YELLING MOUTH

New Treaty Militia - A response from Tru Paraha

2011-12-04T20:02:00.000-08:00

Performers: Cat Ruka and Joshua Rutter

Venue: Otara Music and Arts Centre

Southside Arts Festival

Reviewed by Tru Paraha

The art of fearless community

On 28th October 1835 The Declaration of Independence was signed in Aotearoa, five years prior to the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. On Friday the 28th October 2011 performance artists Cat Ruka and Joshua Rutter presented New Treaty Militia at The Otara Music and Arts Centre, where audience members including whanau, friends, South Auckland locals, artists, dancers, teachers and students from Manukau Institute of Technology were invited to place their signature of attendance on a giant registry board. This was the first of many provocations of the evening where the gathered crowd became collaborator and conscience. I am reminded of Australian artist Lynette Wallworth and her profound installation work “The evolution of fearlessness”. She expresses in her notes how she is challenged to ‘structure theses spaces to encourage temporary interdependence between the viewer and the vision and a communal relationship between participants’.

Ruka achieved this feat through strategic decisions which placed an R18, experimental dance work in the heart of Otara and subsequently transformed the space. Presenting this work in The Southside Arts Festival after a disappointing response at Tempo allowed Ruka’s colleagues and students to form the voluntary support crew by which the tasks of production could be achieved. This enabled the kind of on-site learning that performing arts students are seldom privy to in their first year of training and gave them insight into a distinctive arena of independent production. For these individuals to host a NZ arts gathering including practitioners such as Shigeyuki Kihara, Sean Curham and Kristian Larsen on their own turf was liberating and of critical value.

The self-produced event relied on a currency of venue sponsorship, koha and product and bar sales. The performance artifacts and set design were accumulated through a process where friends and colleagues of the choreographer gifted articles to her. This was not a financial decision but a deliberate act of community inclusion. The most pervasive currency of the event however, was Aroha. Aroha as an operational principle presumes the universe to be abundant with more opportunities than there are people. Aroha in practice is intelligent; a unified intelligence of the heart, soul and mind, recognised by peoples of all cultures. Aroha in action is munificent as was evident in the audience contribution throughout the performance, generosity of koha and commitment of various individuals who respect and support both artists. This currency is a direct result of Ruka’s ability to maintain significant relationships within her local and international community. It also attests to a wahine who, through the evolution of her own fearlessness, enrolls the veracity of like-minded comrades along the way.

The art of provocation

Described in the director’s notes as a “theatrical protest,” New Treaty Militia arrives in NZ as a timely prelude to the oncoming general elections. Aotearoa, notorious for our post-colonial identity crisis has toiled over Maori/Pakeha relations and power dynamics for nearly two centuries. Cat Ruka of Ngapuhi and Pakeha descent explores this hybrid conundrum in collaboration with NZ born artist Josh Rutter, in a performance of un-rivaled ingenuity. A barren community arts centre with black out curtains and modest lighting grid is mutated with a mountain of green bottles, chains, portable smoke machine, stage lights, bells, balloons, boxes of beer, a giant poi, two microphone stands, sound equipment, swag bag and various other paraphernalia. Symbolic and evocative, the haphazard display is more than chaos. There is a camera which the audience are invited to use at anytime and it’s fine if our cell-phones go off during the performance. Eleven envelopes entitled “articles” placed in a precise row across the floor contain cryptic information. The contents/instructions are unknown to both audience and performer until selected and read aloud. What follows could range from an orgiastic dance solo, to violent treaty negotiation, exquisite hair pulling pas de deux or a series of interrogations such as, “Do you relate more to people of African American descent than to Pakeha even though you are genetically more distant?” and my personal favourite “Are you Maori?”. These intermittent questionnaires evoke childhood games of truth or dare and at times, the odious surveys of NZ census; a wry observation of the Kiwi obsession with identity.

The art of transgression

A medley of selected and original soundtracks including modulated voice-over, gangster rap, and Kiri Te Kanawa’s rendition of ‘Po karekare ana’, create subliminal rhapsody and dissonance depending on what is happening within the performance or which article we are dealing with. The eccentric duo morph in and

out of theatricality, treading the edges of indiscretion. Their voices, amplified by microphones are often a caricature. Michael Haneke in his ground-breaking thriller “Funny Games” breaks the unspoken rule of the 4th wall when one of the antagonists makes a direct address to the camera/viewer. Such a blurring of fantasy/reality and reconstruction of genre has caused much controversy and debate as also happens within the dance paradigm. Ruka’s work is not everyone’s cup of tea, though I suspect it may be because kiwi patrons are not familiar with the blend. The piece is abstract, and refreshingly impossible to understand. It does not reek of the codified movement vocabulary which is propagated through schools of dance in this country. These are however, highly trained practitioners who have chosen a unique path of navigation. A provocation of which one must be willing to experience; a breaking of the 4th wall.

Halfway through the performance, the audience is invited to create a dance party with pop-out streamers, lighters aflame and bass booming. Here is a euphoric hiatus, beckoning the elevated spirit of the participants to couple with an atmosphere of permissiveness. It is a clever manipulation. The artists possess full awareness of our need to articulate. The mute, passive observer of the proscenium arch is not cultivated in this breed of theatre. Some of us remain in a kind of Stockholm syndrome and continue to identify with an oppressor. I choose to stand on my chair and wave my hands in the air. Others avail themselves of randomly positioned bottles of beer. Beer is a powerful device in this decadent performance ritual. The players consume it before, during and after the show. It serves as a performance artifact and cultural emissary. Ruka sloshes it over her bare breasts inducing a paradox of iconic Maori maiden and wet-t-shirt-contender-at-slapper-pub. She questions her proclivities and ponders whether a desire to take her top off stems from the fact that her ancestors didn’t have tops on? Rutter, in a brilliant moment of absurdist theatre strikes a pseudo-gangster pose for the camera with an orange Tui box over his head. Later, when questioned on whether he loves rugby, an ambiguous head roll ensues, to both the dismay and delight of a gathering with divided loyalties. In some nations this could equate to being asked whether you support a fascist government or believe in God. His interpretive taiaha display is also something to behold; vaguely camp and devoid of the customary warrior mechanisms prevalent in indigenous performance. But the pertinent thing is that he isn’t Maori (unless you are of the doctrine that having Maori friends makes you a little bit Maori) and can improvise without duress. Ruka – a 21st century femme fatale clad in sheer tights and leotard, sequined brassiere, lace-up boots and bandanna across her face-greets her audience with legs astride, penetrating stare and taiaha in hand while Rutter ominously binds his hands in white boxing wraps, over and over again. Yes. You had to be there.

The Artist and the State (of things)

This brings me to cite those illustrious advocates of the NZ contemporary arts industry who did not make it to the performance. No professional dance reviewers, CNZ/Te Waka Toi representatives, NZ arts administrators or members of DANZ, Pacific Dance, Toi Maori or director/producer of any state-funded performance company in Aotearoa were sighted at this event. As the late front man of OMC, Pauly Fuemana once proclaimed- how bizarre, how bizarre. And it really is considering the international itinerary of this work and the contribution that these practitioners are making to the NZ contemporary art arena. It was the only professional dance performance programmed in The Southside Arts Festival and is supported by a strong media profile with feature articles in The Leader, The Aucklander, Sunday Star Times, Radio Live and various online sources. Perhaps the work is too subversive or the location simply undesirable. My questions to the above mentioned organisations and others are:

How are we able to create a culture of critical analysis/dialogue around performance work being made in NZ if we are not attending?
Who are the artists considered worthy of investment by the State and why?
Why are dance support organisations in Auckland not sending representatives to every profiled contemporary performance?
What are the current definitions for contemporary dance, contemporary Maori dance, experimental dance, avant-garde dance theatre, Pacific dance and performance art?
Which do you personally consider “real dance”?
Are you Maori?

‘Pro - Man Renaissance’

2011-08-22T14:48:00.000-07:00

a re'posting..

Performances at Auckland Zoo are part of its marketing engine, A strategy to maintain or boost numbers - not so much bums on searts but eyes on animals. Usually performances are by musicians playing in publicly user friendly zones of the zoo. However the marketing dept at Auckland Zoo have taken a big risk with a very subversive event. Amsterdam based De Laatste Groep van het Werk van de Bank (translation - The Last Bank Work Group) have created something of a performance art coup. Paying homage to and going way beyond Janice Claxtons 'Enclosure 44 - Humans at Edinburgh Zoo' this 48 hour long installation not only evicted the divisions between animal and human, it also slammed culture and species together with head fucking simplicity.

De Laatste Groep van het Werk van de Bank is a seven strong group of performers headed by couple / co - directors Femke Bathhuis and Matz Van Doorn. This is a collective of independent artists, a format typical of the networks of European artists that have functioned quite happily outside of the antiquated 'company' model for some time now. This particular constellation seems to have referenced the 90's European dance movement which itself strongly referenced Judson Church. The Judson artists deployed pedestrian movement and heavily deconstructive conceptual frameworks to depart from previous era's of dance. However this group has stayed true to two movement languages that emerged from that time: Contact Improvisation and pedestrian gesture. Those two movement languages were used to construct a vocabulary that connoted a dying culture and species. Although a decidedly conventional movement pallet, it was deployed with devastating effectiveness.

Van Doorn and Batthuis have created a kind of cultural anti-statement in response to the age of spectacle. Known around Europe for their politically subversive performances, De Laatste Groep van het Werk van de Bank's new work is an event that is almost too good to be true. Reminiscent of shop front window performances where the performers would live on display for twenty four hours a day, this group have taken that format a step and a half further. Housing themselves in an enclosure called Giraffe Valley at the Auckland Zoo, the colony of seven humans cohabited an enclosure with relatively benign zebras, giraffes, and ostriches.

The dancers looked both terrifyingly vulnerable and at the same time discomfortingly 'normal'. They also accomplished a deeply natural sense of disinterest in their surroundings which made their integration into the enclosure almost seamless. Miraculously the animals reciprocate this disinterest and were not intimidated by the presence of the colony in the slightest. They simply wandered around, ate, and did their thing as did the dancers. There were no predators, bar the audience.

Over the course of a day the dancer's employed an improvisational loop structure that allowed them to navigate a consistent world of material via endless theme and variation. Familiar activities such as gathering and preparing food, sheltering in bivouacs, and walking in meandering choreographic patterns, were blended with contact duets, trios, and even a group unison phrase that consisted entirely of everyday gestures. The members of the group interacted only with each other, never with the animals, and never with the audience. The shifting and confused crowd of onlookers were largely disregarded - eye contact between performer and audience was incidental, even accidental. Occasionally the dancers spoke to each other but it wasn't really possible to discern what they were saying, or even if what they were speaking was a made up language.

Within this terrain there were elements that seemed so natural that they were easy to overlook. The most obvious being that the performers were naked. To a seasoned punter nudity is de rigeuer, to be expected. However in this situation the placement of naked humans in an animal enclosure desexualised them, turning the performers into a crude cultural artefact. This played havoc with deeply entrenched notions of packageable entertainement housed in comfortable environs. 'Pro - Man Renaissance' not only subverted the tedium of spectacle that saturates performance across most media, it also reframed human beings as an endangered species to be ogled for entertainment and consumption.

This work was an outrageous social experiment. But polarising the ourageousness was the 'typical' New Zealand muted emotional response. I didn't see parents pulling their children away, rather most adults were either ignoring the performance outright, or just pretending to look at the animals in the enclosure. The strongest reactions were ones of faint embarrassment or discomfort as if some reality tv cameras were present. Which they weren't.

Call me cynical but I wasn't surprised by this. I was however deeply impressed with the multilayered audacity of the event. I had one question as I moved on to see the kiwi's in their little night house enclosure; if on the one hand a zoo is a place where humans view animals, and a 'zoo' is a metaphor for a place where chaos and unrestrained behaviour takes place; how can an audience remain so complacent or even just socially awkward in the face of imagery that is so spectacularly ironic, confronting, and profoundly questioning? Oh well, I soon lost track of that thought as soon as I saw the ocelots, my oh my they were just too adorable!

self entitlement: “yes ringmaster: dialoguing ghosting” with Alexa Wilson & Val smith- A Performance work by Sean Curham 'Ghosting 1-6 Part 2 Cabaret'

2011-02-26T18:35:00.000-08:00

Discussion of Sean Curham's work 'Ghosting: Cabaret part 2' at Gundry St, Auckland Feb-March 2011 by Val Smith and Alexa Wilson.

