The Heat review – Paula Rego's dog women inhabit Becky Namgauds' frisky, feral dance-theatre

The Guardian

23-05-2025

Among the eclectic entries on Becky Namgauds' CV are dancing for Harry Styles and Vivienne Westwood, and rolling around in mud in her outdoor festival piece Rodadoras. The Heat is something different again, a long way from Harry's House – although the house bit is right, as it's entirely set in one living room. But in this one a naked woman is crouched on all fours on the arm of the sofa, looking like things might go feral.
Namgauds is clearly a choreographer with vision, and this is dance-theatre that's by turns unsettling, comic and mildly erotic. She is one of five female performers, of varying ages, inhabiting this domestic setting – sofa, coffee table, lamp, pot plant – where the ordinariness swerves into the surreal. Suddenly one woman is smooshing a tomato into her face. Another's head becomes disjointed from her body in an amusing bit of optical illusion. There's a blankness about these women, but also a hunger.
The Heat is inspired by Paula Rego's Dog Woman paintings, depicting women behaving like dogs, with animalistic poses and bared teeth. It's an unpretty side of womanhood, but powerful too. Namgauds has also definitely watched some Pina Bausch (just look at all that long hair swishing luxuriously!) with these absurdist set pieces, only it's a more suburban version: admonishing a sofa cushion, feeling frisky while vacuuming and so on.
The pivotal scene begins when one woman puts a fuchsia-pink vibrator on a table; switched on, it starts to do a little dance of its own. Across the room, a different woman suddenly starts vibrating. Then it's catching, soon they're all quaking: pure instinct, pure sensation-seeking, desperate for friction. Poor Henry the Hoover is all I will say.
This is an unapologetic depiction of female instincts and what's suppressed beneath the surface. Namgauds has got something, for sure. But is there enough of it in this piece? It feels like a strong 40 minutes stretched to 60. Still, she's one to watch.
At Sadler's Wells, London, until 23 May, then at the Lowry, Salford, on 3 June