Half way through the dance I was thinking that this was the best thing I had seen so far in Madrid en Danza, and then came the introspection coupled with yet another incoherent video-dance construct. Until that point, La Maison du Sourd had been a violent, breath-taking rollercoaster ride watching people -the dancers- interact in all the strange, aggressive, contradictory ways so characteristic of much human contact. The dancers were powerfully precise in their movements, and conjured a devastating moment of desperation in a 90-minute capsule.

The dance begins with violent language: "...hit me (pártame la cara)...dig a dagger into my stomach..." from the dancers who emerge from the audience. Then one of the women begins the twitching, twisting turns which mark Catherine Diverrès' choreographic language in La Maison du Sourd. At first there is no music, just the sound of the words -disjointed and yet able to create a glimpse of human relationships- spoken by the dancers. "Use the whole diagonal to say it. (Utiliza toda la diagonal para decirlo.)" Once the music does erupt, you quickly understand its importance for the choreographer, and its ability to interact -creating climaxes and decrescendos- with the dancers is manifest. The sounds begin with very Japanese drumming and then the grows into a complex hybrid of electronic interference, beats and howls.

The forte of this choreography is the violent and intensely physical contact established between the dancers. They often dance individually amidst the group and yet some wonderfully suggestive movements betray far more complex relationships of dependency and betrayal. A woman spins around with her arms slapping against a man's body, repeatedly as she spins and spins, he begins to avoid her arms, gets below them, moves around her until he is able to catch her and just hold her in his arms. Often movements echo others in a distorted parallel, and then drift apart. At one point a dancer calls another's name, and the latter throws himself at the former, then another two do the same and a strange and crazy world grows in front of your eyes as the dancers launch themselves at one another, with force, and are held.

There are two interruptions to the dancing on the stage: 1) A map of Madrid, seen through the real-time projection of a video camera, upon which numerous ants are released. An amusing metaphor. 2) Also projected via the video image, a man inserting needles into his skin. A strange sensation is caused by the immediate repulsion caused by the sadism of the act and the knowledge that these acupuncture needles are a form of cure. I am not counting the final "interruption" which sees the whole piece move to an incomprehensible final part, revolving around a video, which absorbs all forms of movement from the dancers and, lasting a little too long, becomes detrimental to the whole.

References to Goya permeated the piece, not only the idea of a closed space with dusty pebbles on the floor (I can imagine the rooms where he painted the pinturas negras being just like that) but the literal embodiment of figures reminiscent of the phantasmagorical faces, distorted by age and imagination, which appear in these paintings. Unfortunately, the effect of the floating figures and hunched women, accompanied by howls and cackles, ended up being a little trite; which I am sure was not the intention. There are also various references to Christian iconography (crucifixions and pietas), the use of which is left a little unclear.

Generally the illumination and stage design is fantastic, the dancers are beautiful nervous bombs of movement and the music is overwhelmingly in tune with the dark choreography; all of which leading to a performance which could have been a 10/10. And yet at some point the attempt to intellectualise the piece too much through references between stage and screen, using stillness and personal imagery, not to mention the over laboured all-too-literal references to Goya's phantasms, in my view, destroyed the potential impact of the whole. Rather than deciding upon an average, I have given it an 8/10 in respect for my initial reaction.