As Ritchie-Jones, now on all fours, paws at the stage floor as if his hands were hooves, he tries to make a well from which to drink. The rider has become the ridden, and as Trigger, having knelt, pulled a revolver from a holster, and walked upstairs attests, this stunt work for an audience is thirsty work. Tancheff scoops at the earth, and with her cupped hand makes a vessel for Ritchie-Jones-as-horse to drink from. But if I thought I’d fallen into step, in a quick, surreal slip, a scene change. As Tancheff takes Ritchie-Jones’s right wrist and rotates his arm behind him, what was once a limb is now a microphone into which she speaks, shouts, sings, and becomes other. A tender moment turned upon its head, this is the hallmark of “R.A.I.N.” A gallop will slow, only to quicken.

Whether as stallions who’ve had one too many sugar cubes between takes or been asked to hold an extended bow until their muscles quaked, Ritchie-Jones and Tancheff throw themselves into “R.A.I.N” with such conviction. Locked in quiet conversation with one another, I pick up fallen words like clues to link together. In unguarded moments, as they play a game of ‘catch my limb and hold it,’ it almost feels as if I am intruding on their private world. Over to the side of the stage, characteristic of off duty resting, they alternate between throwing up a straight left or right leg for the other one to catch, and seem genuinely surprised by the resulting pattern. Elsewhere, they slowly make their way across the stage, neither one lifting the soles of their feet from the floor. In doing so, they draw a mountain ascent for me. As they pause once more in the wings, catching their breath from the effort of sliding their limbs forward through molasses, their playful connection and fearlessness is radiant. They are at total ease with one another, even when they are moving akin to having been nudged in the back by a horse, and taking turns scaling the back and shoulders of each other. Sometimes Tancheff rides Ritchie-Jones, one arm raised high, and sometimes she piggybacks him, carrying his form with indefatigable ease.