Anna Reti & Ricardo Machado, Point of You. Photo © Marton Morus

Point of You

Anna Réti & Ricardo Machado

Before sitting down, we’re handed playing cards that instruct us that shifting places during the performance is permitted: a clue to the games that would ensue. Soon, the understated sleight-of-hand of this duo in faded pastel tee-shirts, would have us open-eyed.

By way of further welcome, they glide sideways in front of us, entwined like a two-headed crab with a charming smile, inviting us to contemplate their subtle strangeness.

A white helium balloon on a string that drags a grown man across the floor, charades, a baffling equation, a demonstration of the multiple uses for a chair: these are some of the simple tricks that the pair pull in order to physically and metaphorically, upset our perspective.

There is no spectacular magic or glitter in their routine; it’s their practiced complicity, cosy proximity and ordinariness that delight us and make us eager to play along.

Oonagh Duckworth

What can use two IKEA pillows for? Well, they can be propellers, crowns, wings and blinkers – at least for the two dancers of Point of You. The stripped down stage is their playground, and just like children, they turn everything in it into a game. Even their own bodies: their slow-motion wrestle makes them look like characters from a computer game. And just like children, they soon get bored of their games and abandon them, moving on and finding something else to play with. They are their own sound and light technicians, so they dictate the rhythm of joy.

The audience sits on both sides of the stage, each one of them offering a different perspective on what’s going on. About halfway through – stylishly through a game of charades – the two entice us to swap places. That’s how ONE point of view becomes THE point of you.

How many things can you use a chair for? You’ll have to see the piece to find out!

Lena Megyeri