Shedding the Cocoon: The Rave at Kick & Push
We all know how it is: watching the It Crowd dance the night away, witnessing a force both indifferent and judgemental. We’ve all felt the push and pull of desire to join them, to be them. On August 8th, for one night only, the Kick & Push (K&P) Festival presented The Butterfly Who Flew Into The Rave and granted its attendees the opportunity to decide: will you dance, or will you die?
As soon as you enter the space, you are no longer in the Tett Centre as a K&P attendant—dancers pulse in the dark, and the walls shake with bass—you’re in a fully fledged rave, and they’ve been expecting you. At once mesmerizing and infectious, the dancers call you in to follow or join them: less inhibited audience members—or perhaps the more receptive—dance. With the music as loud as it is, stillness is rebellion, and movement only natural.
Oli Mathiesen, Lucy Lynch, and Sharvon Mortimer are three uncaged club-loving dancers. Party animals indeed, there is something wild about them… they scream at you and look you in the eye so you may know it is for you, this scream—it’s personal. The sudden vocal emphases shock you to the core: a visible effort they do nothing to hide. They are flirtatious and intimidating; a thousand people in three. In turns desperate, jubilant, loving, intense, and assertive, they are not just ravers, individual—they are The Rave itself.
Following the passionate story of three partygoers on a days-long bender, the dance piece channels all the violent progressions of seeking a thrill. Mathiesen, Lynch, and Mortimer are intensely emotive, swinging you into the world of immersive dance with gusto. Dressed in an amalgamation of 90s to 2000s rave fashion, these dynamite dancers represent a wide array of rave-goers at once: they even manage a mid-dance costume change. As the aesthetics and layers fly by, you garner the impression of someone who has experienced days worth of dancing, rather than an hour.
Innovative and erratic, this piece is a to-the-veins tribute to the rapturous energy of rave culture. The Butterfly Who Flew Into The Rave even includes a trippy phosphorescent glove choreo moment reminiscent of classic rave visuals: the performance is constructed with a palpable love for the spirit of the night. Guttural and bodily, sexy and scary, their movement is unpredictable and precise. I only realized once they began doing a transitional two-step shuffle that I could not name any of the previous or subsequent choreography: the experience is genuinely unique and unreplicatable.
Set to the album ‘Nocturbulous Behaviour’ by Suburban Knight, the ravers and lighting design alike move in tandem with the music. A dancer in its own right, lighting effects punctuate the beat, accentuating high-energy moments. The percussive nature of the lighting alongside the fast-paced footwork makes the room itself respond to the music. The energy is seasonal—as the night changes, the dance changes with it. A lighting effect I specifically enjoyed occurred towards the end: lights flared on our performers posing in successive tableaux, showcasing the mood swings of a night out.
There is a trackable journey charted by the three. Sweat lines the floor, tracing their elaborate progress as they rally through the noise. Pendulating between exhaustion and euphoria, Mathiesen, Lynch, and Mortimer guide their audiences through a story of endurance. No pain, no gain—the dance ropes you into an understanding of a happiness drawn through persistence. The effort demanded to indulge in your own spirit is a labour of love. Their ferocious intensity and enviable joy teaches us the lessons you can only learn in the night, revealed by the people you can only find underground. They open up to us; first we are strangers, then, as is characteristic of nightlife, we all get to know each other better for having danced together.
A cathartic and intense dance piece, The Butterfly Who Flew Into The Rave is a truly unique theatre experience. Infectious and raw, I was transported back to many nights in which the same corrosive energy was demanded of me. Oli Mathiesen, Lucy Lynch, and Sharvon Mortimer carry an intimate understanding of the body, sparking within themselves and their audience a fuse that only lives to burn.
‘The Butterfly Who Flew Into the Rave’ is an immersive dance experience created by Oli Mathiesen with the collaboration of Lucy Lynch and Sharvon Mortimer. Currently on tour all the way from New Zealand-Aotearoa, the performance stopped at the Kick & Push Festival on August 8th.
