Theatre / Hannah Sullivan
Review: Echo Beach, Bristol Old Vic
Hannah Sullivan is a self-confessed ‘collector of dances’, and for this show she has decided to share her collection with others.
The evening begins wordlessly with Hannah writing the words ‘DANCING LIKE EVERYONE I KNOW’ on a small blackboard. She then proceeds to do this in the space of a single instrumental track, and I doubt there was an audience member who didn’t recognise themselves somewhere in her movements. In typical British fashion, there was a slightly uncomfortable feeling in the audience to begin with as we sat watching this woman dancing alone, but Hannah’s confidence soon encouraged us to relax.
The structure of the show lay in the stories Hannah told about her memories of dancing. These were mostly connected to her family, and evoked a variety of emotions. One moment we were laughing at the idea of her mum dancing while wearing headphones with a very short cable, the next we were imagining the need her mother had to occasionally hide from the bustle of life. At various points Hannah danced as strangers in a bar, her granddad, her parents and then finally as herself.
For a short time near the end we moved away from the dance-based narrative as Hannah impersonated a radio interviewee. While this did have some relevance, it seemed a little far removed from the main focus of the show.
This was a very competent performance, with the few nerves that showed near the start thoroughly dispelled by the end. Yas Clarke created the perfect soundtrack to Hannah’s movements, with some songs fading to an almost dreamlike state.
In Hannah’s own words, ‘watching someone dance is like watching someone sleep, it’s when you become who you are’.
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