If laughter is the best medicine, then suppressed laughter must be something close to torture. For a full 50 minutes on Saturday night HoBos Dan and John had to do just that. Weak Dance Strong Questions is a dance piece performed by Jonathan Burrows + Jan Ritsema, and is part of the NOTDANCE festival currently taking place in Nottingham.
Now admittedly Dan and I were dance virgins before this performance so maybe we were just out of our depth, or maybe we just didn’t appreciate/understand what was going on (apparently the dance piece was all about asking constant questions). All we did know was that we could hardly contain our laughter as the two men pranced and lollopped around the floor space in the large white room in front of an audience of around thirty people (think the contemporary dance scene in the Big Lebowski), most of whom seemed to be engrossed in the performance and most of whom weren’t turning bitterroot red through giggling. At one point I was having such a tough time containing my laughter I had to think about war and other atrocities to calm myself down. The two girls who sat next to us heard us giggling and it became infectious, it was let me assure you, very uncomfortable.
The doors were left open throughout the performance should anyone want to leave, "we don’t want to impose our act on you unwillingly". But of course no one did.
Now, before I make too bad an impression of the show let me just say that it was interesting to a degree, and it didn’t drag like I thought it might. We certainly don’t regret going and would encourage anyone else to check out some contemporary dance, if only to see how bizarre it is.
We attended the Q & A session afterwards, in which we asked them if they minded when people laughed or were they offended, they said they did not mind , which was a relief.
Then Dan said something about throwing in a cock joke, and that's when we left.
HoBo says, " Perhaps a cock joke would go down well"