AFTER the first night, artistic director and choreographer Javier De Frutos let it be known he would prefer Phoenix Dance Theatre's first full-length dance drama to be considered as a musical.
He has a point, especially given the loud and lewd impact of the lyrics and music of Richard Thomas: yes, that Richard Thomas from Jerry Springer: The Opera.
The problem is, Cattle Call is part musical, part dance, part theatre, part opera, but just not enough of any of them.
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It definitely needs more dance and theatre, but reduced volume on the operatic high seas that often drown everyone else, fewer obstacles to seeing what's going on behind the gauze, and less of the "shocking" language.
Having bosomy, velvet-clad opera singers swear was just about amusing in the Springer opera but once you have broken boundaries, all you can do is crank up the swearing to the next notch, as happens here. Grow up!
Yes, there is a mischief at play, be it in the opening sung invitation to leave our mobile phones on, or the mooing and gun shot sounds to signify we are watching a "Cattle Call", an open audition for inexperienced dancers, so named because of its similarity to the farming practice of penning livestock before slaughter.
However, too much of the taboo-smashing lacks context, for example, the bludgeoning to death of Clemmie Sveaas's pregnant woman by a male dancer: is he her lover, a jealous rival, or what and why?
Having taken brutal dancing to a new, bloody height in Los Picadores, De Frutos goes one step further, as part of his drive to change our perception of the limits of dancers. Here he has them sing, move the scenery, even change the traditional body shape to accommodate pregnancy.
Likewise, he asks the audience repeatedly to view the same scene from several angles - but whichever way you look at it, you leave feeling you have watched an audition, still waiting for the real dancing to kick in.
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