May-We-Go-Round?

Occasionally, two performers have such natural on-stage chemistry, and share such enormous talent and creativity, it’s as if they learned to walk and talk together. This is precisely the case with contemporary dancers Chess Dillon-Reams and Cristina MacKerron—together, The Hiccup Project—schoolfriends who trained together, lived together and now dance together.

May-We-Go-Round? is an utterly hilarious, genre-bending piece of deadpan dance about the circularity of sex and dating. If it sounds familiar, it isn’t. This is no run-of-the-mill performance about break-ups and best friends, but an exquisitely clever, technically stellar experiment with form, which dismantles and then rebuilds countless conventions of modern dance, physical theatre, clowning and storytelling.

Dillon-Reams and MacKerron exchange anecdotes about old boyfriends and the spectrum of emotions they've experienced in the blink of an eye. Their dances are sexy, contemplative, expressive, upsetting and downright liberating, yet are always stunningly well choreographed and controlled. In fact, the performers’ techniques are matched only by their volcanic wit.

The duo cover a staggering amount of emotional, sexual and artistic ground, alongside perfect song choices from Ochi Chorni to Elvis. They step in and out of character with such ease and regularity, such assuredness and precision, that the show has a disarming spontaneity to it, but never risks running away with itself. It’s like Smack the Pony meets Russian theatre company Derevo.

Putting their lives on stage in such an honest way; pushing their bodies with such extreme routines; creating art which totally involves and cares for an audience; these characteristics are what make May-We-Go-Round? so euphoric, and so infectious.