‘Not nostalgic for the days before, but for those yet to come,’ the main performer proclaims to an audience washed in stage lights. As radio broadcasts count down the passing decades through New Year celebrations, three performers spin across the stage in frantic circles, reenacting fragments of pop culture choreography while singing a cappella.
Sofia Pouchtou, Christina Skoutela and Chara Kotsali act as a chaotic girl band, switching props at dizzying speed: flags, wigs, marching drums, feathered headdresses, firearms. Everything appears and disappears in the blink of a hyper-consumerist eye. The result is a joyful mess, though it leaves the audience almost as exhausted as the message repeated by the radio: ‘It’s time to clean this shit.’
The premise is ambitious, but the piece struggles to move beyond denunciation. One wishes the choreography had been pushed further. IT’S THE END OF THE AMUSEMENT PHASE captures the nausea of a party overloaded with decorations, but lacking actual guests.
Imagine your whole life flashing before your eyes on a turbo-charged carousel, and you might approach what Chara Kotsali achieves in IT’S THE END OF THE AMUSEMENT PHASE. With breathtaking virtuosity, Kotsali and dancers Sofia Pouchtou and Christina Skoutela become vessels channeling the cacophonous noise of contemporary culture. This end-of-times girl group is a high-octane radio, flitting from Beyoncé to Trisha Brown to the Can-Can (and too many other iconic dances and references to mention) with dizzying, electrifying speed.
Most impressive of all is the way this dazzling show just keeps on surprising us. Kotsali holds our eyes wide open, Clockwork Orange-style, overloading us with images that tumble endlessly into one another. We barely register the fake blood, the plastic babies, the smiley-faced piñata, before the next prop appears.
In a post-Covid world where literally anything could happen next, this masterfully crafted performance speaks loudly to our times, keeping us on the edge of our seat from beginning to end. You might need a Xanax to sleep afterwards.
From the outset, IT’S THE END OF THE AMUSEMENT PHASE by Chara Kotsali operates as a tightly constructed spectacle machine. Three synchronised dancers in 90s-inspired pop costumes perform like a hyperactive girl band, generating a world of permanent stimulation where energy is escalated, and the audience’s need for entertainment becomes compulsive.
An opening spotlight drifts across the audience to a collage of historical sound fragments. It sets the tone, before Kotsali, Sofia Pouchtou and Christina Skoutlea launch into a piece that maintains a consistently intense rhythm throughout. Kotsali delivers a spoken text with unexpected seriousness, followed by a continuous stream of choreography, gags, pop references and stage tricks. There’s even a brief moment of sweeping, as the stage manager clears the space in full view of the audience. This pause allows us to catch our breath while simultaneously emphasising the rapid succession of action surrounding it.
Yet it is precisely this relentless state of overstimulation that generates tension: the continuous production of amusement begins to feel unsustainable. Beneath its polished surface, lies a reflection on distraction as a response to anxiety. However, the theme of ‘ultimate doom’ remains overly broad, making the overall development feel somewhat predictable.
Dance marathons were cruel, exploitative, and participated in by desperate people with no alternative. So it makes sense that Greek choreographer Chara Kotsali uses the term to describe IT’S THE END OF THE AMUSEMENT PHASE. For this is a performance that screams (those uppercase letters are there for a reason) at the world to stop its incessant need to destroy.
Along with Sofia Pouchtou and Christina Skoutela, Kotsali is at turns a showgirl, activist, singer in a Motown-esque girl group, poet, cheerleader, daughter, friend. With the help of a long-suffering stage manager, the trio plough through a tsunami of props and costumes, until the stage is awash with discarded baby dolls, pizza boxes, headdresses, pom poms, guns.
Behind them, text documents years of conflict around the world (exhausting but not exhaustive), giving context to the women’s plea. A slightly stripped back version might have felt more meaningful (and required a few less single-use props), but sometimes you have to shout to make yourself heard.