THE BELT at the Coronet Theatre

★★★★★

“an intoxicating dialogue between history and innovation”

The Coronet Theatre’s first-ever site-specific immersive event, The Belt, is an extraordinary fusion of dance, history, architecture and technology, led by South Korea’s renowned Ambiguous Dance Company. The experience unfolds in two distinct parts, guiding the audience from the dark depths of despair to the heights of imagination and innovation. Set in the Grade II listed, restored and reimagined Victorian Coronet Theatre in Notting Hill, this engaging performance fully uses both its hidden and public spaces.

Part 1 – Past: An Intimate Encounter with History

With no more than fifty audience members, divided into five groups, we are led on an atmospheric journey through the lesser-known spaces of the theatre. From the basement used as an air-raid shelter during World War II through backstage corridors and machine rooms and across its rooftop to the theatre’s distinctive cupola, this phase feels like a private expedition into the heart and soul of the building, mostly lit by candlelight.

Choreographed by Boram Kim and performed by seven dancers (Kyungmin Jang, Hak Lee, SeonHwa Park, SoJeong Im, DeokYong Kim, GyuEun Han and Jisoo Gong), five short dance works unfold in these intimate settings. Each room, transformed for this five-day residency, presents a different mood: unsettling (The Room of Struggle and Despair), joyful (The Room of Communication), playful (The Room of Creation), hypnotic (The Room of Precision) and transcendent (The Room of Identity). The music selection is equally diverse, from disco beats to Ravel’s Bolero and Michael Jackson’s Beat It.

The contrast between the restored Victorian architecture and the contemporary fusion of hip-hop, ballet and acrobatics is captivating. Ambiguous Dance Company’s blend of styles – from sharp, street-inspired movements to fluid, balletic gestures – creates an intoxicating dialogue between history and innovation. The dancers’ costumes, along with the music, set dressing, sound and lighting design, further enhance this dynamic interplay.

Part 2 – Future: A Visionary Spectacle of Technological Innovation

The second part of The Belt shifts to the theatre’s main stage, a liminal space where the past meets the future and where raw human physicality meets cutting-edge technology. Here, the full company, including choreographer Boram Kim, delivers a high-octane performance. While rooted in traditional movement, the choreography embraces a futuristic aesthetic, complemented by pulsating dance music and dynamic lighting. The dancers’ costumes, nodding to fetish wear and cyberpunk, feature a mix of leather, mesh and lace, with some dancers wearing face coverings that blur gender lines and challenge binaries.

The Theatre as a Living Museum

What makes The Belt truly special is how it integrates the Coronet Theatre itself as a central character in the performance. The building’s rich history, quirky aesthetic and architectural features are not merely backdrops; they are woven into the storytelling. As you move through the intimate spaces in Part 1 and experience the explosive action on the main stage in Part 2, you feel the presence of those who have walked these passageways over the past century, making The Belt a must-see for anyone interested in the intersection of dance, history and cultural innovation.

THE BELT at the Coronet Theatre

Reviewed on 11th September 2024

by Ellen Cheshire

Photography courtesy Ambiguous Dance Company

Previously reviewed at this venue:

THE BECKETT TRILOGY | ★★★★★ | June 2024

THE YELLOW WALLPAPER | ★★★ | September 2023

RHYTHM OF HUMAN | ★★★★★ | September 2023

LOVEFOOL | ★★★★ | May 2023

DANCE OF DEATH | ★★★★★ | March 2023

WHEN WE DEAD AWAKEN | ★★★★ | March 2022

LE PETIT CHAPERON ROUGE | ★★★★ | November 2021

THE BELT

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★★★★★

“Lovett’s physical performance is totally captivating and anchors this exceptional work of theatre”

The Beckett Trilogy is a stage production of three of the Nobel prize-winning writer Samuel Beckett’s novels Malloy, Malone Dies and The Unnameable by the Gare Saint Lazare Ireland company. Adapted for the theatre by performer Conor Lovett and director and designer Judy Hegarty Lovett, the treatment allows the writer’s absurdist genius to shine through, the solo performer embodying all the isolation, confusion, pain, and emptiness that are the hallmarks of Beckett’s work.

Conor Lovett produces a central performance of pulsating power. Serving as a narrator for the stories, he slides effortlessly between quiet perplexity and deafening explosions of rage, mimicking the voices of other characters and patrolling the empty stage. The piece is also extremely funny: the characters’ various degraded interactions with authority, sexuality and death are described and the audience is invited to laugh at the farcical nature of life and Lovett elicits a rapturous response from the audience. While telling stories, he contorts himself into positions which are sometimes held, the performer appearing to forget how he has found himself in a pose, as he loses the thread of the narrative. Lovett’s physical performance is totally captivating and anchors this exceptional work of theatre.

The staging is minimalist, the first two sections featuring nothing more than an empty stage with a circular spotlight or a ring of light projected on the floor, the work of lighting designer Simon Bennison. The final piece of the trilogy sees a change. Lovett stands with a long drape hanging at the back of the stage and a spotlight before him, throwing an enormous shadow onto the drape. The position of the light illuminates his face giving him an otherworldly aspect and this lighting technique is especially effective when, passing a hand in front of himself, its shadow is thrown over his own face partially obscuring him from view. In this last section, Lovett remains largely in his position, as if unable to move from the spot, and it is here that the play’s focus on language as both essential to the human condition and utterly inadequate as a method of communication is clearest.

Within this set, the cyclical and thorny beauty of the writing flourishes. The language of the play is dense yet halting, stopping and starting, shouting, ruminating, equivocating and Lovett perfectly enacts Beckett’s assessment of human life. Facing the eternal questions of life and death, our answers can only be at best partial and repetitive, with many false starts and new beginnings that lead nowhere. This confusion and incompleteness is rendered both moving and funny. As the narrators pause, often losing their train of thought, they also ask questions out towards the audience, which hang unanswered, despite the response being clear to all those in the theatre: ‘what was I saying?’ ‘Where was I?’ The fractured dialogue between performer and audience places the spectator in a position akin to that of an unresponsive and uncaring universe that sees the plight of humanity yet does nothing to intervene.

The Beckett Trilogy is a masterful adaptation of work of the twentieth centuries’ great writers, by a company that has been described by the New York Times as ‘unparallelled Beckett champions’. On the basis of this performance, the title is certainly warranted.

Tag Archives: The Coronet Theatre

THE BELT

★★★★★

Coronet Theatre

THE BELT at the Coronet Theatre

★★★★★

“an intoxicating dialogue between history and innovation”

THE BELT at the Coronet Theatre

Reviewed on 11th September 2024

by Ellen Cheshire

Photography courtesy Ambiguous Dance Company