A slap on the back is passed around a circle of men, the impact teetering, at first, on the edge between affection and violence before it ultimately tips over into a brawl. “With Uprising, I almost felt I had this wild dog inside me that needs to be unleashed,” Israeli-born London-based choreographer Hofesh Shechter has said of his iconic 2006 work Uprising. “It’s really about the childish and competitive mood of a group of men flung together in a room.”

Hofesh Shechter’s tHE bAD. Photo © Gabriele Zucca

Uprising is the first on a Hofesh Shechter double bill – Hofesh in the Yard – presented by Perth’s own STRUT Dance, in association with the Hofesh Shechter Company, on a temporary stage set up in the courtyard of the State Theatre Centre, surround by a (mostly) standing audience. To Shechter’s brutal, pulsing soundtrack, the seven male dancers spar and brawl, coming together with spot-on synchronicity, or breaking apart with wild, physical energy. Aggression and trauma play out viscerally, as do – more rarely – moments of intimacy, from fleeting, almost covert, eye contact between two dancers to a physical embrace that offers physical...