Modern dance is of its own nature one of the most rebellious art forms. It takes the skilled dancer, instructed in the basic, rigid rules of ballet and demands that he reject them in favour of the liberal expression of inner feelings.

This basic fact has always led modern dance to tackle more controversial topics than its vanilla counterpart and, in The Other Door: What’s Wrong, Why Not? artistic director and choreo-grapher Dorian Mallia smashes through the socially-constructed, glass confines of gender and relationships in what was a riveting, one-hour performance by dance company Moveo.

As with past performances, Mallia ensured that the beginning of the show was provocative and immersed the audience into the vision which he had constructed.

Interestingly, however, unlike It-Tfajla tal-Għonella which took place a few months ago and opened with bursts of bright, warm colour, The Other Door: What’s Wrong, Why Not? was a more sombre affair.

Opening to the sound of a ringing mobile phone, this particular device contributed to a somewhat confusing moment in the audience. By the time its unamused titters had died down, we had become well and truly engrossed in the conversation happening between several voices regarding what seemed to be titillating subjects, the latter being the theme of the night.

Wearing simple costumes of blue and green designed by Ritienne Zammit, the cast proceeded to explore the various nuances of the body and how we construct and derive meaning from everything we see around us.

Indeed, unlike previous performances, nothing in the show was taken for granted as each dancer was able to free himself of the constraints of what supposedly defines genders. Furthermore, in Mallia’s words, “to make sure we didn’t influence each other’s idea of nonconformity, all the dancers performing in the piece were asked to consider this concept from their own personal perspective and to bring that to the table”.

Accessible, enjoyable and indeed relevant in its abstractness

Through the dancing itself and the prop of speech, much of which was a questioning regarding why we take certain aspects of society for granted and feel we need to label them in one way or another, the performance created “a pseudo-society whereby ambiguity is experienced both personally, from each dancer’s perspective, and in contrast to each other”.

The questioning itself is a reflection of the fact that we should never consider our bodies or our understanding of the world through the body to be a finished article. Instead, we are invited to strive to evolve and to expose a new ‘other’.

Dancers freed themselves of the constraints of what defines gender.

By eventually removing articles of clothing till the dancers were stripped down to flesh-coloured costumes, I read a certain discarding of old ideas and perception in order to embrace the newness of this other and an acceptance that people’s differences are what make them beautiful.

In our nakedness, we are all the same and many times it is the very clothes or compartments which we have chosen to place ourselves in for comfort and acceptance which shackle us, rendering us immobile and erecting walls between us.

Although the show was relatively short, the fact that it did not have an intermission seemed confusing to some.

However, viewing the piece as a whole was imperative for the audience to properly taken in its message in one big gulp: an intermission would have caused a significant loss of momentum.

The amount of repetitive action on stage, while not always immediately understandable contextually, certainly did leave a tangible impact as a whole and had my friend and I discussing the purposeful lack of definition of the show as something deliberate which aptly represented its subject matter.

The foundation of the show was Mallia’s belief that “the other has the potential to challenge the simplistic idea that people can be merely framed to male and female binaries and ‘the other door’ is the entrance to a space where one is not judged”.

While this concept is not an easy one to convey at the best of times, I found the show extremely accessible, enjoyable and indeed relevant in its abstractness.