Review: Dance Dance Involution, Fringe 2025

Imagine a code where only every third word matters. The Fringe guide for Dance Dance Involution hints at a show where three young actors from Hong Kong will “simply scam your money and lay flat”. The performance begins with exactly that: three young women, lying completely flat on the stage. There’s no doubt as to what the crisis is, and it’s not the shortage of ‘Dance Dance’.

They are attempting to meditate their way out of a crisis. The crisis? They have a show to create and no idea what to do. This meta-narrative cleverly opens a door into one of the most pressing cultural debates facing young people in East Asia today.

A Cultural Crossroads

The real meat of the show is the lived experience of these three talented young women. Born in a Hong Kong that has waved a complex farewell to its British colonial past, they must navigate a whole new society and its immense expectations. It’s a world where their parents and the system itself demand everything from them.

We learn of a culture where working from 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week, is commonplace. A world where you can have a high-profile, lucrative job as a lawyer or a doctor and still be unable to afford your own home. The pressure to work, to succeed, and to provide for family is immense. This is ‘involution’ – a high-stakes rat race where vast effort doesn’t necessarily lead to progress. It’s a term taken from maths.

To Lie Flat or Fight Back?

In opposition to this burnout culture, a trend has grown: ‘lying flat’. It’s a form of quiet quitting, a conscious decision to step off the hamster wheel to preserve one’s mental health. This show frames it as a spirited, comedic, and deeply emotional debate over the right path forward for their generation. Should they work harder to force change from within, or should they ‘lie flat’ to force a wider societal reckoning?

If you came expecting a pure dance show, you might be surprised. The performance is a more vital cultural conversation than choreography. That is, until the final third, which features a brilliant ‘TikTok section’. An audience member is given a giant hand to literally ‘swipe’ the performers from one short, frantic dance gig to the next, a clever and cutting metaphor for the gig economy and the relentless demand for new content.

Overall

Dance Dance Involution doesn’t offer easy answers, and that is its strength. The show is a fascinating and superbly articulated debate, brought to life by three charismatic rising stars. It’s a piece that challenges, entertains, and educates in equal measure. Don’t go expecting pirouettes and grand jetés. Go for a sharp, funny, and surprisingly moving look into the heart of a generation at a crossroads. A surprise little find this Fringe.