THE WEIGHT OF THE THING LEFT ITS MARK
By Shaun McLeod
I'm just going to have to accept that my job brings with it the very small chance that on any given night a flying soup spoon is going to hit me in the privates. This is a conclusion I've reached after much reflection brought on by a flying soup spoon hitting me in the privates. I can't come up with statistical proof that I'm more endangered than most in this regard, but when I compare the number of times most people have been hit in the privates with a flying soup spoon (0) and the number of times I've been hit in the privates with a flying soup spoon (1) I think there must be something to it.
You know, now that I think about it, it might have been a dessert spoon. The offending piece of cutlery was just one of hundreds of knives, forks and spoons which were employed for various obscure purposes by the four dancers of The Weight of the Thing Left Its Mark, but perhaps ironically it was the thing that had the most impact on me. It wasn't much of an impact, though, and it left no actual mark or anything.
The Weight of the Thing... is improvisational dance directed and choreographed by Shaun McLeod. I've read others praising the piece but I didn't really find myself responding to it in any particular manner. Improvised dance can often leave me that way – it's as if I'm being presented with a bunch of answers without being informed of the question. It can be surprising, but if I don't have an inkling why this movement or phrase was chosen over all of the other possibilities which might have occurred, it can be the choreographic equivalent of peach loggerhead very adagio the crepeee bullfrog bullfrog inodoro. The soup spoon thing was an accident (OR WAS IT) but with impro, the distinction between accident and intention can be fuzzy.
You could say the same thing about someone like Deborah Hay, whose technique literally involves dancers addressing themselves to particular questions in the moment without letting the audience know what those questions might be. But at least I know Hay's philosophy quite well, and can see how an individual performer is embracing the kind of challenges she sets out, if not the particular problems themselves. It might just be, then, that I don't know Shaun McLeod's work, so I don't know what's informing the choices of his dancers.
Season ended.
MUSIC FOR IMAGINED DANCES
By Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey
There's not a terribly strong critical community discussing sound art in Australia today. There are voices out there, but compared to artists working in most other art forms I imagine sound artists have a pretty tough time being heard, so to speak. And I don't claim it as an area I'm particularly schooled in, either, though I know there's a very rich tradition of avant garde aural art that's being furthered by some very talented people in this country today. It would be hard to visit this exhibition/installation/event without gaining an inkling of appreciation for that tradition, too: it's worthwhile even just as an impressionistic historical record.
Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey have assembled an enormous archive of music with a connection to dance – from works specifically composed for choreography to music that inspired people who compose(d) for dance. The track listing is played randomly for the audience, who are left on their own in an installation setting lit by a dazzling, subtly shifting lighting array. The effect isn't immediate. It takes a while to feel immersed in the space, and it's recommended that you try to stay there for half an hour. I managed that easily, and could have stayed longer. Best of all, I was the only person around when I visited the piece, and this made it an even more powerful experience.
What shocked me was how gently disorienting the whole shebang can be. At one point a vocal line emerged during a song (by Ligeti, I think) and I jumped, suddenly sure there was someone else in the room with me. Later I was a bit afraid again, for a different reason. Near the end I thought I might be having a mild stroke, but it was just my eyes having trouble focusing on the shadows I was casting on a wall. All of this was inspired by a bunch of songs on random. It's a really good selection.
And dance seems somehow intrinsic to their composition. Even though there are no dancers in this work, it's hard not to start to see a dance in your mind's eye, or feel one in your body. Maybe it's just your imagination attempting to fill the void where the choreography should be (it's part of Dance Massive, after all) but I did have the distinct feeling that some music, or sound art, has a connection to choreography that's much deeper, more embedded.
Anyway, it's free and it's on days and some evenings until Sunday night. At Dancehouse; bookings not required.
IN GLASS
By Narelle Benjamin
This is beautiful dance performed by beautiful dancers. There's no arguing that. You'd be hard pressed to find a pair of performers more watchable than Kristina Chan and Paul White. It left me a little cold, though. While it's technically elegant and immaculately danced, I think it could have benefited from some close dramaturgy – there are ideas in play, but they're thrown around in a loose manner that doesn't match the amazing accuracy of the dancers themselves.
The central motif is the mirror. Chan and White interact with mirrors large and small, echo each other's movements, dance with video projections of themselves or make reference to countless stories of mirrors, from Alice in Wonderland to Sleeping Beauty to the myth of Narcissus. In one particularly striking sequence White sprouts mirrors like wings, tripling his reflection so that he becomes a kind of vain Cerberus. I'm not really sure why, except that it looked great.
There are moments when the reflections have a strong impact. At times it seems as though there are four, six, eight dancers on stage at the same time, though the conscious mind knows that isn't the case. It seems a potent evocation of the mirror stage of psychoanalytic thought, when we misrecognise ourselves in the glass, not comprehending that the reflection is our own, and pondering the strange power we have over this puppet's movements. But for all its power, I wasn't particularly energised by In Glass, and was left wondering if I'd missed something.
Season ended.
SWEAT
By Branch Nebula
I have no idea who Branch Nebula are but this show was a sheer delight. Not that its subject matter is particularly joyous – it addresses the lives of menial and industrial workers in our cities, from cleaners to hospitality staff, in ways that are often troubling (you learn more about bacteria than you might want to know, for instance). But the cleverness of the presentation can't fail to charm.
It commences with the audience wandering into the playing space, where there are no chairs, no set, no props. There's a sole performer, who immediately begins to explain what we've done wrong so far and how we should appropriately respond to the rest of the work. We're to empathise with the situations of performers when required, and at other times maintain a cool objective distance in order to appreciate the points being made. She then asks audience members to help her remove items of clothing one by one and, almost naked, suffers some kind of terrible violence (a factory accident? A workplace assault?) She lies on the floor in abject humiliation, screaming at us to look away. It's a sublime theatrical moment – we're there to look. That's part of our job description. And over the next hour, we look at people we normally don't see, despite their constant presence in our lives.
This is dance theatre, but the spread of performance styles it engages with is broad. Breakdance, contemporary, martial arts, parkour, song, spoken word, even soccer. Soccer! There's a riveting sequence in which a man messing around with a soccer ball – the way he might on a lunch break – begins using a woman's body as a sort of human goalpost, manipulating her more and more violently as a tool for his entertainment. There's no didactic point to be made, but the wealth of associations it conjures is gripping.
The coup de theatre comes in a late scene, where a crew of serving staff, grins fixed like a rictus, seat a group of audience members at a long table for a feast. Without revealing too much, the culinary presentation quickly comes to resemble the old Pro Hart Stainmaster ad. The look of unbridled glee on the face of a kid who planted herself front and centre seemed to express what everyone else was thinking right then. This is messy art – and the dance styles on offer are a long way from the cool, technically precise formalism of a lot of Australian choreography. But we live in messy times, and this production seems to have nailed something of the world we live in despite its ragged edges. It seems fitting that one of the questions I left with was: who's going to clean all of this up?
Season ended.
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