Yesterday
[Alexa Wilson]
10:39
yo
[Val Smith]
10:44
ok good
right so yep, ghosting hmmmmmm
[Alexa Wilson]
10:47
yes 'what does it all mean?' lol
it has to be a joke right? the whole work is a satire
ghosting.. cabaret: part 2. did you see part 1? was there a part 1?
[Val Smith]
10:48
i think i did, if it was the part with the ballet studio girls at kmc
[Alexa Wilson]
10:48
ok. right. tell me about that.
it felt like ghosting part 2 referenced older works so in a way was self consciously ghosting himself.. ?
[Val Smith]
10:50
ok so yeah it was the ballet girls maybe 5 of them and these young theatre peeps [i use peeps to mean both male and female young adults, urksome], cant remember their company name yet
oh yeah ghosting himself, makes sense, ghosting memories, concepts, images, ideas
[Alexa Wilson]
10:51
its hard not to see sean's work without seeing it as referencing or being contextualised by past works.. he has a real prolific and long history of experimentation within nz dance/art/performance art.
i see parts of it from older stuff- even classes. and the setting- gundry street.. he has been the caretaker of it for a long time. its like his home.. and a home to a community of dancers he encourages.. also experimental. the setting was instantly very community. its a hall. Its HIS hall.
[Val Smith]
10:52
yes the history and reference of is defs in there, i think the role of the technical helper as other performer, kind of onlooker but participant, is interesting [anna and josh]
[Alexa Wilson]
10:53
yes true- and he has trained in lighting.. he has been a lighting technician for many dance shows so knows that role- and also changed his own lights a lot. that whole NZ DIY style
[Val Smith]
10:53
community is something he is working with for sure, like expanding, including, but in an understated way,
DIY. love that style, his lighting stuff is totally awesome to me, noone is doing that biz, concept lighting, body lighting
[Alexa Wilson]
10:54
true. yep he's always very humble with that ay. an unsung hero! it seemed to me very defined - the tone - by the audience.. having watched it 3 times (to document it with video and photographs)..
[Val Smith]
10:55
those theatre dudes at kmc were giving cues, and feeding in stuff, doing actions, like a toast scene that kept reoccurring [plus mics, and scripts or instructions on paper]
[Alexa Wilson]
10:55
ghosting part 2 was bookings and 10 only allowed- but more sneaked in 2 nights i saw.. and sat in various awkward positions around the space in the way nzers do- even when encouraged to sit on the roller chairs with headphones in the space- to hear the sound... people tended to avoid being in the 'performance zone'. This is quite nz.
[Val Smith]
10:55
what do you think about his movement, what is happening in his mind/body, ? < his inner experience is exciting;, its intense, and mysterious – what the hell is happening for said performer right now?>
[Alexa Wilson]
10:56
oh funny. it was the kid version at kmc? this was the 'adult version'?
i'm interested in this because for a long time he has investigated the techniques of dance and abstract movement using his own somatic techniques.. i saw a reference to this. an ocd- autisticness... a repetition. repeating movement like he's autistic.. an obssessive compulsive disorder that dance has.
[Val Smith]
10:57
maybe, i think he wanted to work with the ballet , they were really interesting to watch, well not always, like they certainly are not a josh or an anna to watch , there is a level of uncomfort < teenagers, self conscious, a certain awkwardness – paradigms of sean/choreographer/teacher as authority present?>
[Alexa Wilson]
10:57
and counting over and over.. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 8 very funny.
oh that's interesting. Wow we are getting an overlay of threads of convo by using an internet chat for this.
[Val Smith]
10:58
perhaps something about precision, discipline, self violence, perhaps self violence seems most on for me
yeah
[Alexa Wilson]
10:58
the kids created discomfort as opposed to the 2 performers anna and josh supporting- sean's solo?
[Val Smith]
10:58
the concentration in his choices around movement material interests me, why he'd want to go there. [correction – mind movement, what he is thinking/feeling]
[Alexa Wilson]
10:59
yes the self violence of discipline and dance.. the inherent and unconscious way it controls in a pathological way,
i also saw a form of 'acting out'
[Val Smith]
10:59
like his mind has to concentrate in a certain way , his eyes pop out, its not relaxing to watch.
[Alexa Wilson]
11:00
performance art from 70s/80s used this term 'acting out'- although its a psychological one.. for kind of grotesquely embodying aspects of our culture to an extreme... drunk people do this - 'act out'. So do kids and crazy people.
[Val Smith]
11:00
I have to admit i just loved the moment of softening when he has the rabbit head on and the music, it gets evocative for that one moment, soothing and he like cuts it off, im like mmmmmm that was beautiful , and i want more.. [my taste is questionable here. i enjoy disruption and contradiction intellectually, my body enjoys relaxed and heartfelt consistency that plays out to the end, like a fairytale, complete, aaaaah ooooo- cynical?]
[Alexa Wilson]
11:00
so the 2 things went in opposition to each other.. of course- the controlled repetition.. turning into a pathological acting out of kind of madness.. with spit flying and his voice reaching pitches that were uncomfortable at times with people covering their ears. [edit- we are totally entitled to response to works in a multitude of ways and infact i prefer the tension that this kind of violence creates- also for my own work and the authentic responses complex and problematic that arise in said audience when viewing stuff in this way- naturally we like peace.. but i aim to energise and enliven with that stuff myself and having talked to sean it seems the same]
[Val Smith]
11:01
i liked the spit,
i liked the violence, i wanted it to go further, i wanted to feel unsafe, more uncomfortable
[Alexa Wilson]
11:02
yes - i loved the 'mean entitled bully' dance as well. i chose that one on the first night i went from the smorgasboard he gave the audience to choose from.. and each time i saw it it was powerful. it seems the most earnest one.
[Val Smith]
11:02
it does stand out
[Alexa Wilson]
11:03
he spoke about - and again referencing old work- his research in dunedin with walking dogs and the socio psychology of it..
[Val Smith]
11:03
the stories of karekare, so known to us, again soothing somehow, gentle,
[Alexa Wilson]
11:03
he spoke of walking his dog on kare kare beach- but
[Val Smith]
11:03
oh thats cool, i dont remember him talking about the dogs in dunedin
yeah i remember him talking about walking his dog at K.K. [clumsy and disturbing abbreviation of karekare] every friday night...?
[Alexa Wilson]
11:04
in a way that was very personal.. his personal relationship to the change of that beach... no his referencing his past research in dunedin for me- about how he talks to his dog- questioning that.. and while pointing to his laptop to show pics of the beach like a conference-
[Val Smith]
11:04
yes the personal, the story, getting to know him as person, the photos, in that space
[Alexa Wilson]
11:04
oh true.. yes. i love the mash up of waiter (he's wearing a suit).. conference, wedding or 21st – speeches.. in a hall- all kinda gone loopy.
[Val Smith]
11:05
oh the waiter, thats right, [censored] i liked the clean cut suit thing,
[Alexa Wilson]
11:05
but in it there is this beautiful self aware moment.. amidst the satire- and he spoke earnestly a lot in rambling ways for each work- also highly self aware naturally- but for this- how he likes this destabilising... and i spoke with him after about how being honest can be very unstable- i speak from personal experience in my own work. I'm not sure if this was his actual angle but that's how i took it to mean.
[Val Smith]
11:06
the implication of relationship to dancers , other performers, techies, is interesting
[Alexa Wilson]
11:06
and he said he 'comes from a long line of mean entitled bullies'..
[Val Smith]
11:06
desire to know them, but not given much about them [who are josh and anna in this context?]
[Alexa Wilson]
11:06
that when he gets upset or agitated his voice raises and that's where he goes.. [edit- yes who are anna and josh as characters? techies.. back up dancers?]
[Val Smith]
11:06
yes i was there the night his sister was there, you were too i guess
[Alexa Wilson]
11:06
yes- and that all ties in to this concept in a way- that whole - control thing..
yes- very personal... his family was there 2 nights i was there.. his dad too..
so he's speaking directly to and for them. pretty friggin cool.
[Val Smith]
11:07
hmmm yeah, oh wow his dad.
[Alexa]
11:07
coz that kind of acknowledgment for the artist in nz is very rare.
the inclusion of and reference to family in a respectful and healing way
[Val Smith]
11:08
sorry what kind of acknowledgment?
[Alexa]
11:08
so in a way HEALING the long line of mean entitled bullies.
acknowledgment from the artist of the role of their family
within their art
in their life
the dance after that in the rabbits mask- which he got a random audience to put on... was sensual and self satirical. i saw a lot of self-deprecation.
how did you read it on a gender level? i know you're really into that stuff at the moment.
[Val Smith]
11:10
i like that he acknowledges his 'weakness' and that it is being addressed [i like how you ‘shouted out’ HEALING, haha]
[Alexa Wilson]
11:10
yes- that's the destabilising eh.
[Val Smith]
11:11
i didnt have much response to his work regarding gendering. . [censored, getting too personal i reckon]
[Alexa Wilson]
11:12
i like how he spoke about what to do in that space between- in relation to the mean entitled bully section- the 'real world' and then making it into art.. what that is.. how to do it.. and then when it turns into a show- what that does to it. he's very interested in investigating these in between awkward spaces.. which is brave and cool as. Even if academicised.. actually within academia is probably harder in a way.
as with all the stuff we've addressed so far. oh that's interesting.. some of my non-dance friends presumed HE was gay. [afterthought- in this way where performers are often if not always hyper-sexualised- because they're so embodied..? unlike most people]
my friends saw him as fred astaire..
[Val Smith]
11:14
i dont get that from him, i [noticed a fleeting] fantasy of him as a transgender, female to male, with a lesbian partner, bahah [should i leave this out? it’s on the edge of ok-ness for me]
[Alexa Wilson]
11:14
it did embody a dance formality- a wedding and 21st speeches and hall- and drunken lunatic losing control vibe.. i loved the use of random objects from the hall- to leap around on totally inappropriately- like ive done at many a party in the wee hours with equally drunken friends 'acting out'.. totally ANTISOCIAL. [edit- yeah HEALING needs to be shouted in this day and age esp in contemporary arts practice... like HALLO LOL OMG]
[Val Smith]
11:15
oh thats cool, thing about how he might transmute the real into art ...
[Alexa Wilson]
11:15
and friggin hilarious. but even more hilarious in a way in this context.
yes.
i noticed him embodying- on the gender front a slight piss-take of the female sort clubby booty shaking... thing.
its funny coz i always have booty shaking in my own work.. in the past 5 years anyway.
[Val Smith]
11:16
yeah, but totally controlled, as opposed to the mess of drunkenness, he is very tidy in his choices [on reflection i don’t really get a ‘booty shaking’ thing here, more just a grooving to music thing, i guess i think of booty shaking as like hard out ‘asse and tits’ kind of flavour?]
[Alexa Wilson]
11:16
like with the dance matt around his head gyrating to MIA.. on the stool
[Val Smith]
11:17
yes you do. who's mia, was that the music? i want to talk about that piece,
matt and stool, [self censoring my toilet humour immaturity here] [gyrating as a deliberate side effect of pelvis and head and ribcage articulation?]
[Alexa Wilson]
11:17
yes a lot of it is incredibly controlled and well thought through- satirising aspects of the world- including youtube spectacle and absurdity through himself. His pop-cultural references feed into his life and the low keyness of his mad presentation smorgasboard of selves.
[Val Smith]
11:18
the matt around his head part taking us through a class activity was so nostalgic for me, i missed his teaching enormously in that moment, and my body remembered it [ autistically repeating ‘lovingly’], i loved it then and now, it is so healthy and i love the spinal aspect.
[Alexa Wilson]
11:18
i think its well developed coz- its his MA project- thesis project at AUT in spatial design.. its a clever decision to present it over the weeks each thursday too.. to spread the word
yes that song is by MIA - um.. frig- whats it called- that bang bang one i love.. and i remember doing phrases to that exact song years ago when he was still teaching dance class more formally.
[Val Smith]
11:19
i like that its happening spread out, its very down home, i will go again, hoping still to see more pieces not yet seen,
oh god, yes the piece with the youtube blog, bahaha, that was awesome,
[Alexa Wilson]
11:20
it was funny then too, kinda perverse. there's a perversity in his work... again an underbelly of repressed nz sexuality i rex
[Val Smith]
11:20
so funny, that he chose that, random, another insight to him, expanding, little glimpses into his random art practice, making connections...
[Alexa Wilson]
11:21
that piece- what was it? - him lip synching to this woman's youtube video talking about how this perfume of ... ? bad memory.. smelt like 'crotch'
and how embarrassed but compelled the girl was by this... on the video- with him dubbing himself over her text. everyone's perverse fascination with it, her with the crotch perfume, him with her and us with the performance of it all.
[Val Smith]
11:21
hmmmm, ok cool lets talk about the sex of it, yes, repressed, yes underlying, yes, perversity, fetish,
the taming of the stoool, woah cowboy, get down, tie up its legs, rodeo stylez, sexy, dunno about that, but there is sex, and bondage as always, i remember the perfect lie, was that what it was called, the bits in mouths, DOGS again... [shout out to dogs in general x x homer!]
[Alexa Wilson]
11:23
[oh yes homer! home dog] very funny scene. and so funny with anna and josh- moving tech stuff around so seriously to aid the 'show'... all the time.. of something so absurd. as sean sitting at a table on its side projected onto the table of this woman.. and even saying things like 'laugh'... really heightening this repressed sexual tension within the whole narcissism of it. the piece was called - something about 'teenage boy'- oh 'i feel like a teenage boy' that's right.. pretty weird sexual gender shit [edit-feeling self conscious bout my swearing here] .. going on there... and the youtube exposure.. all of it.
[Val Smith]
11:24
teenage intrigue in anything sexual
[Alexa Wilson]
11:25
so innocent was her sexuality and his not.. and also how she's leaving herself vulnerable to perverts all over the world- as youtube does. i make stuff 'unlisted' myself on youtube!
[Val Smith]
11:25
hmmm yeah i hadnt thought about that yet, i feel like a teenage boy, i guess he might have been going into the territory of what feels uncomfortable and seeing whats in there, projected idea
[Alexa Wilson]
11:25
yes bondage... i see what you mean in a way
cables and cords.. all over the place.. and this latent aggression- very passive aggressive nz style. Latent control and gender issues squealing out of nz... on many levels. [edit-i like your projected observation val... its a very interesting observation mate. desire is so much about projection and performance always reeks of it..]
[Val Smith]
11:26
how bout when he dropped the microphone
[Alexa Wilson]
11:26
it made a lot of the audience laugh this piece
[Val Smith]
11:26
oh they laughed at the teenage youtube one?
[Alexa Wilson]
11:27
again - and i saw it a few nights- so it varied in its emphasis according to what got chosen- but i saw this autism... with the mic.. lots of counting many many times.. and movements so repetitive.. ocd. dropping it like a kid or 'i just don't care'.
yes they laughed everytime. Other things were more just uncomfortable.
[Val Smith]
11:27
matt and stool was pretty intense on the floor, as a user of the space i noticed i was like woah go easy, thats a community asset, then laughed at myself
[Alexa Wilson]
11:27
i kind of saw this bogan guy in there as well- pogoing around...
but always the waiter - at your service as a platter of entertainment...
[Val Smith]
11:28
his kind of marching thing, on the spot, and homolateral movemvements, if it was that, he likes to work himself hard..
[Alexa Wilson]
11:29
who is the real one in control. having worked as a waitress bitch you ARE the one in control... and you are ON SHOW.. it is all for show. its all about presentation working in restaurants.
for everyone
[Val Smith]
11:30
yep titillation, as you become the object of fantasy/imagination, so you can become the image they want or not, plus controlling how much flirtation is allowed or engaged in
[Alexa Wilson]
11:30
yes and like a performer too, presenting body as something to be consumed, very much playing with titillation- he has an almost flirtatious eyeballing engagement with the audience...
very self conscious.. its like how to be sexy and on show time. I always feel awkward being served in a restaurant in a similar way to maybe how an audience feels looking at a performer.
i saw a lot of control stuff directly referenced in there eh, he spoke about this- with giving over the choices to the audience- which he struggled with- on the choices.. some believe sex is power. Geez how did we get to this? that's pretty 90s ay.
[Val Smith]
11:34
haha all good.
[Alexa Wilson]
11:34
he makes sophisticated choices about how exactly to satirise nz culture through his own experiences through a humour which underpins an indirectness nz has. a hiddeness.. about real agendas.
[Val Smith]
11:35
SHOW, the lights, pink, popping pink balloons,
yes, i can so relate to that, a hiddeness about real agendas, geez, i want to get out of that, it creates a kind of sickness a leaking of desires in twisted ways.. [probably makes good art subject i guess...]
[Alexa Wilson]
11:36
the whole elephant in the room- no one should speak of things.. how we can't stand up for ourselves or speak directly. therefore this passive aggressive bullying and acting out can occur- a tyranny.. which is antisocial and socially backward. i saw this repression in nz culture in many contexts- creatively, academically, politically, business board rooms, clubs, at the table, in the hall in formal community events... he was the ringmaster of this particular circus. it was clever and funny.. and brave too. [edit-good art- what's that even? everyone's opinions differ.. in mine 'good art' makes you conflicted in some way.. and enlivened in others]
Val is offline.11:37
Val is online.11:37
[Val Smith]
11:37
honesty is the only way it seems, i feel his showing all of that helps to expose it for healing i guess, but also because of the nature of art being in codes etc, it compounds it as well, heightening the problem, fetishised secrecy
Val is offline.11:38
Val is online.11:39
[Val Smith]
11:39
yes ringmaster. but playing the gentle welcomer and holder of space, it is most certainly brave but do you think that is something significant for him, he seems comfortable, or perhaps i just cant sense, oh he has anxiety, like performance anxiety, but does he have art anxiety?
[Alexa Wilson]
11:40
good point val about secrecy. [edit- also defs welcomer of space- he has a firmly placed heart in terms of people and community no doubt]. Of course he has anxiety- who doesn't? It seemed tough after a show where there were less people- made it more awkward. But yeah its easy to make brilliant stuff and it go off the radar in nz. its almost safer. and i feel it is important to document this kind of work- in writing, video and photos- which slips between artforms and genres in nz.. dance? art? ... we live in a very mainstream dance culture here.. and this kind of experimental stuff from my recent experience of europe- goes on big stages.. but here is hidden away..
and sean doesn't like a big fuss about his work.. he is humble and just does his shit. its admirable but i would love nz culture at large to be faced with this stuff. he says people have had bad responses to his aggression- like not getting the psychological choices made to expose this passive aggressive acting out pathology of nz culture... [edit- sounds like i'm dissing nz culture when it could be humanity at large but this is our particular breed of humanness]
[Val Smith]
11:41
god that is so true and so frustrating for me,
Val is offline.11:41
Val is online.11:42
[Val Smith]
11:42
this work is totally brilliant and exciting and hardly anyone will see oit or have a chance to understand how important it is,
oh interesting that he thinks about how people have had bad response to the aggression
to me this is the work that should be in the arts fest, damnit
[Alexa Wilson]
11:43
its been a BIG paradox/contradiction i have been struggling with since going to berlin. that our work is really unique coz it deals with nz context - and sits well in europe in some ways- formalistically (though i found germany more repressed than nz at the moment- and i got called a radical anarchist amidst this minimalist grip- off topic but not really) but then we are speaking to and about nz which is VERY IMPORTANT. it is a frustrating dilemma as nz does not give cudos to the true experimenters in nz dance..
only the tried and true. Experimentation gets absorbed into the dance world regardless however.. from those who do it. With little acknowledgment.
Val is offline.11:43
Val is online.11:44
[Val Smith]
11:44
i feel like i dont understand his work, and i want to, i feel like i want to talk to him about what he thinks regarding his work, it goes over my head
[Alexa Wilson]
11:44
really?
has that always been the case or more recently? since his academicising of his practice?
[Val Smith]
11:45
yeah, like i didnt get the violence thing til someone said something, i was like oh yeah,
Val is offline.11:46
Val is online.11:46
[Val Smith]
11:46
hmmmm, maybe the more complex works, like the sugar rabbits and branding one, which i loved so so much, gosh i guess i really love the perversity of it, always desiring it to go further.. [your thinking is complex sean, would love some format of your thinking on paper, i’d be really keen to read about that aspect of your work..]
[Alexa Wilson]
11:48
so he taps your desires? Hehe. his work should TOTALLY be in the main arts festival in nz- its more interesting than a lot of the international acts they bring from 10 or 15 years ago - like jerome bel- and current... he would be better off to take his work to international festivals where he would meet international response. europe is very academic in dance.. anyway- its a bit of a strayed discussion this.. but i guess it gives it a greater context. this is the first work he has presented since Bedrock- that you just mentioned 5 years ago. what a drought. its really really really hard to make experimental dance/perfromance in nz - and sustain it. its vital that nz keeps making and supporting experimental work as it pushes the art form and our world we live in in new directions. its exciting! experimental is 'normale' in europa damnit. but its the reality here and its not going away. its a small country. sean had has to sustain himself somehow and grow- and studying seems to have given him a lot of nourishment. A lot of support too. And interesting new directions.. [lost track of what is an edit and what was original here. am totally projecting my own frustrations and desires creatively onto his work. i do feel that i do have time & energy to consider sean's work in this way despite being very busy because its very important work for nz dance/art]
is there anything more you want to say?
[Val Smith]
11:50
yeah, ummmm, perhaps to add on any after thoughts would be fun, just as they come, whenever,
[Alexa Wilson]
11:50
its interesting to have a discussion about the work rather than review it blankly as- it is very complex and veiled.. so digging out and comparing is a cool process as a review.
[Val Smith]
yes, it seems to be that, this is a dialogue in my mind, i'm not trying to evaluate it [bullshit], though i do have subjective opinions, [disconnect]
Your chat message wasn't sent because Val is offline.
Val is online.11:59
Val is online.12:00
[Alexa Wilson]
12:00
woah you keep going offline babe. and coming back.
[Val Smith]
12:00
slow connection here.
ummmm, alexa and val were students of sean's in the chris jannides era 1998-2000, [unitec, dude]
[Alexa Wilson]
12:00
yes its a dialogue. [edit-It's pretty intimate- i'd like to acknowledge that about this community in general but especially this discussion- which maybe or maybe not reflects the work itself.. intimate and with our desire to read into the layers of veilment there as fans, former students and peers. Hopefully that's not too ghastly for Sean.]

