AUDIENCE REVIEW: Many Must Have It
Company:
Prashant More
Performance Date:
11/29/25
Freeform Review:
GOA, INDIA
Prashant More spent years trying to quiet what he calls “the monkeys in [his] mind that just won’t stop.” His contemporary dance theater solo, 3AM chronicles his personal experiences wrestling through the physicality and mental volley of his insomnia. Originally choreographed in 2021, the work now operates as both a dream sequence and a memory bank that has seen More through to the other side of his sleeplessness.
On this warm November night, an audience of about 50 assembles at the Flying Goat, an open-air culture house, bar, restaurant, and host to a monthly series of performance works by artists from around India. It seems only fitting that a dance about the plight of the insomniac has found itself at home in this clean, well lighted place.
Street sounds from the busy North Goa road seep in as guests greet one another around a concrete patio. Audience members proceed in groups to the bar off to the right corner ordering as rose tea, coffee, or something stronger before the performance begins. Someone lights a cigarette. Friends in scarves reserve spots next to each other in one of three rows of plastic chairs. Luce the French bulldog waddles between legs looking for a scratch on the bum or perhaps a snack. The intimacy of the venue suits the work.
More walks silently onto the patio from the bar side carrying a rolled up floor mattress. He scans his horizon line, unrolls the mattress, and stands back to ready himself for the Olympic effort of trying to get to sleep. He takes time to limber up, stretching his arms, dropping into a runners lunge, rolling his shoulders. Ready, he takes a deep inhale, sweeping his arms overhead in the first action of a sun salutation. He releases a staccato exhale, drops into a squat with arms thrust back along his sides.
Waits.
W a i t s…
Beyond the walls of the Goat, motorists honk to one another, signaling the improvisational traffic pattern for two taxis, three scooters, and a cow likely attempting to navigate the same patch of two lane street. Dogs bark with their neighbors. Although most of the dance takes place in silence, the environment is never quiet. More may be in a bar, but he could just as easily be in any bedroom in Anjuna.
More launches forward, landing prostrate with enough momentum to mattress-surf for a few feet along the concrete floor. He tries to rest, breathing methodically for a handful of seconds with his eyes shut. Small turns of the head progressively escalate into full body fidgeting. While More lies face down on his mattress attempting to quiet his racing thoughts, five random fireworks explode somewhere beyond the patio walls in baritone booms and crackling sparks.
Eventually, More gives up on laying down and attempts again, in vain, to coax the mattress into his ally instead of his adversary. He stretches once more, dives and slides across the floor, bows to the mattress perhaps hoping that the reverence will afford him the opportunity to drift off. No luck.
Nikhil Nagaraj’s hypnotic soundscape sweeps in over a speaker system as More faces off with the mattress on a corner-to-corner diagonal. For the first of two times in this show, the introduction of pre-recorded sound marks a transition between doing-as-behavior and movement more easily categorized as contemporary dance choreography. While I could do without the music in this venue---I'm too into the street sound and the addition of a recorded track feels like an interruption---I could easily imagine its value and impact in more closed off performance spaces.
Overhead, lights flicker. More processes toward the mattress along a corner-to-corner diagonal, phasing through a ticking clock of gestures: Reach. Look. Hair. Front. Pinch-and-roll. Drop. Pivot. Pivot. Click. Bounce-bounce-bounce. Actions recycle, morphing subtly in direction and order, a repetition strategy that appears throughout the work: theme and variation on a sleepless night. More is arresting here in his specificity and articulation; the gestures are clean, confident, and not a single one bleeds into the next.
When More eventually greets the mattress again they shape shift together, falling though a series of images governed by the surreal logic of dreams. More picks the mattress up and swings it in concentric circles. The mattress drapes over his shoulders. More lays supine and wriggles beneath it. He log rolls and the mattress wraps around his head. Cape. Cocoon. Shelter. Mask. Shroud. The two sit next to each other. More flirts. The mattress isn’t having it.
Delirium has set in. The body is ready, but the mind won’t rest. The mattress settles back into the role of inanimate object. More methodically alternates between the checklist of his own possible needs and all of the annoying remedies that well meaning friends suggest for incurable sleeplessness. These actions too, fall into one another. The mattress supports and witnesses a flipbook of meditation, prostration, incantation, and masturbation to no avail.
More’s floorwork skills and fluid spine shine in a last ditch effort to please PLEASE let him fall asleep. Seated with legs bent in a ‘z,’ he pushes his palm against his temple and rocks himself over the sides of his feet to stand. He continues the momentum with his head, circling ear, neck, torso, in a spiral that continues into steps that cross behind one another. He unwinds his legs and falls backwards, breaking the fall with a pushback of the legs and a roll through his spine. Everything swirls. The flow sweeps him away, sweeps me away. The concrete floor feels like the illusion.
Music swells. Tilting melts to rolling, spills to waiting, spirals open. Place, possibility, reality, and metaphor all come crashing into one another. Luce the bulldog chooses this moment to trot the length of the patio, perking his ears and standing immediately next to More’s head. Someone unsuccessfully tries to tsk tsk the dog back off the patio. Without breaking the flow of the dance, More reaches overhead and lightly puts his hand on the dog’s back. Luce settles and sits. Imagination twists the tangible into the possible as More rides the tide of his momentum into darkness. The audience takes a few beats to begin clapping. A trance state lingers. We’re all dreaming, just a little bit, even if we aren’t sleeping anytime soon.
Author:
Jennifer Passios
Website:
Prashant More's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/prashant_more369
Photo Credit:
Azri Rashid (center image), Sumi Deogam (peripheral images)
