Anatomy of a Night review: Joyous, sexy, infectious, seductive

Anatomy of a Night

The Depot, The Complex

★★★★☆

“How’s your night going?” In the Complex’s splendid new cavernous performance space, Kevin Murphy’s striking lighting, Sal Stapleton’s videography, Rory Sweeney’s sound design — with music by a different DJ each night — and a catwalk pushing through the audience all delineate the club.

Aiming to evoke a night, any night, in queer and club spaces, the dancer and choreographer Nick Nikolaou does it solo, serially creating a cast. His queers, weirdos, fringes and nightwalkers are expressed by their efficiently changed costumes-with-attitude (designed by Dearbhla Beirne): striding down the catwalk preening in thigh boots, bustier and half-ball gown, or out of it in a sparkly slip dress, an uncertain lurker in a shirtless suit with something to prove, or writhing and oozing sex, or muscular anthems in a tight jumpsuit.

Nikolaou creates multiple characters through an energising, skilful, perfectly observed and sometimes dizzying range of club dance styles. Joyous, sexy, infectious and seductive, Anatomy of a Night is also tinged with regret for something lost — lost to the pandemic and lost to the city’s absence of clubbing spaces. After the performance, there’s a club night for the audience.

Runs at the Complex, Dublin 7, until Saturday, September 24, as part of Dublin Dance Festival