L-E-V, Love Chapter 3, Sadler's Wells

Love Chapter 3: The Brutal Journey of the Heart, to give it its full title, is the third and final instalment in Israeli choreographer Sharon Eyal's trilogy of meditations on love. The first, OCD Love, was seen at Sadler's Wells, where Eyal is an associate artist, in 2016; the second, Love Chapter 2 followed a couple of years later.

Now L-E-V, the company Eyal co-directs with her long-time collaborator Gai Behar and whose name points to the Hebrew word for heart, lev, returns to Sadler's Wells with Love Chapter 3. At just under one hour it is, like its predecessors, a short and intense piece, relying on nothing as mundane as a straightforward narrative, but rather on impressions, suggestions, hints.


On the company's website, Eyal's only description of her work is a series of seemingly disconnected words, such as: Moment. Silence. Longing. Moon. Demon. Gap. Salt… you get the gist.

On stage you'll see nine dancers clad in unisex unitards designed by Christian Dior Couture creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri to give the impression of naked bodies tattooed with delicate patterns of foliage and landscapes. To a soundscore of techno music by Eyal's regular musical collaborator Ori Lichtik they will perform Sharon Eyal's trademark repetitive, sometimes convulsive, often painfully slow choreography.

Eyal tells us that the work is inspired by a quote from Hanya Yanagihara's best selling novel of relationships A Little Life: '…things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realize that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully.'

A prolific choreographer, Sharon Eyal is familiar to Sadler's Wells audiences through her work with companies other than her own. Most recently, Rambert's junior company, Rambert2, performed her Killer Pig there.