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Manchester international festival: Sea Change; Breathless Puppets – review

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Deansgate, Manchester; available online
Boris Charmatz gets Manchester’s communal toes tapping, while Akram Khan partners with hand-drawn animation to stylish effect

The French choreographer Boris Charmatz opened this year’s Manchester international festival with Sea Change, a live event performed along the cobbled stretch of Deansgate, on a muted grey Thursday evening. Despite a small crowd and a certain lack of atmosphere, it proved to be a delicate, moving enterprise: a line of professional and amateur dancers, each performing their own different “bit”, united by theme. Some clutched their heads, lamented and ululated; others flowed from pose to pose as if doing tai chi in the park; others went through warm-up exercises like joggers, or slipped about as if mired in the mud at Glastonbury; some yelled “Save our rainforests, save our oceans!”, raggedly cheered on an imaginary sports team, or reached for the sky in euphoric, ravey bliss.

All had one thing in common: from a fun run to a funeral, a protest march, a boozy barbecue or the advance of the zombie hordes, they referenced collective events. Charmatz gave us back our lost moments of togetherness. There was even a section about running to catch a plane; you know things are bad when being late for something takes on a nostalgic quality. The dancers’ costumes of sweaty white T-shirts, jeans and trainers, smeared with brightly coloured school chalk, emphasised the benign, refreshingly casual tone.

Breathless Puppets is available online

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