by Luisa De la Concha Montes

Last summer, with four years of on-and-off skateboarding experience under my belt, I keenly tuned in to watch the skateboard showcase at the 2024 Olympics. I remember feeling envious as I saw the skaters stylishly dropping from huge concrete bowls. I mentally returned to the Level in Brighton, where I spent many hours unsuccessfully trying to land a trick, surrounded by familiar faces and the intense smell of weed. There was a huge gap between my memories of skateboarding and the perfectly smooth bowl on the screen. It was numerical and structured; too polished from what I knew as skateboarding. I turned my computer off, incredibly proud of Arisa Trew, Hiraki Cocona and Sky Brown, but feeling slightly detached. How did a sport that started as a form of protest (the legend says that skaters in L.A. would break into rich people’s houses to drain their pools and use them to skate) turn into a $4.8 billion business?

My skateboard has been gathering dust since, and skateboarding has become a luxury that is not available when you have a 9-to-5 job. However, I was reminded of the hypnotising power this sport still holds on me as I venture to Sadler’s Wells East – not too far from the 2012 Olympic landscape – to watch Mette Ingvartsen’s Skatepark. From arrival to departure, the vibe is, for lack of a better word, cool. Attendees are not your typical theatre audience: the youngest person I saw in the crowd must be five years old and the oldest is probably a parent of the youngest. As I walk towards my seat, I was approached by someone wearing Docs, a dress and a full face of makeup. She is carrying a speaker blasting “Nightcall” by Kavinsky, and I have to praise the team for Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive reference, which seemed very appropriate as I walked into a stage full of wheels.

The ‘stage’, if it can be called that, is really a skatepark complete with ramps, rails and ledges that becomes a non-stop flow of bodies and movement for an hour and twenty minutes. Perhaps ‘flow’ is not the right word, as ‘flow’ implies a streamlined journey, whereas what I witnessed was a grounded, non-linear journey, fully reliant on the pull of gravity. Drops and falls merged with jumps and swings; from skateboarding to rollerblading and breakdance, the choreography explores the concept of subcultures through spotless transitions. The experience is hypnotic and electric; heads darting from one performer to the next, responding to each trick with audible gasps and claps from the audience.

The sound design, by Anne van de Star and Peter Lenaerts, activates the highs and lows of techno, punk and rock through smooth transitions, creating a rhythm that becomes a key part of the narrative throughout the whole show. The sense of camaraderie is tight; every time a trick doesn’t land, the group cheers and laughs, neatly linking the concepts of solidarity with the ‘anti-capitalist’ attitude that the show as a whole explores. Together, the movement, the coordination, and the sense of conjunction between the performers, reads like a poem to anarchism, and everything that exists outside the norm. The skatepark, embodied as an explosion of meaning and message through flags, masks and music, becomes a place where subcultures can mix and thrive.

Sitting in the sidelines, and watching the freedom they creat on stage, I feel both hunger and envy; hunger for a world where there are no jobs or obligations and I can spend my whole day at a skatepark; envy for the young pre-graduate self that was able to spend hours in that bowl. It makes total sense that Mette Ingvartsen was inspired to create the show by spending a lot of time with her two kids at Ursulines Skatepark in the centre of Brussels – by watching youthful hope and rebellion unfold, and reminiscing about her own teenage years, experiencing “that feeling of being on wheels and gliding through space”. Despite experiencing envy and hunger, I leave the theatre uplifted; gliding through my own thoughts of resistance and rebellion. I know that every performer that night had so much fun, and to be honest, so did I. What a riot.

Skatepark ran through 12 April.

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