culture: rather than projecting the visuals onto a wall above the DJ they surround and absorb the audience. At moments the performance becomes a rave complete with DJ booth, the cast descending amongst the onlookers as crazed dancers.
But does Fuerzabruta live up to its hype? Undoubtedly. You will not see anything else like this at the Festival this year, or maybe even next. Although it lacks an obvious narrative, the amalgamation of performance and visual art, dance and acrobatics and light and sound creates an overwhelming sensory overload. Fuerzabruta is a show which offers little explanation of its motives, nor profound insight into the human condition, but exists as an experience and a memory that will take a long time to fade in the minds of those who have seen it. It may be the most expensive thing you see at the Festival but it promises to be the most exciting, enthralling and unforgettable £25 you have spent in a long time.
As everyone trickles out an hour later, there is a palpable sense of bemusement as the audience try to come to terms with what they have just seen and express it in words. This is a show that is almost impossible to describe; as a friend said outside “it's like trying to describe a colour.” Even couching it in comparative terms does not provide an adequate description. There is no use for Hume’s principle of the ‘different shade of blue’: Fuerzabruta is something that must be experienced.
This is hardly surprising given that the company claims its objective is “to break intellectual submission of the language [sic],” to create “a space where the pressure of the senses affect the mind.” Fuerzabruta does not ask you to understand, it asks you to experience, to become part of the performance. It defies categorisation because it has no raison d’etre: as the performers themselves state, “Fuerzabruta doesn’t have a purpose. It is.”
Once within the all-standing, blacked-out performance space, attendees are led around by ushers. Almost instantly, the audience is parted as a white-suited man enters on a giant treadmill, dodging chairs, tables and people that come hurtling towards him before he crashes through stacked confetti-filled boxes.
When a foil sheet is drawn around the auditorium to make a billowing wall with two girls running around it, or when two people scramble on either side of what seems like a spinning sail, Fuerzabruta becomes like a finely tuned, technical circus. Moments when a giant transparent water-filled pool containing semi-naked girls is lowered above audience’s head become explorations into light and space, rather than a simple performance.
Fuerzabruta is an all consuming sensory experience; a soundtrack that could fill the dance floor of any nightclub accompanies the performance, complete with strobe light overload. Indeed the unabashed hedonism of Fuerzabruta bears much in common with clubbing culture: rather than projecting the visuals onto a wall above the DJ they surround and absorb the audience. At moments the performance becomes a rave complete with DJ booth, the cast descending amongst the onlookers as crazed dancers.
But does Fuerzabruta live up to its hype? Undoubtedly. You will not see anything else like this at the Festival this year, or maybe even next. Although it lacks an obvious narrative, the amalgamation of performance and visual art, dance and acrobatics and light and sound creates an overwhelming sensory overload. Fuerzabruta is a show which offers little explanation of its motives, nor profound insight into the human condition, but exists as an experience and a memory that will take a long time to fade in the minds of those who have seen it. It may be the most expensive thing you see at the Festival but it promises to be the most exciting, enthralling and unforgettable £25 you have spent in a long time.