There’s metric time, and there’s experienced time. In Metronomia, a kind of choreographic machinery for six white-clad dancers, it’s the tick-tock tick-tock type of time that prevails throughout. It’s there in the sound of Kangding Ray’s electronic score, pitching errant pulses above an ever-steady beat. It’s there in the motion of Tamara Gvozdenovic’s geometry of action, a toolkit of disjointed bends, swivels and sidesteps that she distributes and redistributes across the ensemble, the dancers moving on the beat, every beat.

There are essentially two sections, both ending with sonic syncopations giving way to clubbier, four-square booms and thuds. The first patterns the dancers in lines, like latticework; the second in circles, like lacework. It’s sharp, it’s legible, and the compositional gears, pistons and cogs shift and turn like fine-tuned clockwork.

Still, we can’t expunge experience from time, and we have to wonder: where is this piece going? It felt to me like much sequence and little consequence.

An instrument of strict precision, a metronome keeps time, moves at a prescribed pace and never wavers. So too Tamara Gvozdenovic and Kangding Ray’s tightly woven piece, Metronomia. But this slight titular deviation also hints at dystopian oppression – a notion backed up by the uniform-like costumes and steely stares worn by the six dancers.

Movement patterns are repeated over and over (and over), identical in shape and structure but delivered in different directions at different times, giving the illusion of autonomy in a restrictive world. Such unremitting unison may leave little room for emotional connection, but it most certainly gives the performers space to shine. If there is a beat to hit or a cue to meet, they’re on it – to an almost exhaustive degree.

As they take a bow, the dancers’ smiles radiate relief at a difficult job well done. Only then can we feel what they feel, which is perhaps a little too late.

It’s a menacing thing, the metronome, the way it keeps count — of fractions of seconds, no, milliseconds — not letting the slightest slip up slip by. It is no surprise, then, that the movement in Metronomia goes like clockwork. Six dancers take to the stage, tick-tocking like hands of a watch face, mercilessly minding the march of time…

Only time will tell whether the machine by which we measure life will come out on top. Or whether, beyond the humdrum mechanics of the automated movement, there is something altogether more human that we could claim as our own.

And that is what choreographer Tamara Gvozdenovic ultimately leaves us with. That after a dance that just keeps ticking, and perhaps tocking for that tad too long, there is always the breath, there is always laughter, there is always the timelessness of joy.

If you go to see Metronomia, then it should be for its final moment, but perhaps only this moment. A moment when, holding hands in a circle, giggling, the dancers at last become human.

There is something quite pleasing about the synchronicity of movement. It gives a sense of unity, as if acknowledging we are part of something bigger than ourselves. Ego has no place in Tamara Gvozdenovic & Kangding Ray’s Metronomia. Six dancers in plain white shirts and trousers make their entrance under incandescent lights. One moves towards us while the others observe her. A second catches the movement and suddenly the whole group takes over every inch of the stage. They move in parallel lines, in circles, in diagonals, and create different patterns around the same steps to a techno beat. Sometimes together, sometimes on their own. One arm meets another, legs bent, hands on hips. You can’t take your eyes away.

Playing with the geometry of movement and space, the piece is a vivid exercise in the deconstruction of Balkan folk dance codes. Nevertheless, the closing, more traditional approach to circle dances can become somewhat inconsequential.

How do traditional dances remain relevant? Not sure, but creating a dialogue between tradition and contemporary seems a fair way forward.

In Tamara Gvozdenovic and Kangding Ray’s Metronomia, the dance floor is divided into grids by fluorescent orange tape. A voice tells the audience to ‘immerse yourself, let your ego dissolve’ and six performers in white flared trousers and tops enter a stage lit with UV. A relentless electronic beat suddenly fills the space. The vibe here is decidedly techno.

The performers begin to move with sharp angular gestures and footwork. Formations
are made and broken, unison turns sharply into syncopation and back. The dancers move across the grid like wind-up toys on tracks, the same set of thirteen gestures being adhered to throughout the work in different configurations. Across the musical score, synth pad swells give way to enthusiastic snares, carrying the entire performance for 35 minutes.

It’s well-executed – props to the performers for their hair-raising precision and stamina. Presumably, the intended effect is exhilaration but the final result is really exhaustion.

The six rather fierce performers of Metronomia execute a series of cold clockwork patterns and mechanistic choreographic systems that pull the audience along on a repetitious marathon. Tied to the rhythm of a metronome, the performers slice their way through 2-D dance phrases. Blank expressions, an icy demeanour and white costumes, gesture somewhere uncanny valley adjacent, a hint of performative artifice that perhaps tries to thicken the fourth wall.

Insisting on its own machinery, a reduced palette of material is exhibited again and again. As the work progresses, the icy exterior melts and folkloric motifs are summoned. The performers hold hands, create concentric rings, their feet become playfully rhythmic and images somewhere between futuristic ceili and synchronised-swimming-sans-water are displayed. Flashes of warmth and personhood flicker.

Compositionally tight and deftly performed, Metronomia shies away from reaching for something more profound or revelatory, owning its own, self-imposed regulation.

In the dim light, six white silhouettes face the audience as a steady beat starts. It triggers a movement that will not stop until the end of the show. Using a rather conventional creative principle, two or three robotic choreographic phrases are repeated over and over by the dancers, in fragmented ever-changing subgroups.

Metronomia by choreographer Tamara Gvozdenovic and composer Kangding Ray has something of an aseptic dystopia about it, where human bonds cannot exist. Beyond the identical outfits and the synchronised movements, the dancers seem to be apart from each other.

But the repetitive construction doesn’t entirely create the trance-like effect possibly sought. It’s not until the closing moments, when the dancers gather in a circle and look into each other’s eyes for the first time, that the group is finally allowed to exist as such.

Although this piece might struggle to enthrall the audience, the dancers deliver an impeccable and impressive performance.