[additional- This dialogue was conducted via facebook chat. It seemed appropriate to use new technologies and an informal dialogue between interested speakers about this unique work done in the moment in writing. The result is a fragmented, layered discussion. Please note that after thoughts and convo were continued for a few days.]

[i liked my/your self editing/contextualising comments - self diminishments, and justifications, nz self installed tall poppy ing, god i feel guilty calling myself tall, how sick is that NZ] [i also notice i take on a following role in the conversation, that facebook chat format happens at lightning speed for my usual slow and deliberate process. I think this chat would be very different if it was done as multiple back and forth email thing, i’d like to try that with a different performance with you perhaps..?] [choice, thanks alexa x.]

You can still see this work March 3rd, 17th and 24th at 7 Gundry st in the Old folks Association Hall, Newton, Auckland NZ.

Cat Ruka's opening to the Dudley Benson Show - By Val Smith

2011-01-14T15:03:00.000-08:00

(Val Smith is a New Zealand/US dance artist engaging with the fields of education, performance and research, her work interfacing with a sensation-based, creative practice. Her performance background is in contemporary dance, improvisation, feminist performance art, and political street theatre, since 1991).

I saw the final show at Oratia Settlers Hall on a warm Sunday evening (December 5th 2010).

We arrive by car from the city.
I am aware we are much closer to the Waitakere Ranges.
I can smell flowers and trees in the air.
As we walk across the road to the hall I become aware of birds calls, Ruru.
It feels really alive here in a very different way from where we have just come from.
This feeling of aliveness is also filling the hall as we enter to find seats.
People are excited in a quiet, sparkly-eyed kind of a way.
Having never seen Dudley live before I don’t really know that which is happening.
The hall slowly packs, and more chairs are pulled out to accommodate everyone.

Cat’s piece opens the show and is rendered like a kinesthetically communicated karanga. She stands as a solo artist on the small raised stage, but I easily sense all the other performers are with her, just not yet seen. Lit with DIY lighting, the space is all really old school colonial styles, all tea cups and dance halls. Calling across thresholds with precise and refined signals, becomings, and embodiments, Cat skillfully crafts the focus and quality of mind/spirit in the Settlers Hall.

The piece functions to set the tone and intention for the whole event, and in her role Cat perhaps functions as our spiritual host. I really enjoy the formality of this ritual along with the way Cat manages to also undermine the formality with an inspired approach to content. Perhaps I should give an example of what I might mean by this here, in case you didn’t see this work, but hmmm, nah, maybe you can just imagine what a dissident and transgressive ritual choreography might look like…

Body is dressed in a long simple off-white costume with a long black thick rope wound loosely around her neck, it is slowly cast off or birthed through, with slow weaving hands and arms, then, it just lay there evocatively draped across and around her feet. At some point, I cant quite remember when, Cat seats herself on this chair, knees spread wide in a strong position claiming spaces of all kinds, including sexual spaces, and its like, here I am, whatcha gonna do, but softer and more intricate than that. I drop into the liminal flow of images, engagements with audience, and all of the ancestral, modernity, and contemporary referencing.

There is a part where a stream of quick edits of breathing movements morph in quite a trippy way. I am struck by how easily Cat moves between embodiments of the feminine and masculine. In split second shifts she becomes a god, a warrior, then perhaps an ancestor, and long gone early modernist choreographers. All and more inhabit the choreography - ghosting characterisation. I really super love this part. She is pushing around binaries - I see the spiritual and physical, tapu and noa, and feminine and masculine realms being cleverly played.

Not only a maori invocation/ritual, this work also plays out as a protest piece. Owning ‘self’ as maori and a performance artist Cat opens up (and closes) emotional realms and fields of qualities through ways of being, through carrying her history and allowing us to see all of it. She somehow invokes and includes past, present, and future social and political paradigms, challenging all of our colonialist fuckups, and provoking ‘us’ (the implied us-ness of an audience, as visitors on the implied marae) to stand up and own our ‘selves’ as well. This is mostly all implied, so I’m not sure how to explain this with concrete descriptions.

There is a definite flavour of subversion to this work, (as there is in all of Cat’s artistic work to date), but in this case she is pointing partly at a lineage of modern dance and the interest in primitivism at the time, making movement references to that dance history through the lens of colonisation of the exotic body. Her statements are intriguing through their complexity and ambiguity. Notions of the spiritual are at once revered and questioned. It’s really intelligent, but also emotional. It’s like I’m not exactly sure what is happening but there is a sense of the mystique of ritual and quite rightly so I’m drawn into the magic of it and the artistry of how she is revealing the realm of spirituality and politics combined.

Cat has a strong sense of mana as a performer that is very moving. Through this particular performance she is making bold statements about gendering possibilities through incarnations of maori masculine and feminine symbols and movements which she unapologetically owns. There is a feeling of pushing boundaries around what is ‘ok’ to portray here, but she is totally confident in her decisions, so I feel like she is creating new ideological grounds that others can walk upon too. What she challenges she changes. I experience an empathic exchange of hope and courage whereby she is envisaging a future more tolerant of living diversity.

I bring diversity into the discussion deliberately here, because this performance is making statements about what it means to be maori, a woman, a dancer, and a performance artist. But beyond this Cat is also creating ideological space for the performance of Dudley and The Dawn Chorus and all of the implied statements of that segue into our experience as audience - that of witnessing living sexuality, sexual identity, queering, and genderqueering.

Cat’s performance opens a door for understanding and appreciating the significance of Dudley Benson as a living history of contemporary performance practice and self conceptualization. For me, Dudley embodies a lineage of fighting for the freedom to express a queered self acceptance in art. Whilst how he is in himself signals for me a time where we can more comfortably and visibly be who we are in performance and art, there is still a reminder of a history of violence against LGBTQ communities. The witnessing of Dudley and The Dawn Chorus doing their thing sheds light on meanings evoked by Cat’s work. There is a revealing of the subtleties of what she is communicating to us through contextualisation of what comes after her. I realize more of her gendering intentions after I ‘get’ the extent of what Dudley and his art practice represents.

This set is a collection of Dudley’s interpretations of waiata by the New Zealand composer Hirini Melbourne. They are folksongs that celebrate Aotearoa’s birdlife from Dudley’s new album Forest: Songs by Hirini Melbourne as well as songs from his debut album The Awakening. Dudley and The Dawn Chorus are sweet and concentrated, carrying us into a kind of quasi-religious state. We are reflective and transfixed by their delicate and articulate voice and song. I think Dudley might come from a church choir background, but whether he does or not, I am taken into a heightened space that sparks feelings that I associate with churchly experiences. Why is this worth a mention? Because Dudley is mixing queering with God, and that for me is such a very valuable actioning in these present times.

I know now the meaning of the sparkly eyed thing I saw in people as we entered the space tonight, Dudley is well loved. Its so interesting to me how I feel affirmed in my own queering identity by just witnessing Dudley’s presence in performance…but the strength of talent of his artistry along with the talents of Hopey One (beatbox) and the rest of The Dawn Chorus members is just so damn beautiful, I end up crying quietly throughout their set. Tears for injustices, tears of shame and pain, tears for loves, and loves lost and left. What I carry away from Cat’s performance and this event as a whole is a renewed hope and gratitude for the living and loving of queer and genderqueer artists working away all over the place dreaming and enacting new futures and worlds.

http://dudleybenson.com
http://catruka.com/

CINDERELLA - By Ann Liv Young. Reviewed by Cat Ruka

2010-09-05T19:07:00.000-07:00

As I enter the building an old naked man in womens’ make-up stands at the top of the stairs leading to the theatre. He is saggy and creviced, a confrontational image of everything about the body that society passionately seeks to avoid. I won't pretend that initially I am shocked and caught off guard by the honesty of this, but given the nature of the work I am about to see, I assume that he is part of the cast placed intentionally amongst audience members to help jolt us out of the normality of our lives - or perhaps for any other reason - maybe just for fun. I give the man a warm hello, which he receives gratefully and politely, and then I take my place in the long line for tickets. I soon see however that he is standing a few people behind me waiting in line to be ticketed just as I am. This not only reminds me that I am in New York, but also sets the tone for an event that has already, without even trying to, immediately confused the traditional boundary between audience and performer.

The venue that Naked Man and I are lining up outside of is Issue Project Room, located on the third floor of the Old American Can Factory in Gowanus, Brooklyn. It is a long white rectangular venue with no ‘stage’ area as such, meaning that the performance takes place amongst and with the audience. Upon entering the space, which has been decorated with huge bunches of balloons and blow-up animals, we all circle ourselves around an orange square in the middle of the room, which has on it, among other random objects, a laptop, some papers with notes on them, a microphone and stands, water bottles, food, and what seems like beads or gems scattered around. The style is colourful, kitschy and primitive, as though we have entered the earnest pages of a young girl’s scrap-book. There is a woman standing at the end of the room overly primped in a blue hooped princess dress, white gloves, thick garish make-up and a blonde wig topped off with a small sparkling tiara. Beside her are two male assistants in black suits, pink bow-ties and wigs, and a soundman in a bloody-stained blue lycra dress stands by the mixing desk near the middle. When everyone is in, the woman makes her grand entrance to the middle of the room on roller-skates, floating toward her fantasy.

The woman on wheels is none other than controversial, provocative and prolific New York based performance artist Ann Liv Young, a young woman who since graduating from Hollins University’s prestigious dance programme has fast become a leader in her field. At only 29 years of age Young has performed her distinctive works at some of the world’s most leading festivals and venues including P.S 1 Contemporary Art Center, Brooklyn Museum, The Kitchen, Dance Theater Workshop, P.S 122, Judson Church, Impulstanz, Tanz Im August, Springdance, and Laban Centre London, among others. Having only had the chance to follow the woman’s prowess via her online presence (which is quite extensive by the way), my anticipation is running high. What will I see tonight in this sickly-sweet room? Will I see boobies? Will I see people having sex? Will someone even try and have sex with me maybe?

Starring in Young's one-woman fairy tale reinterpretation is her own alter-ego “Sherry”, an aggressive and persuasive southern wildcat who in turn plays the character of Cinderella, a poor young maid whose parents are dead and whose evil step-sisters control her meaningless life. Essentially there are three women performing tonight, each one bouncing in and out of the aggressive and the demure, an interplay that manages to investigate female archetypes and stereotypes without boring you to death with serious feminism. The juxtaposition of a socially provocative character (Sherry) inside a strangely sweet and child-like veneer (Cinderella) is a subtly tense yet playful dynamic that among other things, enables the audience to maintain curiosity.

Existential ‘Dear Diary’ monologues that Cinderella softly recites into the microphone as she sits in front of her laptop provide a simple thread through the first part of the performance. These personal and almost shy offerings are spliced and contrasted with her trademark use of pop songs, which she leaves her computer to dance and rap/sing along to with conviction and a truthful attempt to get the words and pitch correct. Her two suited assistants in pink bow-ties and wigs provide flamboyant back-up dancing with flashing fame style moves. High kicks, turns, and pirouettes never looked so funny, must have been the wigs. A favourite moment is Young’s powerful and hilarious rendition of T.I’s Whatever You Like, which she manages to re-contextualize with a Riot Grrrl attack on the microphone.

It is a simple structure that unfolds. Young performs a song or monologue, and then addresses the audience with questions, after which she returns to her computer to recite a monologue again. It soon becomes apparent that it is not the actual singing and dancing and 'performing' that is the 'performance', but rather everything else that happens in-between it. She gets on the mic and asks us how we are, what we think of the performance, if we have any questions or comments. The young intellectual Brooklyn audience is keen to participate, giving responses that Young steers the show with by cleverly throwing it all back in our faces. The issue of relationships and being in love comes up at some point, which then becomes the over-arching theme of the rest of the discussion, paralleling the story of Cinderella. Young spots a man alone leaning against the wall, whose name is later revealed to be Jacob. She interrogates him about his relationship history, which he reveals to be almost non-existent. She proceeds to ask him very personal questions and the air becomes awkward and tense. She takes him outside to ask him further personal questions, which she then shares with the audience when they return. “Jacob hasn’t had sex since 2003" she says, embarassing him as anyone naturally would be in this situation, and it seems as though he is on the brink of tears, crushed like a young child who learns that their favourite storybook character is not real.

Young’s behaviour seems a little unfair to me at this point, and to me it is though she has crossed a certain line. I feel compassion for Jacob and a hint of resentment towards Young, a resentment that probably comes from the same place as the anger that has lead people to physically attack her in previous performances. I sit there petrified at the possibility that I may be the next victim of her terrifyingly direct questioning. But as the evening progresses, my resentment transforms into complete awe as I come to understand her embarrassing provocations as cleverly crafted acts of healing.

After performing another song, Young lifts her dress up, pulls down her stockings, and squats on top of a bowl announcing that she is going to poo into it (she also happens to be eating something at the same time I might add). She sits there pushing, asking us to look away whilst she performs this act, but then asking us to gather around closer to her, which she suggests might actually help her push the poo out as it proves difficult to do. Stage fright perhaps. She asks us for advice as to what might help her shit which, by the way, she innocently refers to as "doo doo." Someone hands her a cigarette, the soundman opens a coke for her to drink, a friend from the audience even gets up and sticks two fingers up her arsehole in an attempt to douche it out. Nothing works though, so we sit back down and she changes the subject.

What was supposed to be approximately a one hour performance turns into a 3 and a half hour ritual. It emerges as an open forum discussion, where Young in fact recognizes that people may receive her as a controlling protagonist that uses the misfortunes of other people to create entertainment. We sit on the floor huddled around her like primary school kids, listening intently to the mistress share her glittering story. She addresses Jacob again, who throughout the evening has become the star of the show in a way, perhaps identified by Young as someone who was looking for some help in the first place? Maybe not though, who knows. She actually ends up making out with him, and then after this, repeatedly asks him if he wants her to give him a blowjob, maybe to show him what he really wants, maybe to just do it. Ironically, Cinderella has found her prince, but it is she who saves him in this instance, a clever twist and maybe an accurate reflection of the power that women do actually have over men. There is no clear ending to the show and we are all finding it hard to leave, partly because as audience members we aren't given an obvious "THE END" cue which we are all so used to. The curtain to this fairytale never drops, and we are forced to enter back into the worlds we came from with a lingering sense of "FOREVER AND EVER." Young asks us, "Why haven't you all left yet?" And we all kind of look at each other with "Who the hell knows, I just can't!" expressions on our faces.

