Everyone, home and abroad, wants a part of it.
A show at the converted fire station across the road from Euston railway station means you have arrived and last week 2Faced Dance played the London night of their British tour in The Place’s Robin Howard Theatre.
The opener, Who?, featured Ronita Mookerji and the only male in the show, Prashant More, crammed into a packing box.
It is a search for identity in very little light, the box’s confined space and a distinctly adolescent confusion.
Martin Basman’s score was very danceable, but resolutely ignored as the dancers wriggled and scratched and, as the title might suggest, ran around looking for something.
More was the better dancer and when let loose was a pleasure to watch while Mookerji, the creator, ended up prowling the shadows.
I wondered at their definition of the word dance, and what constitutes a dance movement these days.
An independent nervous twitch or a descriptive response of the human body inspired by music and emotion?
But it really did not matter, with Emma Jayne Park’s seated monologue, It’s Not Over Yet.. , dealing with her fight with cancer.
Personally I saw no vestige of dance but a mammoth desire to de-demonise one of the most unspeakable of human conditions.
Perched on a stool and wrapped in a floor-length white robe, there was a hospital feel about this incredibly brave woman. She pulled out bunches of hair, in time with the music, of course, and lifted her dress to allow a cascade of tiny stones to clatter to the floor between her legs.
She finished in her underwear with a floating balloon, a funny hat and a party popper.
That’s better, she said, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
Yashti, choreographed and danced by Hemabharathy Palani, is first and foremost a woman’s plea for equality in a male-dominated society.
It is, quite simply, beautiful.
Once her mouthful of pebbles were spat out, echoing the previous performer for no discernible reason, Palani, tall and elegant, brought dance back to the building.
Her mission may have been political but her performance was music and movement at its most delightful, which put a smile on our faces as we headed home.