Surreal, fragile and delusional collaboration is a keen exploration of shared desire and movement.

Envisioned and choreographed by Anthea Seah of Singapore’s T.H.E Dance Company, and Josh Martin of Canada’s Company 605, new collaborative work Sloth Canon sees a dynamic team of performers and collaborators from both cities coming together to seek out what it means to build and to break.

At the heart of Sloth Canon lies a fragmented team of dancers determined to “keep it together” as their bodies are launched into an alternate realm, propelled by unnatural momentum and shared delusion. Comparing it to being inside a collective fever dream, it’s a performance that feels surreal, unstable, and even compulsive, crafting a space where fantasy floats just above the spike of reality, fragile and shimmering.

Right from the moment we enter, the soundtrack, by composer Matthew Tomkinson, pulses and overtakes the room, making us feel every beat reverberating through our body, animating the space before anything else moves. Onstage, we see balloons, including a massive balloon sculpture looming from the ceiling, a little whimsical yet unnervingly foreboding. Dancers Brandon Lee Alley, Haruka Leilani Chan, Chang En, Billy Keohavong, and Rebecca Margolick arrive in streetwear, all five of them circling the light but never stepping into its full glare. It almost feels like the beginning of a rave, except nobody here wants to be the center of attention, all a little avant garde as we wonder how this will progress.

The dance begins, and it feels experimental, deeply interpretive, unapologetically raw. The movement has plenty of personality, thanks to the unique choreography devised by the performers themselves. The continued momentum of the body is central to them telling their individual stories; expressed through physicality, yet always connected by a broader structure, synonymous with a T.H.E production.

The atmosphere is almost dystopian in tone, like watching human language being rewritten and distorted into something incomprehensible. There’s a strange “vibe check” that happens, as the dancers segment the space, manipulate it, and almost expand the space, making it feel larger than it actually is. Their movement is swift and they’re clearly spatially aware; they make sharp contact, yet know exactly where one another exists in the room, signifying a kind of precise, organised chaos.

We witness a spectrum of the human form, bodies thrown, collapsed, contorted, extended. There’s a moment where the ensemble forms something balloon-like themselves, letting their bodies swell, flow, expand. They begin blowing up their own individual balloons, and the central element of play comes to the fore. As Chang En blows a balloon up, then lets the air squeal out, its sound tickles not just her but the whole audience, creating a moment of humour amidst an otherwise serious piece. A conversation begins here without words, as if there is a new language forming: quirky, squeaky, shared.

As Billy Keohavong takes the balloon, there’s a sense of personal growth. You can see how much he’s evolved as a performer over time, moving and even ebbing, flowing through the piece itself, as if bending time with his body. The dancers start telling stories not with plot but with presence. The balloons uplift them, or seem to, and the illusion is complete: the balloon becomes an item of power, of levity, of struggle.

Eventually, the balloon bursts, creating a symbolic moment, signifying how power, pressure, imagination can all pop, without warning. And in that instant, it’s like the dancers have floated into the abyss. Dance becomes conversational here, creating story via dynamism, contact and withdrawal. And then, a shift, as if the dancers begin to move like AI gone rogue. Mechanical, calculated, eerie. The soundtrack also follows them closely, robotic and percussive, before we are greeted by yet another change, as the stage itself begins to transform.

The unassuming staging still has another surprise in store for us as wind is let into a massive plastic bag to transport us to another realm, it inflates above and around them. It grows, fills with air, shifting the visual vocabulary entirely. It’s like watching a jellyfish bloom, or the construction of an alien biosphere. Visually stunning, it almost turns the piece into a living exhibit. Inside this translucent realm, the dancers pull one another out of the abyss. They form shapes, sci-fi silhouettes, alien visions. The theatre’s spatial limits expand as plastic rustles like waves. We squint and take a closer look: their clothing now carries textures of the sea, of seaweed, and of coral. It seems they are now underwater.

Now they move like creatures against the current, crawling, floating and led by invisible forces, adapting to the seabed becoming their new space. As the lights begin to isolate and abstract their forms, they are reduced to silhouettes. Then slowly, identities emerge, and each dancer becomes an avatar, revealed, not invented, now confident, able to tell their stories in full.

Finally, they converge. Not as a tight, clean ending, but as a gentle alignment. The individual becomes the collective, the ensemble finds itself again, and differences melt into motion. Where they began as fragments, they arrive as one unit. The journey, from deconstruction to new unity, is hard-won. The piece concludes soft-spoken, resolving gently, almost like coming up for breath from a dive.

With Sloth Canon, Company 605 and T.H.E have demonstrated that through shared imagination, rigorous craft, and a willingness to embrace chaos, weirdness and surrealism, it is possible to build something honest, even as it falls apart.

Photo Credit: Dan Loan

Sloth Canon played from 20th to 22nd June 2025 at the Esplanade Theatre Studio. More information available here

cont·act Contemporary Dance Festival 2025 runs from 13th to 29th June 2025. Full programme available here, tickets available here

Production Credits:

Co-produced by The Human Expression (T.H.E) Dance Company (Singapore) / Company 605 (Vancouver, Canada) Co-created and Co-directed by Anthea Seah / Josh Martin In collaboration with performers Brandon Lee Alley, Haruka Leilani Chan, Chang En, Billy Keohavong, Rebecca Margolick Original Sound / Composer Matthew Tomkinson Lighting Design Adrian Tan Costume Design Loo An Ni