Just over 24 hours have past and I haven’t been able to get Ann Liv Young/Sherry/Cinderella - or the chain of events that she provided the conditions for - out of my head. To me she is a sharmanistic provocateur disguised behind the annoying aggressive feminist stereotype, perhaps a completely selfless act to come off as the bad guy whilst all the while undertaking the work of a modern-day spiritual doctor. Ann Liv Young can simultaneously create excrutiating discomfort, unusually profound enlightenment, humour and grief. Exposing people to their own potential, to their true identities and to what is stopping them, Ann Liv Young is an inspiration to those of us performers who want to transform our audience. Behind the candy-dipped facade of an old story she is simply seeking for honesty I think, in her own performance delivery and in her community, because if we are honest with ourselves, and are honest about ourselves in the presence of others, can we perhaps heal and let go of that which brings us misery and holds us back from our potential? I feel privileged to have witnessed Ann Liv Young’s idiosyncratic take on the fairytale of Cinderella, and to be making work and viewing dance at a time when she is around is, simply, inspiring.

And as for Naked Man, a personal thank you to you my friend for owning your body, your identity, and your true desires. May you shine on like the crazy diamond you are, and may you continue to lead the path for those of us who have become afraid.

MA SODA 'entry examination' UDK 2010 Writing exercise: Critique of another appilcant's solo: 'Flashdance' - By Alexa Wilson

2010-07-16T02:21:00.000-07:00

Q: 'What did you see? How did it work? What was its wider frame of reference? What critical feedback do you have?'

I saw Bulut from Serbia, a tall woman with big black hair in a skant black leotard, perform the beginning of the audition routine from the 1983 movie 'Flashdance' just as it was done in the film to its hit song 'What a Feeling'. She performed it complete with making a mistake and asking to begin again, which she did twice before continuing to deconstruct the notion of an audition, 'art' and contemporary dance conventions as they currently stand in Europe through a monologue which parodied dance and herself as a performer.

To me the irony of her deconstruction was that satirical dance deconstruction itself is now a well utilised convention within contemporary choreography, originated by Pina Bausch in the 1980s and the likes of Jerome Bell in the 1990s. Therefore I presume that she was self-consciously playing upon cliches as such references to 'Flashdance' and the trend towards 1980s retro being 'hip', which has usurped the western world for the past 10-15years.

This solo was clever within its own conceptual framework and well performed by Bulut, taking the audience on an initially cringeful journey of cliche through an enticing and skillful presentation of theatrical piss-takes of various conventions within post-modern dance, which became demonstrative. These consisted of referencing 'using intuition' like a sniffer dog, 'internally motivated movements' which were basically hip hop moves, intellectualising herself within an existential paradigm of 'reflections', being 'out of control' and being 'smart, but not too smart' as well as 'pretentious'. It was entertaining and a strong piece, evidence of a quixotic and sharp mind and clever wit.

The journey of descent that the work took was into a neurotic, narcissistic, self-referencing set of mock 'confessions' and the work ended with her dancing to another of 'Flashdance's songs 'Maniac' and tossing herself clumsily around on the floor with limbs landing heavily before sneaking off the stage and out of sight before the music ended.

I thought it was particularly clever in summarising what this audition process for the MA SODA course is, which is an experimental, intellectual European dance version of 'Flashdance'. She referenced not only this film's cult status to ironically 'express' the way that dance essentially can no longer because it is seemingly in the grips of serious intellectualism and physical minimalism, but to deconstruct the intensity of the conventional audition process itself, which is the part of this film that her dance referenced. This film is very 'hip' right now.

My main criticism of this work is along the lines of my current questioning about post-modern dance in general. Satire is now an institution within contemporary dance and so is speaking through an entire 'dance'. Dance has long since been the 'new theatre' in Europe. With all her skills, performance talents and well crafted ideas, perhaps Bulut could turn her attentions to deconstructing something beyond dance itself, such as any number of pressing issues in the world right now. This not only risks more personal exposure as an artist but contributes something to the world at a time when it is actually in crisis. It is also safe and no longer boundary pushing when something becomes a trend as it is afraid to actually say something which has genuine risk involved.

Deconstruction is very important to any art form in questioning power structures and humour can be powerful, but there are a few more interesting things that this performer could put these skills and talents to than entertaining the dance scene with self mockery. I also wonder, where to from here with self-referential deconstruction, which brings us to the surface? Does this actually unconsciously mirror the larger state of the world in not really knowing? In which case the post-modern theorists have won their case and a reflection of surfaces is all we now have- even inside such (self) bludgeoning artistic 'self-consciousness'.

By Alexa Wilson

Maybe Forever by Meg Stuart and Philip Gehmacher - Reviewed by Cat Ruka

2010-06-18T01:17:00.000-07:00

Irregular flashes of light across the stage reveal an electric guitar, speaker and mic-stand to the right. There is a sense of loss and abandonment here, instruments incomplete without their players. A half-round curve of heavy blue-grey curtains provides an unusually shaped backdrop, which as the flashing fades to darkness and the light ever so slowly grows again, is revealed to be a wry suggestion of an empty small-town cabaret lounge. The huge image of two dandelions being blown in the wind stretched wide in front of the curtains echoes the sense of romantic wishing that tends to linger in such an environment. Two figures are positioned centre-stage, sitting side by side on the carpeted floor with legs stretched out and backs to the audience. Slowly they recline in unison until lying submerged in their world, and as the man apprehensively stretches his arm out to grab the woman’s, their intimate interplay begins.

Awkward engagement and disengagement is at the core of this restless folding and unfolding duet. Man and woman dressed in every-day clothing roll and struggle across the floor, stopping every now and then for long periods, finding it difficult to make prolonged physical connection. The choreography has been given all the time and space it needs, allowing the work’s message to gradually and undetectably seep into the hearts of its audience like love-sickness. Penetrating insight into the nature of a steady declining relationship is delivered through the movement’s calculated clumsiness, which in its disregard of the balletic code provides an astonishing unpredictability.

The man and woman stirring uncomfortably in each other’s presence are Europe-based choreographers Meg Stuart and Philip Gehmacher. In 2007 the two came together in collaboration to create Maybe Forever, which has been touring the world ever since and is performed as part of the main performance program of the 10^th Indonesian Dance Festival in Jakarta. Although both very different in their approach to choreography, space and design, the two arrive at a complimentary meeting place that, unlike the disintegrating relationship they demonstrate, has proven to be a winning point of departure.

Stuart and Germacher are joined by Brussels-based singer/songwriter Niko Hafkenschield, whose shiny blue lounge jacket surreptitiously reinforces the tired pub-like environment. His sweetly melancholic series of love ballards infuse the dancing with a fragile and delicate darkness. Quite indie-blues and up-to-date in its retro character, Hafkenschield’s performance contextualizes the story of love in a contemporary setting, helping to transform age-old issues into radically progressive performance. With his soft and vulnerable lilting he is a modern day angel of sadness - honest and open, almost unbearably so, in that he demands us to be honest with ourselves.

Stuart performs two text-based solos in the work spliced with abstract gestural arm movements, each solo positioned at either end of the stage. The first she performs in a skirt and heels, both rather drab and forgettable in colour, the skirt at an awkward just-below-the-knee length. She also wears a restrictive dark leather or vinyl jacket, completing a rather incoherently assembled outfit. The loud squeaking and crunching of the jacket amplified by the microphone emphasizes the ongoing feeling of unease, of everything being not quite right. Interrupted by gestures and silences that drag her away from the microphone, her text is broken and incomplete. Right down to the very last detail, this work is a tour-de-force of struggle.

Gehmacher’s solo is performed in his signature style of timid apprehension towards space. Shoulders inelegantly reaching for the ears and gawky transfers of weight as he walks from one position to the next create an uncoordinated language of movement that speaks volumes for the uncoordinated relationship he is in. It is almost as though he is embarrassed, self-conscious of the fact that there are people watching him. He pulls back the curtains and reveals part of the backstage area. Stuart enters and together they perform a phrase of ‘almost-hugging’, difficultly manoeuvring around each other, he often failing to complete the touch. The cold black concrete of the theatre’s walls are exposed and so too is a cold and dying union.

The startling final act of the work plays out like a Lynchian memorial service, spooky enough to send shivers down my spine as I sit in disbelief. In a bright yellow shirt and black jacket and trousers, Gehmacher performs a final confession to the one he has lost – he moves abstractly around centre stage and as he does so, a recorded speech is laid over the top, the text broken up and slightly nonsensical. Without warning Stuart enters from the right in an intensely garish orange sequined dress, slinky and shimmering under the lights. We are caught off guard by this over-excited outfit, which after the previous dowdy and monotonous clothing makes a raucous and unsettling statement. She takes a seat next to the musician’s speaker. He enters and stands behind her as if to claim her as his. Almost menacingly she simply sits and watches, looking ridiculously fabulous and no longer Gehmacher’s who is now out of his depth in this uncomfortable situation. And with a painstakingly slow lighting fade, the image is crystallized.

After seeing Maybe Forever I dreamt that I was having a conversation with the woman an ex-boyfriend of mine is seeing. She was crying hysterically, trying to make sense of their crumbling connection, demanding that I give her insight whilst simultaneously refusing to accept any advice I offered. For some reason this was all taking place on the sports field at my old primary school, an aptly surreal continuation of Stuart and Gehmacher’s performance which somehow managed to bleed further into my consciousness than I had hoped. Obviously this work affected me profoundly and like the memories of failed relationships will continue to stay with me, maybe forever.

Contact Gonzo by Contact Gonzo - Reviewed by Cat Ruka

2010-06-18T01:10:00.001-07:00

Four young Japanese men casually enter onto the stage while the house lights are up. They are wearing t-shirts and track-pants and still have their performance passes on around their necks. One is carrying a backpack, others have water bottles, and there is a video camera on a tripod. They could well be mistaken as backstage helpers preparing the stage for the next act, but as they empty their pockets, place their objects on the ground and begin to warm up, it becomes clear that they are not ‘helpers’ at all.

For a few minutes the men pace around, lunging and stretching their arms out every now and then, not in a dancerly fashion but as though they are about to run a 100m sprint. They seem to be preparing themselves both physically and mentally, creating suspense and tension in their audience, who are all probably wondering what the heck is going on.

Eventually two of the men make contact, not in the sense of contact improvisation where physical connection is utilized to explore movement, but rather within a code of combat or struggle. They push and tussle, climbing on top of one another, every now and then dropping away to reposition and grab a drink of water or to take a photo on their disposable camera. Gradually the battling begins to escalate and without warning one of the men strikes another in the face, the sound of palm to skin cutting through the air and triggering surprised gasps of horror from the audience. This surprise is pushed even further as suddenly from behind a backlit cyclorama a drummer begins a wild improvisational solo. Crashing and banging and wildly attacking the drum-kit, a huge ominous shadow of this female performer showing her drum-kit who’s boss is an interesting backdrop to the male brawn on stage.

The every-day pedestrian paradigm coupled with the invitation to raw violence set up by these performers instils an immediate sense of unconventionality. Contact Gonzo take their name from the rebellious style of ‘Gonzo’ journalism made famous by American journalist Hunter S. Thompson. The exposing of what is normally hidden from an audience such as the warming up, the training clothes and the replenishing of oneself with a drink of water runs parallel to the raw and un-edited subjectivity of the Gonzo style of writing, in which grit is favoured over polish. Thompson would also document a lot of his own actions whilst he was immersed in journalistic projects, a reflexive technique also realized in Contact Gonzo’s use of video and stills cameras on stage.

As the men continue to grapple with each other, a cell-phone rings in the audience. As we know, the rules of theatre etiquette state that this is highly disrespectful and automatically garners negative reactions from audience members when it occurs. A group of people seated around the ringing cell-phone show their disgust with forceful shushing, which is then addressed by one of the performers who simply says to them, “No it’s okay. It’s okay.”

More violent slaps to the face are thrown from every which direction, more piles of bodies rise, tumble and loudly crash to the floor. A modern urban realization of traditional sumo-wrestlers at times, Contact Gonzo continue to battle away with themselves. And for what reason? Does it all just come off as highly charged testosterone gratuitously taking advantage of the theatre space to flex a bit of muscle? There is no emotional narrative here to suggest the reasons behind their fighting. They just are.

To me it is no surprise that this young team of performers are currently being invited to perform this work in festivals all over the world, which comes off more as an uncontrollable event rather than a finely-crafted performance piece. It is clear however that this group has a precise agenda, and their unique antics ensure that they stand out among the rest. Contact Gonzo is a highly innovative ‘dance’ company who unabashedly challenge the established norms of the theatre. Representative also of a contemporary consciousness in which violence and technology are implicit, I’m sure their work will act as an interesting reference point in critical dance discussions for years to come.

Darkness Poomba by Kim Jae Duk - Reviewed by Cat Ruka

2010-06-18T00:53:00.000-07:00

Two male dancers ignite Darkness Poomba with a duet performed under severe top-light. A fast and furious exchange of angularly choreographed movement, hands mechanically grasping for each other’s faces, and bodies regimented in a forward facing stance. Creating the illusion of a robotic pair of Siamese twins, the two young men are a fashionable modern day fruition of an ancient cog-like machine. Five dancers clad in chic black clothing sharply enter from the peripheries to join the machine and expand upon the gothic energy that has been created.

A spot is brought up on a man standing with a microphone in one of the aisles. Both the ears and eyes are immediately drawn to this powerful presence and we are captivated as the space swells with his voice – he is chanting the traditional South Korean Poomba, scattering sounds of desperation and yearning. Sound manipulation gives an echoing reverberation as if to suggest that we are all inside a cold and mysterious vault of some sort, liminally suspended between hallucination and reality. The performer displays extraordinary command over his dexterous instrument, and his sensitive commitment to the dancers on stage help them to devote themselves to the dark abrasiveness of this space.

Later in the work, a dance with metallic dinner trays between the two male dancers who opened the piece brings an oddly domestic sensibility to the abstract world that has been established. The device of sound is again utilized in this instance, as dinner trays become percussive instruments as well as hats and items of clothing. The chorus of dancers behind them acts as a strata of strange shadows that morph from one contained image to the next. All ensemble dancers solidly support this duet and other highlighted moments of the work with crisp articulation of movement and un-wavering performance energy. It is as though they are there to tease out the dark underbelly of this work with a quiet ferociousness.

The darkness of this rich work is both deeply set into the bones of its body and ironically woven into its surface. Even when the whole theatre is clapping and singing in delight as they would at a concert of their favourite musician, the haunting atmosphere never lets up. In fact it is in these moments of ‘light’ that the gothic undertone is somehow heightened, demonstrating a sophisticated approach to the creation of atmosphere. Funereal organs and regular pumps on the smoke machine provide a parody that is both easing and unsettling for its viewer participants.

As one of the ensemble dancers leaves the stage to join the vocalist in the aisle, we realize that it is choreographer Kim Jae Duk, maestro and master of this frighteningly ironic series of happenings. As he takes to the microphone to join in harmony with the vocalist, two men enter the stage from the wings and pick up red electric guitars at either ends of the stage. Before we know it the traditional lilt of the Poomba has become the waling power vocal of the rock concert, the guitars providing the metallic grit for this transition. All of a sudden we are waving and clapping our hands high in the air, having been transformed from formal theatre spectators to rock-stadium crowd.

In a return to the opening duet, the two dancers from the opening segment perform a gradually accelerating version of the robotic Siamese twin dance as they walk in procession down the aisle toward the stage. As it speeds up, this phrase cleverly functions as the peak of the work, causing a kind of ‘Mexican wave’ effect on the crowd, whose vocal eruption is evidence of the direct affect this work has had upon them. After the excitement has subsided, a gentle and virtuosic harmonica solo performed by choreographer Kim Jae Duk is a clever return to the opening eeriness. And as the creator lays his final delicate mark, the piece closes.

Not one sense is privileged over the other in this haunting re-contextualization of the traditional South Korean melody of Poomba. A truly interdisciplinary and multi-layered work, audience members are taken on a strange and unexpected voyage through the realms of contemporary dance, traditional song, stadium rock, and festival reggae music. Although such a journey may sound schizophrenic and disjunctive in nature, this collage of contexts and performance genres is executed seamlessly. Darkness Poomba is a work that manages to constantly transform our environment before we have even noticed, each world almost functioning as a sinister critique of the one that has come before.

