Stampede: The Stampede

Tim Darbyshire, choreographer and performer of Stampede The Stampede, calls the work a “nolo (not a solo)” because it is a work performed by one body but with multiple ‘choreographic apparatuses’ that have to be dealt with by the performer.

The audience surrounds the square playing space in the middle of the cavernous central chamber of the Meat Market. Three wooden structures, like scale models of featureless apartment buildings, support the choreographic devices. Tim Darbyshire begins the work a top the tallest structure. The deafening sounds of a factory’s pneumatic machinery shatters the silence of the audiences’ entry. From a kneeling position his body is tossed about, the shadows of his labouring body thrown onto screens suspended above the action. 

Atop the next structure, sound becomes a physical force to be withstood. A thin floor is littered with a dessert of rocky debris. Positioned below this are multiple subwoofers, when they release their eardrum-crushing bass the structure shakes, the rocks tumble to the ground and dust rises up around a head-standing Darbyshire- a figure of strained tranquillity in this senseless cacophony.

With the final device, Darbyshire rests himself in a harness hung from the ceiling, his spinning body taking the shape of a falling man as wind and smoke blow around his suspended body. Relief only arrives at the end, with a lone figure spinning silently in the dark. 

Darbyshire and his talented collaborators have produced an anxiety-inducing work that asks much of both performer and viewer. A highly recommended experience.