All In

North Korea’s Arirang Festival: 100,000 gymnasts performing in sync. In colourful costumes, they become ripples, shapes and motion; waves of colour as their costumes combine. They are no longer individuals, neither bodies nor people really, but a mass. Performing like this, so anonymous, they become abstract.

Spain’s ATRESBANDES pick at that idea in All In: how else might people be abstracted? A series of disjointed scenes—the show hasn’t really found its form—show us faceless silhouettes, silent figures in clouds of smoke and a group of friends with Lego hair and stilted, mannequin gestures.

The latter make a stock-standard lunch—vegetables and protein, anyone?—in a bog-standard kitchen. Coming after an analysis of our tendency to hoard stuff, it sets the notion that our possessions define us as individuals against the fact that consumerism functions through mass appeal. We all buy the same white goods and eat the same foods. The one guest that sits at odds to the rest—the vegan to their carnivores—finds his preferences rolled over by the majority. Might Western individualism and democracy make us as anonymous and abstract as the Arirang gymnasts?

That’s dangerous; abstracts being prone to manipulation. The generic lyrics of 'Ode To Joy', from Beethoven’s 9th, saw it put to all manner of political purposes. ATRESBANDES suggest the same applies to people – be they synchronised gymnasts or clubbers dancing to a single beat. It’s a considered argument, clunkily staged, only just rescued by a soaring ending of Arirang and electro.