Playing Savage

2010-04-17T18:04:00.000-07:00

Playing Savage A Dance / Solo Protest by Cat Ruka Friday 29th may Kenneth Myers Centre

At the outset let me make this clear; my role as mentor / advisor to Cat in the making of this work means that this is not so much a review as a personal endorsement. Written as a review. 'Playing Savage' was a solo work that I consider to be significant by dint of its astute conceptual clarity, and its wholesale trashing of cliche and catharsis. It was a powerful politically charged piece of performance art that transcended its makers artistic ego. Instead it succinctly foregrounded the performed image. Those images ultimately called the broader culture out on its own complacency. Yes that's right....us. Not the government, not the corporations, but us. Ruka touched on a fleshy hypersensitive collective unconscious that is lil ol New Zealand. And I felt it flinch. From Ruka's program notes - "Playing Savage is a performative ritual that attempts to re-organize, hyper - extend, and subvert some of the ideas, symbols and images that wahine Maori (Maori women) are perceived in relation to. " Gwynne's opening image was of a sexually aggressive seated figurine. Her face made up like a cartoonesque skull, torso naked save for a fake gold neck chain with a chunky dangling gold dollar sign, and a piupiu (traditional skirt). This was a brash and dense image to greet the already intensified crush of a predominantly white audience. It both set the tone for the work and set the barre for an extraordinary hybridisation of thefictitious and the realistic within each of the characters that emerged throughout the performance. This character made her way off the chair and moved on her knees emphasising femininity and precision within a spectrum of 'beautiful dance' postures. Intelligently though in placing herself low to the ground whilst making direct eye contact with her audience Ruka distorted status, simultaneously undermining herself and confronting the gathered crowd. This continual undermining/confrontation became a signature cycle making the uncomfortable images weirdly palatable. As her character began to eat her own hand in a self cannibalizing gesture to the hyper sexualisation of pop culture Ruka made her graphic vulnerability opaque. Taking the performance into a kind of 'solo as heroines journey' territory Ruka made physical pathways through the performative space via stations. Each station had its own objects. Each object with its subsequent discovery along the pathway carried its own dense narrative and triggered a transformation of Ruka's character. Although predictable as a device this was easily forgivable given the power and heft of her character images, and the content of the work itself. Images such as the washing off of her mask / make up with a sodden Tino Rangatiratanga flag, Or the self sellotaping of a plastic Maori girl doll to Ruka's mid riff which provoked odious connotations. For me though the most pleasurably jarring image was that of an intimidating leather jacketed (and patched) cigarette smoking solo mother wielding an over sized poi. It was in this character that Ruka made her naturally powerful presence shine through and spark up the warning lights on the dashboard. The music of Currer Bells (Angeline Churnside, Tim Coster) defragmented thus completed the design of this section. As this character swung her poi in a perpetual warning, the aggressive tone of the gesture was ultimately made futile by its repetition. An empty gesture brokering no mutual agreement as to its meaning, and garnering no sympathy it just died. Ruka's final image was defused by a slow lighting fade out during which a highly processed version of the John Key victory speech was played. Directly evocative of that moment in the last election when it seemed New Zealand had signed its own political suicide note. Jill Singer wrote in Sydney's Herald Sun "New Zealanders had voted for change...a leap from right to left - with all the enthusiasm and reasoning power of a doped slug." And our resolve was dissolved. Fade to black. Although this all may sound like essay on wholesale hopelessness I came away from the performance with a quiet optimism. This was borne out of the experience that I had just been witness to someone saying something important with depth, humour, skill, and from a deeply informed position.

Think Glitter

2010-03-18T15:51:00.000-07:00

Pro-Posing

Presented by Anna Bate in collaboration with Mariana Rinaldi and Kerryn Mc Murdo

Original sound by Sally Nicholas and Josh Tilsley

Basement, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland, NZ

March 18,19,20

7pm

Reviewed by Sarah Campus

Think glitter, think glitz, think woman as wrestler, as poser, as provocateur, as show pony and as pretty pom pom holder. Blend a streamer landscape with projected image of body builder body and serve it up with exposed stereotypes of restless driven male energy combined with cheerleading females as decorative adornments. In tinsel.

The inner insecure of the world of the 'professional' body-builder is revealed in all its tensile, gripping and somewhat grotesque glory in Anna Bate’s latest work ‘Pro-Posing’, performed at Basement Theatre. Contorted faces, trying to establish control and virility stare wildly at us in the opening scene, with shattered bundles of nerves projected out in eyes and fidgety, anxious body movement. Jerky, awkward, and confrontational positions serve us confusing messages about the validity of masculinity. The tense postulations in the bodies of Kerryn McMurdo, Maraina Rinaldi and choreographer Anna Bate set up a clear structure that guides us through a dance performance event of humour, intrigue, dominance and submission and a myriad of ways to use a conventional glittery pom pom streamer.

In their various 'pro-posed states' of embodied traditional and typical male body-building stances, the women stand as signifiers of a culture which hides in it's protagonists the fear of being seen - to be weak, to be emasculated, to be fearful of one’s opponent. Anna cleverly disguises the threats to one another and to audience 'taking this all too seriously' by featuring the 'cheerleaders pom pom' as a primary device to invoke humour, sensitive treatment of space, and some quirky movement vocabulary devised in a defined series of 'entrapments' for the body. The dexterity in which this unique movement is performed is a characteristic feature of Anna's work and sits well in contrast to the performative 'scenes' she creates in quick succession, giving us the overall impression of a narrative of deconstructed masculinity and a breaking of codes that ‘men only’ can embody this type of representation in satire or genuine embodiment.

Costuming for the piece is simple, and evocative of mood, character and thematic change. The performers seamlessly pursue changes of costume as the scenes develop, and the integration of costume and props into the work is a key feature of the work and delightful to watch.

Pro-posing climaxes in a hilarious 'superstars of wrestling' tussle, in which Anna and Kerryn 'enact' a very skilful and believable 'fight in the ring' - complete with grunts, over the shoulder holds, and slam dunks in to the ground, while Mariana referees the action. Even though a 'victor' emerges, the overall sense we have as audience is one of sadness, and alertness to the dubious quality of masculinity as an aggressive force in the ring. Here, people are dominated but no one really wins. Instead, girls in nude body suits and bright purple pom pom streamers circumnavigate the winning protagonist with a fluid and free, flirty dance which downsizes the impact of the virile wish of the winner.

Dance highlights include a fantastic slapping, circular cardigan dance by Mariana and Kerryn. Through their direct impact with the floor in whipping motions, the two women convey the frustration, superficiality and weakness of the wrestling stereotype and its futility by exacerbating masculine competitiveness and aggression amidst the environment of male one-up manship.

Instead, vulnerabilities and insecurities are exposed, captured in the bodies of female dancers who do a stellar job in embodying the body positions and feeling tone of the hyper-active and hyper-driven testosterone body. The eyes of the women consistently reveal and reflect a moving language of emotional nuance. Coupled with the female display of cheerleading formations and pom pom flurries (sacrine sweet faces included), the performers create a surreal and off-edge world, where the performers appear to be both teetering upon and playing with images that plague and are upheld as 'strong', 'weak', 'beautiful', 'sexy', and 'stripped bare' in a competitive sports culture and in the politics of sexuality.

Fragmented, fidgety and decomposed movement expresses the internal world of the broken wrestler and combine with low level lunges and unusual anatomical placements of those beautiful glittery streamers that made my eyes go all starry amongst the strategically placed lighting. The soundscape by Sally Nicholas and Josh Tilsley oozes a sense of strained inner tension, folding into delicate and super sensitive moments of quiet and reflective commentary in feminine focus as pom pom becomes adornment, ornament, and bunny tail.

I won't give away the power of the fantastic final image and character. Suffice to say, expect a shimmering monster like you’ve never seen before.

Pom pom power to you sisters.

Dance in Berlin/Europe vs Dance in New Zealand

2010-02-18T05:35:00.000-08:00

It is difficult to generalise or even distinguish what is 'Berlin' dance as the way that European dance works in general is very intercultural and international, caused by such close borders and an increasing globalisation of the arts market. This breaks down boundaries between cultures and nations, where they call themselves the EU with now only one currency. Berlin is a very poor but creative city, recovering from the cultural and financial integration of East and West Germany 20 years ago when the wall came down. Dancers and choreographers need to travel outside Berlin to survive, providing they can actually even get into the scene.

New Zealand, on the other hand is a small and remote 'paradise island' in the south pacific which has a cross-cultural milieu symptomatic of being colonised and residing in the Asia Pacific region. As a 'nation' it is no older than 200 years and most of its problems centre around race/cultural relations, environmentalism, land ownership (privately and commercially- who actually even owns NZ?) and identity.

Much like NZ, dance in Europe is governed by festivals and funding, but work tours across Europe not just within one country. It is a global network. There is however a divide between the local scene which is poorer and the internationally touring scene. I have been to 2 festivals in Berlin, 'In Transit' in July and 'Tanz im August' and attended one in Vienna, 'Impuls Tanz'. I have also attended independent shows which are largely governed by venues around Berlin- Hau, Sophiensaele, Radial System, Podewil, Doc 11, Tanz Fabrik.

The first noticable difference between dance presented in Berlin/Europe and that in NZ mid 2009 is that in Europe as a whole the attachment to modernist dance form is long gone. Progressiveness, experimentation, deconstruction, theatricality, irony, interdisciplinarity, performativity, concept; these are being explored across all levels, from the canon choreographers Meg Stuart and Sasha Waltz down to independent emerging choreographers in the experimental venues of Berlin. Even from the simplistic but very ironic older female deconstruction of 'womanness' in Mathilde Monnier and La Ribot's 'Gustavia' during 'In Transit' to the lively, culturally and theatrically overabundant collaboration with Turkish youths of Neukölln, Berlin work of Constanza Macras' 'Hell on Earth'- traditional dance form is in the dust.

Compare this with NZ dance. While Michael Parmenter and Black Grace have made attempts to move in conceptual and cross-disciplinary directions in the last year, as the most well supported practitioners of dance in NZ, their work is still form based. Anyone who has worked for them and is making work also tends to still explore technique and traditional contemporary dance form choreographically. Even Douglas Wright's work, which is more conceptually and emotionally adjacent to the work in Europe is also very virtuosic compared with most of the work here.

However, the more FRINGE work being explored in NZ is like what most of the work in Europe and Berlin is exploring currently. Everyone in Europe is trying something different, looking to find the next new thing. They're knawing at the confines of dance to discover new ways of expressing, exploring and communicating via the moving body, interdisciplinary performativity, somatic investigation and improvisation. There is of course also a lot of derivative, passe work as well, which I have seen.

There are many things at play and conflicting in both dance cultures. While I have seen works of scale here, especially at 'Impuls Tanz', apart from Wim Vandekeybus' electric and athletically organic recent work, "nieuwZwart" (new black)", where the dancers almost broke their bones to achieve virtuosic beauty- mostly naked- and Jan Fabre's very provocative and theatrical 'Orgy of Intolerance,' where a man put a rifle up in his anus and many people masturbated on stage, I have not seen the kind of edge that there can be in some NZ works. There is an open mindedness in European dance, a sense of 'anything goes', and 'we will do and try anything', but it is often detached, often cold. There is a lot of nudity on stage, but it doesn't seem to reflect any genuine sense of power or vulnerability, apart from some rare exceptions.

Whereas there is a sense in NZ of open heartedness or atleast choreographers exploring the depth of their own interests because they want to, scrutinising their own identity and personal politics within the wider world. I think that this takes more risk and is more connected to or grounded in a purpose beyond dance as either an entertainment form or platform to distinguishedly and elitistly present 'avant guarde art'. All this makes me question- where is dance going?

And while NZ dance may have the liberty to explore its own curiosities far from any real pressure to be the next best thing across the world (and very few NZ choreographers get the inroad to present their work in Europe) it suffers from having little input form-wise. The ideas explored in works in Berlin and Europe may not be original and deconstruction and irony is really old news here, but this has forced them back into investigating the truth of the body. They're all about deconstructing what movement and presence really is. Hence there is a lot of state based work.

Benoit Lacambre whom I did a workshop with and who performed at 'Impuls Tanz' and 'Tanz im August', a leader in somatic improvisation, creates an electric and alive performativity from his investigations, a dynamic exploration of dance which is totally embodied and very intense, if not violent. It is about presence.

The use of text is massive in Europe, and In Berlin I attended a free work in progress by Ezster Salaman during 'Tanz im August'. She was taking text to the next level, working on a solo with Christina Rizzo which explored liminal spaces in text- that was halfway language- grunting, half singing, hysterical, throwaway, and gesture which naturally came with it inside a range of constantly shifting states. It reminded me a little of the work of Brent Harris in NZ but it was female. This work had no dance in it and was the most surprising thing I have seen yet. I saw another performance art influenced dance work in a small gallery called Okidoki in Neukölln in which a woman, Biljana Bosnjakowich, lay on the floor and invited people to sit around her as she linked and unlinked their hands across her naked body, which was in a circle grid like Leonardo Da Vinci's image of man's measured body, also measuring their faces with her own hands. Layering (of states), gentleness and subtlety is on the rise. But then violence is also ever present still in larger works, along with some explorations of 'failure' on stage.

They have it all here, and are unashamed. But heart, it seems, is ever veiled. This is not surprising as they've seen much hardship here in the past 100 years alone. Perhaps it makes the work more complex, along with of course a well fuelled history of intellectual discourse. This has its strengths and weaknesses, just as being isolated and open hearted in the pacific also does. These are all generalisations of course and there are many exceptions which I hope are embedded in this text. I get the sense that there is a lot of a ingenuine posturing on stage across the world, after all it IS performance. As soon as something becomes a trend too in my opinion, it has lost its authenticity. Whether you think authenticity is important is completely subjective of course.

As I have said, the Fringe dance culture in NZ more accurately parallels what is happening here in Berlin and Europe, which I already knew before I left NZ. I believe NZ dance is a well kept secret in some ways, unable to penetrate the international scene due to isolation and finances. Some people in NZ are making new dance, but it is not necessarily always supported so much by institutions. There are many paradoxes, but NZ and Europe are very different, if not opposite, places socio-culturally, both still pushing the artform of contemporary dance in interesting ways compared with many other places in the world.

Article by Alexa Wilson.

Picture of 'Polar Pop' - collaboration between Alexa Wilson and Tallulah Holly-Massey (photo by Elsa Thorp), Berlin 2009 and 'Bodies in Urban Spaces' by Willi Dorner (photo by Alexa Wilson) for 'Tanz im August' 09- which had NZ dancer Solomon Holly-Massey in it.

Do Animals Cry? By Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods (Volksbühne Berlin)

2009-11-23T10:37:00.001-08:00

I have long wanted to see Meg Stuart's work, having only read about it online from NZ and knowing it would be a combination of state-based improvisational strategies for emotional expression as well as powerful and transformative social commentary. Concerned that my expectations would be too high, the work 'Do animals cry?' fully exceeded my expectations of being the finest european dance theatre of the day.

So dance has long since been the 'new theatre' in Europe. What Artaud coined a 'theatre of cruelty' long ago has found itself institutionalised inside Meg Stuart's dance theatre, which is a theatre of explosive and evocative imagery rather than words. It is a theatre of the body and of all politics surrounding the body, beginning here in this work with the institution of the family, which is also inclusive of human beings as a wider family. It is a commentary on humans as animals who are at once social, communal, dysfunctional, incestuous, always prone to power play inside desire to possess rather than love. A family which can never part, but cannot quite love each other either.

Although the cast is very european dance theatre in its cross-cultural make-up, ranging from american, japanese and german to english/polish the flavour is distinctly american, which is what Meg Stuart is. 'Dysfunctional family' is not original as a concept and U.S independent film does it best. Turning tragedy into alchemic comedy and spitting it back out into tragedy again just to churn the emotions of the viewer. Stuart does this without a story or even many words, as the most poignant aspects of social dysfuntion can be evoked by body language alone.

The work is over 2 hours long. While this may seem long to most, it is bursting at the seams with a crafted mastery of contact duets, trios and solos, which while most would not call 'dance' in the traditional sense, embody an incredible fragmented subtlety and charged schizophrenic tension inherent in the conflicted family member's relationship to family.

