From England with Love, Shechter II: thrilling portrait of Blighty as a big old psychosexual muddle

From England with Love, the latest piece by Israeli-born, London-based choreographer Hofesh Shechter, begins with an octet of dancers subversively decked out in school uniforms – complete with rucksacks – facing us stock still, in an almost divine shaft of light. As Elgar’s Nimrod (arguably England’s wordless national anthem) plays loudly over the speakers, they solemnly mark out an almost classical port de bras, yet this slowly but surely disintegrates. By the time this ninth of the composer’s Enigma Variations has finished, they are pointing at us, then miming tears running down their faces.

Are they crying for us? Or suggesting that we should cry for them? Perhaps both. For – sonically, choreographically and visually – this four-minute section vividly sets out the stall of a piece that reads like an affectionate but profoundly exasperated billet doux to (and postcard from) a country in a big old psycho-sexual-political muddle, at once wedded to its past, its traditions and its nostrums, and also suspicious and even contemptuous of them.

A well-judged 55 minutes straight through, and performed by the choreographer’s next-generation Shechter II company, it’s essentially a tapestry of dozens of little vignettes that vary from tranquil to lascivious to downright aggressive. Before long, those uniforms are sweat-soaked and largely undone. And, as the cast of 18-25-year-olds proceed to bump, grind and brawl (at one point, to what sounds like hundreds of glass bottles being hurled through windows), then, at the flick of a light switch, erupt into by turns perfectly drilled formations and positively exultant free-for-alls, the piece often has the air of a School Disco or playground ritual gone very largely to Hell.

Certainly, it’s all unmistakably – a cynic might say, over-familiarly – Shechtarian. Those oh-so-distinctive rounded, grounded, visceral steps; the soundtrack’s huge, percussive grooves (by Shechter himself, as ever) peppered with snippets of classical, here markedly English staples; its ultimately dogged optimism in the face of society’s frailties and failings. What’s more, in the more violent passages there is a particularly strong sense of recycling from his much earlier piece, Uprising.

But it absolutely rockets by, and there’s more than enough novelty here to hold the attention and justify its existence. Production – not least its cinematic “jump cuts” from one scene to the next – is as crisp as Monster Munch, and the dancers perform as if possessed; Holly Brennan, the first among marvellous equals, is one of the most thrilling exponents of the Shechter style I have seen in 17 years of covering his work.