Bullyache’s dark depiction of the shadowy global elite

A Good Man Is Hard to Find is both ferociously original and profoundly perturbing. It takes its inspiration from the 2008 financial crash and the supposedly secret Cremation of Care ceremony at the Bohemian Grove, covered by Jon Ronson in his series The Secret Rulers of the World, which documented puerile rituals meant to purge members of the global elite of guilt. In performance, it lands like a cross between Harold Pinter and Pina Bausch, but with its own dark, visionary tang.

It sets five dancers inside a shattered boardroom (design by TOR Studio) dominated by a vast table. As it opens, a naked man lies sprawled on the floor, wriggling with difficulty back into a tight-fitting suit, as one of his colleagues straddles a chair, watching menacingly. Later, another urinates over him.

Over 70 minutes, the performers play power games: ceremonies of dominance and humiliation, represented in a series of shady tableaux and movement that seems to shudder through their bodies.

Their poses are fascistic, their brown shirts reminiscent of historical rises to power. At one point, they put on white makeup and lean threateningly over the table, bullying the person cleaning up after them. At another, they dance on its surface, preening and writhing in a horrific parody of a beauty contest. Shostakovitch’s Chamber Symphony in C minor takes over from an electronic score, the mood lurches and a joke becomes terrifying as thewinner is suffocated and tortured.

The dance is fantastical, precise, detailed, saving the piece from falling into cliche. The people performing this contemporary rite are both perpetrators and victims; the darkness is visible and corrosive; the dancing sublime. Bullyache are a company to watch.

Photograph by Andrea Avezzù