Hat's off to both the performers and the choreographer, who together make room for each dancer to explode on stage while heightening their oppression, by feeling what they need to feel in order to deliver such authentic performances, which few productions can muster. Genuine feeling and individuality on stage is a rarity in dance performance created by one choreographer's vision and shows extreme skill to be able to create access to and harness such depth in performers.

The set by Doris Dziersk is larger than life to be expected, a large tunnel of branches, which acts as an off stage and also sometimes lit inside as a vehicle for transformation, semi-circles a dog house and a kitchen table. At the front of the stage is a drum kit. All action erupts from or evades these objects in their symbolic significance. The music by Hahn Rowe is uniquely folky. Rarely overpowering (except for one solo by a rubbery dancer breaking out totally OTT club styles and a crazy woman's drumming) it goes with the all american set- half country, have dreamy, half film epic and accentuates the journey which is half satire, but mostly serious.

While each inventive vignette often builds in tension either in violence, teasing or power struggles there is much rejection and abandonment, with many characters being left uncomforted, doing something anti-social alone while the other's continue socialising. And while there is much expression of individuality via powerfully electric solos of sinuous articulation or state changes which are beautifully grotesque in their pleasure at their own subversiveness, there is plenty of return to sitting bound to each other in silence. There are many long uncomfortable silences, hence the 2 hours. The family/community tolerates each other even if they do not really function together as a unit. There are a lot of attempts to speak turned grotesque by intense stuttering or repetition, which is powerful as well as humorous.

With words stripped out, attention is drawn to the group behaviour as if it is an animal documentary, mostly subtle but sometimes made more obvious when exaggerated- like with the return of one of the family- the excitement of all is half dog-like. Many references are made to dogs, with most of the characters ending up in the set's dog house at some point. They toss sticks to each other and seeing as dogs are loyal, the sticks are of course returned.

Gender relations are subtly corroded. Role reversal sees a strident woman try to actively seduce her inactive boyfriend before being nearly seduced by a more interested male party. However the boyfriend who gets between them seduces the male, leaving the female dejected. Always sexually charged, the work explores the complex dynamics of human power relations, often with the result of emptiness, complacency or lonliness. Only once is someone actually comforted in their pain. No genuine love seems to exist, hence the isolation. The impotent or emasculated patriarch, who never seems to get a solo but is teased and never really respected has a very telling presence in this role. The individual pain of all the strong performers and their alchemical attempts to break free of oppression is strongly felt.

The only person unaffected by the torment seems to be the character who has left the family and come back (Alexander Jenkins). He is the most empowered, calmly and vibrantly filling the stage with hope. His presence seems to tranform the entire stage.

What is so moving and amazing about this work is the simultaneous complexity and simplicity of it. The concept is simple and the intricacy of craft is brilliant, with inventive and playful layers ephemerally shifting in and out of each other, whether they're humorous or confronting. Each performer is inside their body in truthful ways, sometimes subtle, sometimes violent, always powerful and ever more truthful as the work goes on. What is transformative about it is the honesty of the work and the commitment of the performers. I imagine this as testament to a choreographer with a lot of integrity and compassion.I find these qualities quite rare in larger works as a whole. I've also discovered via this work that integrity is more important than the quest for originality. Infact integrity makes originality.

By Alexa Wilson

This is an old review but I just found it in a folder and I think its chur as so its going up! Written by Alexa Wilson

2009-10-29T14:28:00.000-07:00

‘Terces Ym’ – Performance Improvisation

Graduation MCPA Performance by Sarah Gavina Campus

Danced by Sarah and Val Smith

November 5 & 6, 2008

TAPAC Auckland

A calm opening in the darkness. Two women are present. At ease, open and powerful within darkness and light as if they are one. A depth created in space and body which makes performers and audience alike seem as if they are together in the deep ocean in its depth and calm- both emotionally and spiritually. The way the light cuts through deep ocean/space creating an ephemerality and a clarity, the two performers engage with their presence, each other and the environment. I am mesmerised. There is both stillness and expanse as the two move with such poise, awareness and synchronicity one would or could think this dance is 'choreographed'. Of course, we know, it is. In the same way that life unfolds and tells us its many stories in one long, manifold constant.

The beauty of liminal improvisational performance is that it not only opens and heightens spaces and transitions and transforms strong imagery also evoked in the viewer as a liminal exchange, but it fuses or morphs imagery and experience together between them in one constant exchange and endless transformation. This was my primary experience of the performance.

As the space/body work opened, I began a 'reading'- perhaps defined by these black, androgynous military costumes clothing that had such inherent female power, beauty and intelligence floating in deep space and time. I saw a connection to World War II and the trails of this left in our generations blood/DNA make up, coupled with Italian (traditional/folk) song and knowing Sarah's genealogy of Italian/Sardegnan family history. I was aware that this was my own projection and I was seeing or 'making of' the improvisation what I wanted, but this very European experience of survival during war and horrific disconnection from celebration of humanity which brought such suffering (perhaps a reason for immigration to nz?) was at once sitting inside the grief of this past and healing it at the same time. I saw also the reclamation of a long line of female magicians, healers, shamans, and witches healing this history together. This was in the beginning of the performance and an example of the imagery, which arose and was evoked in me.

There was such a depth of presence and sensitivity within both performers Sarah and Val, - such a deep knowing and trust available to them that each movement, gesture, moment of contact or solo moment was embued with extreme awareness and care. While there was the power of pain transformed in small and large stories through transitioning moments in both audience and performer, the liminal space created an extremely focused, vulnerable and powerful sense of love and safety. Things were looked after and cared for in this world created by the performers.

Retreat into darkness was as profound, loving and artful as a reach of the hand into a small square of light. There was no judgement here, only being, being in self, with other, powerful and generous. The skilfulness of this form of improvisation is so captivating because while both the performers in this work were extremely internally aware and intuitive they were also as externally aware and giving of themselves and the audience. This is SUCH a rare quality in ordinary dance. While it is fleeting in other 'choreographic' or 'improvisational' work it was continuous throughout this performance which for me was a testament to the mastery of their improvisational craft and bond together as performers and people. They created a space for new voices and experiences to be felt, heard and seen. This was done through total clarity and presence within the ether.

This was my overall experience of this absorbing, powerful and moving performance.

Prodigious Pilot

2009-10-21T13:36:00.000-07:00

Yours Truly Productions present Prodigious Pilot
Transmission Room

By Georgie Goater

In the heart of high-rise Auckland city, an emerging group in an underground venue take on popular culture through contemporary dance. Indie/pop music (Lady GAGA, Lady Hawk, Lilly Allen, Gwen Stefani… and more) runs until we are casually ushered to the cabaret-seated dungeon facing the stage. Banana lollies in trendy vintage teacups and bowels of fruit are on offer throughout the space. In front of the stage to the right, stand racks of hanging clothes, to the left a mock band of instruments – a drum kit (tagged “The Peelers”), keyboard and 2 guitars made out of cardboard and tinfoil; evoking a memory of the knitted aesthetic in Stereogram’s video “Walkie Talkie Man”.

Out of the darkness lurks the first performer who takes their place on stage (perhaps the lead band member of “The Peelers”) - a 2-imensional life-size Banana head man, who proceeds to execute a lateral two step dance to the beat of the music, building to a climactic boogie. A gimmick false start to the show along with a voice-over announcement introducing Prodigious Pilot, sets a tone of the ironic mockery of pop hype.

Six young women explode into the space with a sassy synchronised dance routine, of which the integrity is carried through a collective interpretation of the popstars personas, and each performer’s own expression of their ‘bedroom mirror’ alter-egos. This chorus of Cool Bananas complete with uniform yellow printed t-shirts and yellow sneakers is the recurring theme and structure that frames the series of dance vignettes in the show, through theatrical scenarios and leg air-guitar dancing. Overtly characterised and throw-away in performance, yet effortlessly united and succinct to the musical beats, these individuals dance well together.

A stylised Egyptian duet between a male and female is slick, fast and tight, displaying pleasurable moments of unison and partnering movement supported by the dynamic base-heavy track by Santigold.

With the choreographer herself as the bride in between murdering bride’s maids, a soap opera inspired scenario of dance unfolds. Detailed, fast and intricate movement expresses the build up of internal angst, beautifully executed by this technical trio. A deconstructed sound score of dramatic organ sound bites, is the only break in the show from popular music – in all a sophisticated highlight in the show.

An improvised dance to Joy Division has a solitude woman staunchly enter the space and bounce on and off beat across the concrete floor like an awkward lone rocker at a concert. An honest performance, as the dancer naturally progresses through the build up in the movement and melts into a grin; this is a delight to watch.

Melancholic Moby and Iron & Wine play musical access in a private friendship heart to heart duet. Helping each other into long dresses, the weighted dancers come off the floor into a soft dance of freedom.

A final solo dance to Billy Idol’s hit track “Dancing with Myself” triggers the return of the Cool Bananas, in a chorus frenzy of high legs, quick turns, swooping arms and the repeated gesture and sound of eating (bananas). The dancers charge around the space through the audience and up on to chairs chanting “go bananas” infusing the audience a with sensory banana overload.

Yours Truly Productions has bravely taken on pop music as their access to self-expressive choreography, despite the challenging nature of predisposed associations other popular art forms can present when making dance. The punchy, catchy dancing always matches the level of hype and interest of the pops songs and is never outweighed – a challenge I believe these girls achieved with their innovative dance moves. The banana as the symbol of pop eventually exhausts the show without development from its original introduction – a journey is missing with this idea. I am left wanting more, but with less banana.

Sacred Blend Satisfies

2009-10-12T17:55:00.000-07:00

Sacred Dance Tempo 09
Collection of works
4,5 & 6 October
TAPAC, Auckland

Review by Sarah Gavina Campus

So what’s sacred about our dance here in Aotearoa? I went along to immerse myself in a programme designed to initiate a shift in consciousness.

This year’s Sacred Dance programme offered an eclectic mix of physical and metaphysical dance that traversed through emotional and environmental landscapes in search of expansion and expression.

First up was Dee Landon’s work ‘Persephone’, performed by Sassy Niven. Niven dances in homage to the Greek fertility myth of Demeter and Persephone’s journey to the Underworld. Resplendent in pink and white, Niven exemplified the Isadora Duncan style of dance – free flow, bare foot, expressly feminine.

Sassy did a great job in emotionally exposing the tale, particularly and clearly through her facial expression. Gestural movements and a flattering draped pink and white costume spoke of delicate flowers, earthly abundance and added an archetypal female signature to the piece. Invocation in arms and footwork deftly wove wave like patterns emphasising circles and arcs, continuity and female cycles of birth, growth, renewal and change. Niven dances with assurity and definition, reflecting the tradition of Isadora with a clear sense of timing and rhythmic and lyrical flow.

Jumps were precise and a welcome counterpoint to her floorwork. My sense was that Landon attempted to portray both characters of Demeter and Perspehone, speaking through the dancer’s body their relationship to the underworld and eachother. Two performers may have been a more fitting choice in order to clarify the theatrical dynamics of this ancient myth. Sassy performed both roles with commitment and an awareness of the shifts in state needed to profile each character.

Next up was Jennifer De Leon, in a brave and self-reflexive piece of work entitled ‘The Light Came Through The Window’ (2008), exploring her total dedication to dance following major hip surgery. Revival, resurgence and regeneration emerged as primary feeling tones, as did portrayal of plummeting sorrow, grieving and loss that physical injury can have on a dancer’s career and passion.

Jenny danced with conviction and fortitude, opening her vulnerable self to the audience. She combines her history in modern and balletic dance with contemporary sensitivity to the space around her, softening her body at times to yield to forces of gravity and momentum.

The exposure of Jenny’s open chest to the sky added another heart felt depth and sense of intimacy to the work. Falling and spinning into the backspace combined with strong limb extension provided dynamic balance and showed Jenny’s willingness to embrace current contemporary movement genres. A repeated series of rond de jambes appeared to reference the location of her injury; evocative of the ordeal her body has experienced.

Music by Leonard Cohen was the perfect sonic accompaniment to support themes of sombre loss, purposelessness turning to purposeful, the rekindling and picking up pieces of broken anatomy, and an uncompromising ferocity to stand tall in the face of adversity.

A free standing split leg balance displayed De Leon’s physical skill and ability to control her form. Her prowess as performer and technician emerged strongly, and I encourage her to continue to find stability in her work, both physically and in live performance. Jenny appeared to be breaking some of her own habits in dance by committing her body to move in a ruthless and tender pursuit of her own journey.

Monisha Kumar presented ‘Natraj Dance’, a potent mix of polarity in response to the deity Lord Shiva. Kumar cuts a stunning figure of Indian graciousness, speed, charm and precision. She energises a direct line to her audience, which captivates our hearts. Monisha communicates to each audience member, allowing us to witness her passion and commitment to her sacred dance.

This dance revered Lord Shiva through a series of continuously morphing and fluid images that explored ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ aspects. Movements alternated between articulate traditional finger, head, arm and foot patterns more evocative of a feminine essence in classical Indian dance, to explosive and dynamic whole body expressions that propelled her directly and speedily through space and with ‘masculine’ energy and force in limbs, eyes and torso. This provided a real winning combination for the viewer. An extended sequence of ‘on the spot’ turns displayed Monisha’s ability and expertise in this dance form.

Musicality comes naturally to Monisha, evident in the marrying of her superb footwork with the beats of both traditional contemporary rhythms and contemporary music which accompanied the change of states from ‘feminine’ to ‘masculine’.

I delight in watching Monisha dazzle with costume and a face that so expressively lights up the space around her. She appears effortless in her ability to hold contradictory rhythms in her body with animated power and one pointed focus and attention to detail, whilst dancing with such joy!

Benny Ord’s solo presence on stage is unmistakable. Mixing fluid precision with a length in his limbs that seem to wrap themselves around the entire stage, Benny also exudes calm and serene stage energy. Ord epitomises the ‘cross-over artist’ – equally masterful in both camps of contemporary and classical form.

‘Peter’ (2003), choreographed by Mary-Jane O’Reilly, was originally commissioned for St Paul’s cathedral in collaboration with the Auckland Choral Society. Ord eloquently embraces the moodiness and turmoil demanded by this piece. He appears instinctively in command of both melancholic qualities and technical virtuosity - who can forget those leg extensions! Benny is rapidly coming into his own as a mature male dancer, able to portray the inner world of the solo dance character. He captures in movement the poetry and sensitivity needed to dance this journey in a modern ballet style.

Ord’s lines sear through the space. He appears like a sea bird in the wind – highly articulate, delicate and powerful in a masculine style. Although classically trained, Ord’s body owns a contemporary sense of weight and momentum that strikes the space in a lightning like manner. He sets and conveys the story with honed focus and commitment to each moment to ooze a simple looking body whilst dancing complex choreography.

Benny’s next challenge is to bring his quirky and unique dancing signature to his face and allow his mask to generate aliveness and expression so natural to his body. This will enrich and add whole new layers to his charismatic presence.

The stand out highlight of the evening for me was ‘Siva Aitu’, the new 30 minute work by emerging company Ura Tabu, choreographed by Charlene Tedrow. This strong band of women is a potent force to be reckoned with – a posse of young bodies grounded in earth, in sensual stage presence and in their relationship to eachother. The mix creates a performance synergy that ignites the space with reverence to cultural and spiritual homelands.

‘Siva Aitu’ was broken into 5 parts or rites of passage, each beginning with film footage dedicated to various components of Pacific living. Geography, environmental disasters, history, colonisation, cultural artefacts, artifice and community spirit is touched upon and explored in a rich soundscore composed of natural sounds of bush, birds and animals.

The dancers of Ura Tabu are totally committed to this work. Hands appear so softly to touch the earth in respect for themselves and for the environment of Pacific peoples. Fingers trace simultaneously delicate air patterns in the sky whilst pumping bare soles lay claim to the earth inside their blood.

Choreography presents a mix of traditional, contemporary and hybrid forms, each appearing as an exploration of primarily ensemble formations. The women are so tuned to eachother that this format works very well for them. A dynamic sensitivity between each performer creates a palpable tension and longing for reunion and symmetry when one dancer departs to solo or duet.

Costumes cloak and/or reveal the body in simple lines and combinations, fleshing sensuality and honouring traditional and current fashion. The ‘mix and match’ approach further conceptually developed could create a fresh mark on the dance scene in this country. These women offer a point of difference. They are not afraid to show us their wildness and abandon, their sexual integrity, their love of their people united through time and geographic distance, and their sacred relationship to nature and cultural practice.

