Minimalism has many guises. If the opening of the Dance Reflections season had featured the cleanest of compositions in Lucinda Childs’ 1979 Dance, Katerina Andreou’s BSTRD (2018) is a down-and-dirty feat of endurance, throbbing with a force at once vital and oppressive. Lights flare aggressively behind a raised platform. Andreou, determinedly casual in T-shirt, trousers and trainers, places a record on a turntable. It plays a hammering pulse, nail-like beats and a skull-drilling drone, all on a primordial four-count rhythm that keeps its stranglehold on the piece throughout.
Part clubber, part folk dancer, always a slave to the rhythm, Andreou jogs, bops, bounces, jiggles and sidesteps, first straight-on, then side-on, then round the edges, each rudimentary step combo repeated right, then left, then right, then left.
Sameness highlights moments of difference. She takes off her T-shirt. There’s an identical one beneath. She escapes from the platform, then returns to it. She flips the record. The B-side plays the same rhythm. There’s one big, nonreversible change: the end. Andreou exits, leaving chalky clouds and soothing piano chords hanging in the air. The physical and mental relief is palpable. Worth it?
