In volatile and agonisingly slow "Untried Untested", childlike wonder at the laws of nature remains too distant

What is gravity? What is air? What is breath? In Untried Untested by choreographer Kate McIntosh four women explore the magical workings of nature using simple means. They are armed with dozens of black balloons, a tangle of ship's rope, a handful of feathers, a few bags of potatoes, wind machines and fluorescent lights, a playground made of wrapping paper. And their own bodies. Unfortunately, that wonder remains too far away due to the strange, uneven pace.

Upon entering, the stage floor is empty and Untried Untested's four performers casually fiddle with their props. One by one, they walk up and seed the play floor with black balloons. And they disappear again. From the side, three wind machines start blowing. Very gently, the balloons vibrate in the airstream, get moving and are slowly propelled to the middle of the floor. They are dancing! Spontaneously, there comes order in chaos.

That is short-lived. Ferociously, the four performers throw themselves at the rubber. With clawing hands they squeeze the balloons to pieces, bite into them, kick them, take a nose dive and crush them, or crash into the hall wall with them. With each bang, someone falls to earth. The screeching crackle, caused by the friction with the rubber, makes an impressive inferno. This hilarious chaos continues. Until everything is broken, and the stage floor is littered with loose balloon fragments.

Moments later, two players stand side by side and show different things to the audience: a handful of feathers, a stone, a book or a tangle of rope. Both with a look that seems both apologetic and challenging. Suddenly, a third player, lying in a corner of the playing floor blows up a balloon. She jumps up, puts on a sprint and runs into the hall wall. With a loud bang, the balloon bursts and the performer smashes to the floor. For dead. Witty, of course, but I have no idea what to make of this.

The above capriciousness is symptomatic of Untried Untested. Long passages with very minimal movement alternate with sudden, absurdist and hysterical accelerations. There is nothing wrong with that in principle. But most of what happens in Untried Untested happens at such an excruciatingly slow pace, that it is precisely with those sudden accelerations that all the tension slips away in one fell swoop and - unfortunately - the associations do not stick.

Except for one great image.

By the end of the performance, one of the women has fallen to earth. She is dragged like a rag doll by the others in a circle across the playing floor, which is littered with props. She gets snagged. A tear appears in the wrapping paper and, with a deafening roar, the entire paper playing surface is torn apart. As if in a devastating, all-consuming vortex that drags everything with it; a tsunami of paper and rubbish. She ends up as a giant pile.

This wonderful ending makes up for a lot, but a lot of vicissitudes preceded it.