With a narrative hung loosely around departure from a shared point, navigating outwards to locate new knowledge from Pacific lands, and re-emerging with new forms, Ura Tabu presented a dance fitting to the recent turmoil in Samoa. Touching upon environmental themes allowed audience members to realise the preciousness of the Pacific and the fragile environment in which it sits.

Film images of faces and people in action coupled with live drumming and singing reinforced the communal elements vital to the conservation and preservation of Pacific ecology and rituals. Images were skilfully woven to impact the overall choreographic texture. With further artistic development these could become a powerful symbol to inspire and clarify a cohesive choreographic voice.

Each dancer embodied the entire movement range required by the dance - from wild head and hip movements to earth pounding plies and foot rhythms, and fantastically focussed eyes channelling the lineage and spirit of Pacific peoples. My own mind and body is steeped in kinaesthetic and visual memories of dextrous fingers dripping through pockets of air created by rippling, curvaceous, sensual arms.

In all the works of the Sacred Dance programme, my spirit was moved – someplace, to a new place, to a place I had never been. Only by the performers embodying their own sense of the sacred could I be opened to my own experience. Well done everyone. Let’s hope you continue to define and redefine the sacred in your dance and to share in skill and celebration.

Footnote Forte Solo Series

2009-10-12T02:09:00.001-07:00

Footnote Forte Solo Series
6 pm, 12 October 2009, City Art Rooms, Lorne St, Auckland

By Alys Longley

Footnote Dance Company’s latest offering Footnote Forte gives a new twist to their repertoire, with a series of solo works, each one made by a different choreographer, performed in unusual locations. Here in Auckland it’s the City Art Rooms and the bar Cassette Number Nine. I very much enjoyed the intimacy of the works and the intensity of the dancers- the intimacy of performer and audience is matched by that of the two dance artists collaborating in making a new work – as the evening unfolded I thought a lot about the provocative nature of the solo dance work.

Michael Parmenter’s piece Somebody’s Darling folds out from itself in enticing layers of formal play, narrative complexity and creative heritage; the work is choreographed to Douglas Lilburn’s somber, moving piece Elegy, which dancer Francis Christeller’s grandfather sung for its original recording. Christeller’s intense performance quality reminded me of Parmenter’s performance of his Long Undressing, especially as this piece is actually structured as an undressing, from the formal confidence of the performing opera singer to the near naked figure of a figure stricken by loss. I enjoyed the space that Parmenter gave his movement phrases, the formal cycle of movement echoing the shifting tones of Lilburn’s arrangement of poems by Alastair Te Ariki Campbell.

Kristian Larsen’s Adze was a work of sparking, diving, hurtling playfulness, with
dancer Claire Lissaman flowing through unpredictable momentum paths into abrupt shifts of rhythm and form. Larsen made Adze as a tribute to local composer Phil Dadson, but I really can’t figure out why Dadson’s music didn’t feature in the work – his creativity sure did though, Lissaman radiated the experimental pathways of Dadson’s sonic / aesthetic experimentation with confidence and strength.

Dancer Anita Hunziker was positively ablaze with the confidence of a who-gives-a-shit electro-pop loving teenager in Sarah Foster’s Firecracker. Her brooding demeanour shot through excessive pathways of what the programme describes as a “cathartic onslaught of movement”. This movement was edgy, provocative, and very rock ‘n’ roll.

The final work of the evening (two of the program’s works– Ross McCormack’s Stealth and Malia Johnstone’s Lens 1 are off the evening bill) was set in bar Cassette Number Nine – a perfectly chosen venue for Maria Dabrowska’s Stark, which fantastically brought dancer Sarah Knox’s tremendous skill and spark to the stage. This was a very tight, enjoyable piece, although I must say that it was almost too tight, with a bit too much ‘tah-dah-ness’ for my taste. I would have loved to see the darker, more challenging elements of Stark’s legacy brought to the fore – and I would think that Dabrowska would be the one to do it, as she’s proven she’s highly capable of innovative and edgy work.

It was a pleasure to enter the field of such fiery, electric collaborations between choreographers, dancers and composers.

And We Need You!!!!

2009-10-06T21:47:00.000-07:00

A review of Prime Cuts
Alys Longley
6 October 2009

No seriously, my feeling is that right now our dance community is desperately in need of the kind of work performed in the Prime Cuts show of this years’ Tempo Festival. Big ups to the curatorial team of M.J O Reilly, Marianne Shultz and Marama Lloyd who selected a body of daring, inspiring and challenging dance works, all of which deserve longer runs and extended development.

The evening began delicately with Sefa Enari’s work Fanua. This choreography was danced with sophisticated articulation by Filio Vaila’au, with composer Poulima Salima’s soundtrack echoing the fusion of the modern and the traditional in contemporary Samoan dance.

Melanie Turner’s work Texture evoked landscape and birdlife. Abstract movement was punctuated with environmental motifs, with digital projections folding the dancers in rich texture of light, colour and pattern, reminding me of the way light creates and recreates the movement of the forest with shadow and sun.

My heart skipped more than one beat for Anna Bate’s new work Score, performed by Bate and Mariana Rinaldi. This dance felt rough, ready, confrontational and playful. From the outset this piece signalled that its audience was going to be more like a room of active witnesses (and perhaps testifiers or judges) than a safe and passive audience, to the extent that our presence as audience was cleverly choreographed into the torsion of the work. This piece had me on the edge of my seat, and really made me want to DANCE in salutation of the anti-social, the imperfect, the radiant strangeness of negotiating interactions with others.

Gabrielle Tomas’s piece Hapu was another courageous work dealing with a negotiation of shifting identity – the term “heavily pregnant” couldn’t apply to Thomas, who shared the incredible form of her pregnant body with lightness, almost ease. The want of utter easiness occurred in Tomas’s engagement with what she describes as the ‘celestial grotesque’, which she describes in the programme notes as a form of physical endurance. Tomas’s work begins with a film work; she is submerged in water, her pregnant body rich with movement – this state soon becomes uncomfortable – is she trapped in the water, will she surface? She eventually does, but the sense of a disconcerting lack of control, of weight carried and of the magnificence of this weight makes this a gripping work.

Geordan Wilcox and Kristian Larsen’s work re:set closed the evening. Wilcox and Larsen are wonderful performers,– as highly experienced dancers they might be considered an unlikely pair – Wilcox’s forte being ballet and Larsen’s being performance improvisation, but it is in the disjunction between movement vocabularies that this work sparks. The tension between Wilcox’s controlled sharp lines (heightened by his wearing a pristine suit) and Larsen’s idiosyncratic, organic informality (wearing a singlet) were perfectly matched. As the piece finished I must admit I was left with a desire for the partnering in the work to develop further, and this is a work that I think should be developed, which felt like it had further depths to mine.

In fact, all of works in this years Prime Cuts are well worth further development. I especially hope that Melanie Turner’s Texture has a further run as I felt this was a piece that was just finding its feet, which the dancers could release themselves into still further, relax into, to really find the edges of the phrasing that Turner skilfully and rhythmically choreographs into her work.

All in all, I would say that Prime Cuts is a must-see. It’s rare to see such a diverse body of choreographic ideas brought together in such a way that the works accent each other, with the singularity of each work still being supported. And a random tinsel bird person as well!! Perfect!!

Biljana Bosnjakowich, titled "the vitruvian woman", as part of Chiba&LaPupazza at Okidoki Gallery, Neukölln Berlin, 0ct 3rd 09

2009-10-06T03:59:00.000-07:00

So I just posted this on my facebook status because I was moved by a small piece of performance art in a gallery that my new Italian friend Sara had taken me to in my local suburb of Neukölln in Berlin, which was a group exhibition organised by Italian artists. I said 'Alexa Wilson saw a performance in an exhib last night where a woman lay naked on the floor and encouraged people to sit around her touching her as she joined people's hands gently across her body. . nice and unexpected for berlin. something quiet, something ...gentle.. something honouring of vulnerability. cool to see small children also observing with curiosity. no irony, no rock n roll, no ego. simple. .'

Then Cat, the editor of this review site, wrote to me 'yellingmouth!' and I thought I don't know who the artist was though, but then I realised that not only does this performance sum up alot of things I think European progressive performance really has to offer right now in 2009 going on 2010, but we ARE in the digital age and I can easily find out who she was. And this is the strength of this age.. so here we are creating and sharing webs of community, experiences and ideas.. across the world, across the net- with my Italian friend opening me up to a world of Italian artists in an underground Berlin gallery, Cat encouraging this website for caring community performance and so it goes on. And really, I need to say and share this stuff actually because it is part of a wider trend right now, helps me feel there is hope for the world, is very much a direction which interests me in performance and makes me just feel more normal to write about it. So here it is...

The exhibition is called 'Chiba&LaPupazza' (Italian for 'Feed' and 'The puppet') presented in Okidoki Gallery and is a mixture of photography, painting, installation, object art, illustration, music and performance. And there's also a great feed.. which goes with the title of the show. Free (often vegetarian) food in a community based- artistic context is not unusual in Berlin, which tends to have a former east, communist-anarchist-community arts vibe about it, with lots of food collectives around putting on free food nights everywhere. Not only Italian artists present work at this exhibition, there is also a heavy presence of Japanese artists with live electro music, video and object art. Being Berlin right now there is alot of nudity in the photography and I am not surprised to then see a naked performance. Infact I have seen nudity in public in non-creative contexts. It doesn't seem to be a big deal to bust out nudity in Berlin in public.

So all this understood, a female performer (Biljana Bosnjakowich) enters the front room of the packed and pretty small gallery, covered in white paint and nude, to lie in the middle of the floor like a starfish, facing up. As I am standing outside, I have to crane my neck to see over people's heads or between their legs to see that she has joined up the the black lines/markings on her body with those of a circular type grid marked out on the floor- which I had earlier noted and thought was some kind of basketball court or sport-like demarcation of space. So I read it as making her body somewhat like a known territory for games or sport, aggressive, competitively fought over etc.

She lay there for some time. The audience had that combination of anticipation caused by waiting and bordem as they sat and stood patiently expecting something to 'happen'. People left the room as the silence became more uncomfortable, so I was more able to see as- and I'm not entirely sure what initiated this process, perhaps the performer beckoning- about 5 or 6 people, both men and women, slowly came and sat around her body, touching her with theirs in an alarmingly gentle and respectful way. It was not what I was expecting.

It was actually disconcerting to see people in Berlin responding in such a kind way toward vulnerability. They even had beer in their hands, as most people tend to here. I didn't know what to make of it. Then Alice, the performer, began to touch people's hands and faces gently, with fingers which created some kind of gesture towards measuring their bodies. Then she started to join their hands together, in pairs or groups, across her naked body. Some of them touched her body gently with their own hands. She undid some hands and joined them with others. I noticed a girl around 10 or 12 sitting in a chair looking directly down the event with totally patient curiousity. Oftentimes here I have seen the small children of Berlin witnessing some really amazing event or world-class international artist do their thing and thought 'lucky little bastards' and 'they're so cute' and how they will grow up so so cool. And so they should, its the new skool way.

So finally the group left her, and again I've no idea what initiated this as I couldn't see very well. She then got up, the lights went dark, then (maybe accidentally) on again as she then ripped a video camera off the official looking videographer of the evening to leave the room. I wasn't sure if this was staged or not. Ambiguous. People clapped. She returned to thank everyone, including the Italian community who had supported the event. She sounded American when she spoke english but was fluent in Italian also.

Upon discussing it with my Italian friend after- we decided the circular grid was actually Leonardo da Vinci's famous drawing of a male body splayed with anatomical circular measurements around it. Was Biljana Bosnjakowich therefore addressing issues around the female body, which does not fit the male archetype or (art) world, having and doing its own measurements of others from a position of powerful vulnerability? I really couldn't say. All I was really left with was a feeling. A feeling that something special had happened. Something rare. Something I have not seen yet in performance. In a typically 'rock n roll' internationally urban cool gallery environment in a city which is renowned for 'anything goes'- that a naked woman lay in her ultimate vulnerability (visible from the street) on a concrete floor under harsh lights inviting people to sit around her and hold hands. It drew me in, it took away a sense of separateness that I may have as an urban dweller, it softened me, it certainly softened those who participated, and it gently asked all involved (including viewers) to question the power of vulnerability to transform social relations in a healing, loving and community way. There was no judgement, no irony, no pushing away or harshness. It was fresh, both for Berlin and the world (of performance too) because it was not trying to be anything other than people relating- genuinely, real-ly, in the moment, in a respectful way to female bodily vulnerability. I thought it was very powerful in a quiet way.

Within context I know that Europe has a lot of somatic and healing performance processes and ways to offer. I have done alot of workshops to this description since being here. I know it has been happening for sometime but it seems to be gaining momentum at a pivotal time in world history- with the threat of planetary destruction upon us. Gone is the need to harshly strip bare, or push to the extreme, or deconstruct, or ironically and sardonically entertain to make a point or say something via performance.

We are looking at a new era of what is real and truthful here in this world- through the existential lens/platform/vehicle/artform that is performance- using the live body presence to do so. If there's anything I've learnt from being here it is that if performance/choreography is putting itself on a pedestal of spectacular virtuosity or even deconstruction in the privileged western world at this time in history in pretentious or elitest ways to only the privileged that maybe its day is over- and it certainly pails completely in comparison, in my humble opinion (lol), with an emerging underbelly of work worldwide- whether performance art or improv based- which aims to meet and transform communities in a genuine attempt to make the world a better place, starting with being real in respectful ways. To me, all else seems shallow, egotistical, just dull and somewhat lazy... when faced with so much to actually change. Sometimes I want to tear my hair out. So yay for the likes of Anna Halprin and a legacy of powerfully healing community work.

And thanks to Biljana Bosnjakowich for sharing the love. The world needs more of it as we know, and I hope to pass it on... to beloved Aotearoa. Which has so much potential for genuine love as well. If only we could really realise it. Europe is defs not the be all and end all of everything of course, just more stuff. Lots more stuff. Thanks Cat for reminding me! It's all about sharing.

Steel Ballerina

2009-10-04T15:35:00.000-07:00

Steel ballerina
Tempo 09 Dance Festival
4:00pm Sunday 4th October 2009, TAPAC Theatre, Western Springs, Auckland

Reviewed by Rosemary Martin

I was hopeful that Steel ballerina might just be a production that would offer the ‘real, rough and raw’ side of the balletic environment, through a production inspired by the life of Dame Margot Fonteyn, Prima Ballerina Assoluta - the woman who was possibly the epitome of all things ballet. As the advertising stated, Steel ballerina was to explore “... the idea of a creative expiry date and the private versus public face of a dancer”, I was hyped.
Steel ballerina, created by Mel Dodge, Pagan Dorgan and Jacqueline Coats, and performed by Dodge and Dorgan, demonstrates that unless you have a very real understanding of the nuances of the ballet world, it is difficult to offer an audience a version of events that is free of stereotypes and clichés.

Blending fact with fiction the performance merges narrative and movement. The narrative, provided in short vignettes incorporating the experiences of Fonteyn and friends (Nureyev, de Valois and the fictional ‘Anna’), were well crafted and poised, and it was apparent that Dodge, Dorgan and Coats had done their history homework.
The downfall of the production - the part where I just wanted to close my eyes and make it all go away –was when the dancing began, which is a shame when you consider that this is a production motivated by the lived experiences of one of the greatest ballet dancers of the 20th Century. I understand that Dodge and Pagan were not attempting to emulate Fonteyn’s movement; however some refinement, originality and sophistication in both the choreography and dancing could have gone a long way in making this work more convincing and compelling.

The movement vocabulary itself was lacking in depth and substance, with the section performed by Dorgan on the floor being cringe-worthy and unattractive. The soundtrack – a blend of artists such as Bjork and Thom Yorke, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Purcell, Jeff Buckley and Gary Lucas – fitted the storyline like a glove, though only further emphasised the lack of choreographic development and innovation. The lighting by Corinne Simpson was superb and provided a focus for those times when I couldn’t bring myself to view yet another sickled foot in sur le cou-de-pied.

