Colossus review – masses of dancers, masses of fun

Mass movement can have a walloping impact, whether in military parades or Olympic opening ceremonies. Australian choreographer Stephanie Lake knows this; her piece Colossus, originally made in 2018, has been performed all over the world and its clips went viral online.

It now receives a UK premiere with a cast of 60 students from the London Contemporary Dance School — enough to fill the stage of the Queen Elizabeth Hall. The sheer physical power of so many bodies is striking. When they all run at once, if you’re close enough, you feel the air whoosh by as if they are the blades of a giant fan, and small movements ripple through the group with millisecond timing, creating an architecture larger than the individual dancers.

Lake uses that power to explore what a mass of bodies can mean: a melée, a mob, a team, a flock, a set of subjects directed by an imperious conductor, even a gang in pursuit.

United Kingdom, London

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