In his ‘Double Murder’ double dance bill, Hofesh Shechter balances bleakness with hope

Hofesh Shechter has decided to give audiences a break.

The 47-year-old Jerusalem-born choreographer’s international reputation has largely been built on works that bombard audiences with unsettling images of societal dysfunction and human desperation in the face of an unforgiving universe. Now, for his company’s third Toronto visit, Shechter is offering a glimmer of hope in a double bill that contrasts his darkest visions with a gentler portrayal of humanity and its potential for healing. It wasn’t originally planned that way.

The first part of the evening is a work called “Clowns” that Shechter made in 2016 for Nederlands Dans Theater in The Hague. “Clowns” achieved global fame two years later when filmed by BBC Television.

“Clowns,” made for a cast of 10, is a series of emotional sucker punches framed disconcertingly within the conventions of a circus act. The ordered choreographic formations are redolent of Shechter’s own background in Israeli folk dance. Then, without warning and ever so matter-of-factly as if it’s all part of the act, someone gets killed. Throats are slit, brains blown out, stomachs ripped open.

Of course, there is no actual gore, but as the staged deaths mount, all presented as a form of light entertainment, it’s clear that Shechter is railing against what he sees as the commodification of extreme violence and our own complicity as its consumers. It took Shechter a while to absorb just how disturbing a work he’d made.

“I’d watched it many times before I thought, ‘Man, that’s so depressing.’ It’s an angle of looking at what humans are, but as if there’s no way out. That’s when I decided it’s only part of the truth. There must be another angle. There must be another way to portray humanity, or to connect to emotions and questions about humanity, because there are other sides to humanity that are maybe more worth it. So, I decided to create ‘The Fix’ as an answer, as a kind of antidote.”

“The Fix” was planned pre-COVID, but its premiere was delayed until September 2021 because of the pandemic. It was developed in part during a three-week residency at Alberta’s Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Shechter says that opportunity fed into the nature of the work.

“You’re almost totally isolated up there in the mountains. You can just focus. For a while you don’t have to worry about the world. You are able to contemplate life as if from outside any structure. Part of the meditative nature of ‘The Fix’ was clearly affected by that space, that separation from the world that we really craved.”

“Double Murder” is currently on a world tour that winds up in Spain next spring. Toronto is the second stop after Vancouver in a four-city Canadian leg.

On its past visits in 2012 and 2018, the London-based Hofesh Shechter Company has appeared at the almost 900-seat Bluma Appel Theatre. This visit it’s settling into the much more intimate 450-seat Fleck Dance Theatre as the first offering in Harbourfront Centre’s 2022/23 “Torque” season of international contemporary dance.

Nathalie Bonjour, the centre’s director of performing arts, jumped on the opportunity to present “Double Murder.”

“What an amazing way for us to open our season,” she said. “I feel the work has become even more relevant in these post-COVID times. I’m sure it’s going to be very moving for audiences.”

Shechter is happy that Toronto audiences will see “Double Murder” in an intimate environment.

“I do think that in a smaller theatre there can be this sense of camaraderie, the feeling that we are going through something together. It’s a special kind of experience.”

This is particularly applicable to “The Fix,” which sits at the opposite pole from Shechter’s more typically frenetic and unyielding choreographic onslaughts.

“I want to offer the audience something I normally take away from them, which is time,” said Shechter. “Mostly my work is always quicker than your mind and your feelings, and it leaves you kind of overwhelmed. With the ‘The Fix’ I want to give the audience time, to invite them in and to give them time to contemplate.”

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