It was clear that the focus of this work should have remained on the spoken text and sharing the fascinating on and off stage moments of Fonteyn’s life. Steel ballerina only just began to raise themes such as identity, transitions, retirement, pressure, fear, aging and pain in ballet, without looking to explore why or how such issues exist and are dealt with in the ballet world. There are hints offered that Fonteyn’s life may have been much more complex than just tutu’s, Tchaikovsky ballets and Covent Garden premieres, however we never find out much more that the subtle suggestions offered throughout the work.
I learnt two things from this production, firstly that I shouldn’t have got my hopes up, and secondly you should always believe the wise words of Public Enemy - “don’t believe the hype”.

Tertiary Colours

2009-10-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

Tertiary Colours, 30th September-1st October, Tapac Theatre

By Cat Ruka

Tempo Auckland’s Festival of Dance 2009 kicked off tonight with it’s first show Tertiary Colours, showcasing 7 works from 5 of Auckland’s leading tertiary dance institutions. A fine idea in my opinion to begin the Tapac season with the future’s talent!

The programme begins with the University of Auckland’s ‘Woven’ choreographed by Juanita Jelleyman. Woven demonstrates a threading together of Maori, Pacific and contemporary movement, resulting in a subtle and clean vocabulary neatly interpreted by 9 female dancers. Crisp formations roll and dive into one another, fitting together like an M.C Escher puzzle painting. Also representing the University of Auckland for the evening is Juanita Jelleyman and Ai Fuji-Nelson’s duet entitled ‘Whisper’, a delicate interplay that explores the dynamics and relations between two females.

‘Hokkai Bayashi’ is a solo piece performed by Pamela Sidhu (East Auckland Performing Arts School), whose physical prowess is well suited to the athletic and technical balletic style of choreographer Patrick Sunderhauf. Sidhu performs each moment of this piece with an attacking precision, mirroring the fierce drumming music that accompanies her.

Dancers from the Apollo Theatre School perform 2 pieces for the evening, ‘Sing, Sing, Sing’ from the musical ‘Fosse’ and ‘Latin Fever’. Both pieces are executed with high doses of energy and strong commitment to movement, and a genuine sense of enjoyment and pleasure that only fresh young bodies can achieve!

Human Scenery is a modern ballet piece choreographed for 13 dancers from the Auckland University of Technology. Choreographer Phillipa Pidgeon does well to manage this number of young dancers on stage, who although at times seem to drop away from the performed moment, still do well to maintain the general form of the piece.

Those Left, choreographed by Shona McCullagh and performed by 11 female Unitec dancers is a dark and brooding choreography set to an amazingly emotive piece of music by Gorecki. Having already seen this piece performed in 2008 I had a fair idea of what to expect, and I would like to congratulate these young dancers on interpreting this challenging choreography with passion and heart.

I commend all of these young dancers on their obvious professionalism and dedication to movement, and look forward to seeing them grow through the years to come. Great start to Tempo! Hugs.

WE HEART HONESTY

2009-09-14T15:20:00.001-07:00

A conversation between Rosemary Martin and Cat Ruka

Cat: The other night Kristian Larsen performed a solo improvisational dance/text piece at the Kenneth Myers Centre as part of his Masters research in Dance. You know how blockbuster movie trailers all have that same voice-over narration guy on them and he always says in that really gruff hyper-yank voice, "One MAN, one DESIRE"...that was going round in my head whilst I was getting seated. Kristian. Alone. With a niggling problem....And enough bravery to want to solve it.

Rose: It was good dancing in my books. Despite the fact that at times there was more talking than dancing, this only made the moving part all the more interesting, leaving you wanting to see more of the improvisational movement business that Kristian so clearly articulates. I enjoy good dancing, thinking dancing, intelligent dancing; dancing that has the ability to move you to consider things from a new perspective, that creates an imprint on you as an audience member, or that can just make you laugh, in a good way.

Cat: Yes it was good dancing, effortless dancing, dancing that didn't apologize for being there or being clear. And speaking of laughter, there was this one moment when Kristian sort of shed himself, he was talking about something mundane-ish...and he just sort of cracked up at himself and shattered the performer ego and it just lifted the mood, along with the illusory distance traditionally set between audience and performer. From then on we were all in it together. I suspect that this might be hard to do, to minimize that distance, to create intimacy like that, particularly in an improvised setting where we're all waiting for the guy to drown anyway...which of course he didn't. Not once.

Rose: It was apparent that it was Kristian's intention to interweave and frame movement within spoken text, something he achieves with ease, providing a running commentary, strewn with humor, of the intentions, processes, notions or narratives pertinent to his concept of improvisation and performance. Clearly the influences Kristian speaks of – Paxton, Forsythe, Hawkins, Ralston – emerge through his movements which are refined yet real, set to a score of breath and impromptu lighting cues.

Cat: Refined yet real is definitely the crux of this performance I would believe, and the crux of his investigation into improvisation too. How hard is it to show good technique without being a wanker right? Without losing oneself in the process? And you know I said to Kristian after the show that for some reason I had no desire to tell him how amazing he was or to give him feed back because why would I give someone feedback for just being themselves? You know it was more like I was just having a conversation with Kristian and he just happened to be doing all the talking. Honesty is quite a pleasurable thing to see on stage huh.

Rose: The integration of William Forsythe’s Improvisational Technologies into Kristian's research demonstrates that you don’t have to be in Europe to do this and that it doesn’t make you look like a ballet dancer, rather it just makes you look like you know what you are doing, creating a valuable set of movement tools to draw from.

Cat: LOCATION. I think Kristian said the words 'context' and 'space' quite a few times in the piece, and I do recall a bit of the old 'inscribed', 'written upon', 'agency' etc being in there too. What exactly are we doing when we make 'contemporary' (European) dance in New Zealand? Coz, you know, we're kiwis eh....What is that actually? Are we copy-cats? Are we borrowers? Are we hybridizers? I think Kristian likes to ponder this in his practice. I wonder what Forsythe would say if he saw the piece...

Rose: The most satisfying element of the performance for me though was that Kristian was prepared to acknowledge what so many of us dancers experience and understand; that we dance because of love, for love, in love, around love.

Cat: Yes. And I think that may have possibly been the problem that Kristian wanted to solve actually. In my opionion, Kristian has been investigating or searching out Love and Truth by way of discipline, technology and rigour. I don't think he knew it at the beginning though. And that's quite the beauty of the practice isn't it is that you don't really know what you're doing until you get in there and do it. You know I think the relationship between improvisation and Love could quite possibly be, perhaps, unfathomable?

Rose: Oh, and I really want to see that roll in the top right hand corner of the stage again, it was splendidly breathtaking.

Cat: I would agree.

'Gustavia' (2008) by Mathilde Monnier and La Ribot at 'In Transit 09' (Resistance of the object) in Berlin 19-21 June

2009-07-05T04:46:00.000-07:00

Two aging female dancer/choreographers (Monnier- French, La Ribot- Spanish) from very different discourses collaborate to make a dance commentary and ironic cabaret on womanness performed, much like NZ's biped productions presentation of 'Fishnet' in 2006. So back to gender and sexuality as 'cultural politics' performed in a classically western/european deconstructionist entertainment style. How can I resist reviewing this show? It's right up my alley so to speak and I've been doing this stuff for years. So this is unashamedly for me I guess... (personal is always political and vice versa in my opinion) and for anyone in NZ interested in differently located performative perspectives via this reviewing website. As it's now crystal clear to me that we are located so specifically inside a cultural/performance context and make work to and for this, pretty much alone. Curated by performance theorist Andre Lepecki this year's 'In Transit' ('best') dance festival in Berlin invited 'Gustavia' to present at Haus der Kulturen der Welt as part of its tour.

Gustavia is the main city of a fancy island off the coast of France called St Barthelemy. Your guess is as good as mine but I like it. Metaphorically the title speaks volumes about tourism, land, isolation, romanticism, elitism, origin. But I really wouldn't know. I'm from a paradise island too, which as we know ain't always paradise.

Before I left NZ I'd been told 'French women use their sexuality to claim power back off men'. Having done a B.A in women's studies back in the dirty 90s I thought this was a pretty crack up statement, yeah women's one and only power is sexuality got it. Don't get me started coz it's a quagmire and I thought that strain of thought died peacefully in the 90s (I jest). It's 2009, nearly 2010 and these things remain complex. But so ok, what is it about French women eh? And mediterrean women for that matter. Just to generalise our precious lives away. Anyway.. so I'd been warned it was boring by some, amazing by others and I was curious, having loved Lyne Pringle and Kilda Northcott's 'Fishnet' so much. I want to know how these 2 women will do it differently.

And they do. Because their cultures are markedly different from NZ and so remarkably unisolated in its use of deconstruction as a tool for performance work. Whereas in NZ it is used sparingly, here it defines the work. The humour never ceases. You know they are fiercely serious about the ridiculousness of gendered performativity. It therefore makes me question, who is the audience- in every case? You would never see this in NZ work.

These women are incredible performers. They have a fierceness of face, intensity and highly trained muscularity which makes them almost look like men as they age. Their bodies are still highly agile and limbs extremely long. They enter the stage wearing black leotards and take their place at the microphone. For 20 minutes they take turns whimpering and sobbing from the silence after trying to saying something unsuccessfully into the microphone and tripping on the carpet in their high heels to replace each other. The clowniness of their performance becomes clearer and clearer as they increasingly try to out do and undercut each other with feminine posedness. All of this is executed with unflinching seriousness and intensity which illicits increased mirth from the audience.

Each section they perform has a clear beginning and end and each idea introduced is repeated in that postmodern performance art way (that only Mark Harvey seems to do in NZ) which both exhausts and transforms the action/task and idea they are futily performing. It is very clown. The power games played out are classic sidekick and star roles.. (grumpy/happy clown) with one walking around confused while the other walks about purposefully and meaninglessly with a plank to bash the other on the head repeatedly as they turn. It seems to speak of unconsciousness and the repetition of patterns and mindless habits women play out within femininity, without change.

The main strategies employed are repetition and satire. The clown must be highly serious for the humour to work. The strongest part for me is the ending. Both women stand on chairs and blurt out over the top of each other (in english) every 'type of woman' which is so humourous and layered it goes beyond other sections with its density and becomes poetic. The freedom of this section and claiming of womenness in its complexity retrieves power back from the futility of sexualised womenness in the former sections. Again this is something which interests me personally, using the strength of female intelligence to have fun with stereotypical roles for women. It is fierce, it is powerful in both simplicity and complexity and it is funny.

The only problem with rendering something culturally performed down into nothing is what are you then left with? Always the deconstructionist way. What I saw was two very strong, talented, beautiful, intelligent, powerful women from some of the most privilged (colonial) countries in the world almost mercilessly discarding feminity only to say that one can only be strong if one is never vulnerable. I saw no vulnerability in these women, no earth womanness from 'Fishnet', no softness. It was cold, it was hard. It was simplistic even. And I guess this was the point. Were they Euro women claiming back the power? I've no idea. The irony is that they were performing to and for such a specific audience the concept of deconstructed performance.

It did make me consider though the cultural context of performance with great interest. Where there was room for softness, complexity, ephemerality, humour, power and vulnerability in the NZ work (of the same subject matter) 'Fishnet' and a freedom which comes from having no audience, this performance of gendered subjectivity relied heavily on well used deconstructive conventions straight from the intellect only, highly trained performers and really less heart in my opinion. If that is not too harsh to say because they make up for it in passion and intensity.

And this is very easy for me to judge of course, Europe feels like a cold place compared with NZ. People's vulnerability lies buried far beneath the surface. If you show emotion you really are weak so you better get on with it. And strut. That is the cultural veneer of this place and probably especially for women. It is therefore a land of very strong women, this is womanness. There's no pathos here! And the strength of sensuality is a given.

Getting the picture? I want to make no judgement or comment of what is good or bad here btw, it is just very different. NZ work is often quite cathartic or atleast emotive and women are by no means meant to be vulnerable. But the modes of performance communication reflect the culture and thinking around the art form. And performers perform to that culture, unconsciously or not. They speak with and reflect it. An audience so educated as in Europe can handle so much satire and deconstruction. It is actually normal, perhaps even unconscious? Very different from NZ. Where deconstruction is used in some choreographers work more than others, but when it is it really really does want to mean something. And is often balanced by something rather ernest.

Unless I missed the irony of 'Gustavia', which is entirely possibly, and they were also satirising the strong woman. But I didn't think so. Maybe they didn't actually know themselves. Sounds like from the talk they gave, that they agreed on nothing, which usually creates an interesting dynamic if nothing else. Some thought it made them cancel each other out but I thought some interesting things were performed and communicated. Go collaboration.

Obviously from the festival's title (Resistance of the object) it was pretty clear they were resisting or atleast playing with the ever objectified and narcissistic female/dancer body/being. As we know this is always a minefield and no easy task. Use and abuse the stereotypes? Hats off ladies, hats off. You got me thinking.

Review by Alexa Wilson (Berlin correspondent :))

Cultural Contemplation, Compassion and Celebration of The Savage

2009-06-07T16:22:00.001-07:00

Playing Savage

A Dance Solo/Protest
By Cat Gwynne
May 29, 2009
Kenneth Myers Centre
Auckland
NZ

Reviewed by Sarah Gavina Campus

As light illuminates this half-naked female body, she appears stark, brazen, opulent and ready with an animalistic psychology that forces us erect in our chairs. Hello savage. The brown woman, slung low body over chair, treacle poured over the object. Honey, with that kind of body pour we know we are in for a wild ride. She sets the stage straight – makes it clear she is here to formally and forcibly introduce us to a stream of performance characters that stretch historically through time and space of culturally oppressed peoples and into the delicacy and fierceness of Cats relationship to iconic and stereotypical (mis) representations of ethnicity, ethnocentricity and enlightenment.

The gathered, excited crowd was a mix of friends, family, artistic cultural consumers, musicians, academics and other motley virulent supporters – young, medium and old age. Yay. In other words, a healthy cross-section of the population into performance art as political protest, as revolutionary and timely personal expression. The ‘performance art’ medium, filled with elemental practices in contemporary dance, Maori performing arts, body as symbolic device to represent the ‘voice of the people’ and use of various implements and objects, both traditional and ‘modern’, wielded powerful and startling imagery for the punters that witnessed this cyclic modern day ritual.

As Cat’s languid, strong frame began to scribe space, she oozed female sexual gallantry in a Josephine Bakeresque, burlesque, lioness and hootchy mama kind of a way, embodied with physical and delicate finesse. Cat moved from ‘post’, ‘station’ or ‘state’ with a quiet dignity and respect for not only her indigenous culture, but for the psyches, hearts and minds of all women, and of all subjugated and misrepresented peoples.

She followed the forms of culturally recognisable stereotypical characters – noble, fallen ‘other’, exotic lover, temptress, seductress, faithful cultural ambassador, revolutionary, protestor, indignant ‘bad mother’, ageing kuia, obstinate challenger. Each was associated, derived from, or transformed by her tenderly embracing the internal essence of various plays on the ‘savage’. Shifting her intention between each station, the artist morphed through a series of ritual transformations, not necessarily related to the previous image, but grounded in a deep and thorough creative act of Maori tikanga and ritual passage of Maori women and people of colour. My feeling is her spectators ached for her to linger longer with each character purely because we were so fascinated with her relationship and depth of commitment to each transformation of ‘woman’.

Guys, I don’t know how you felt about her speaking of female experience, but we ladies were comforted, consoled, challenged, caught and quite frankly, a little turned on by the creatures laid before us. Definitely stirred and shaken to the depth of our own bodies – who without words, shared an identification and empathy with the artists arguments for the perils and pearls of the black, brown, red, yellow and white body to be heard. Those of us exposed to the distressing state of cultural dislocation and ensuing experiences of ‘oddness’ could breathe quiet moments of contemplation, relief, appreciation and thanks for her brazen openness with the specificities of this condition – expressed through the makeup of each image and in the pores of her skin, breath and blood. This fortunate space of living within such cultural margins - feeling both pain and the birth of possibility evoked through identification with ‘both’ and ‘other’ are a reality for many people who struggle with cultural affiliation and identification in a world still beset by often underground and unacknowledged racism, and/or misguided attempts by peoples ‘sympathetic’ to ‘the cause’, but who fail to understand the complexities of cultural dislocation and oppression through, put bluntly, a lack of lived experience.

The final image, of Maori woman in black leather jacket, proudly wielding the deftly swinging poi as tuning instrument of anger to empowerment was for me the summation of all that previous characters had brought to the stage - pure boldness, contrasted with deep sensitivity and psychic power. A perfect accompaniment to the driven words of John Key’s ‘victory’ speech. In the language of her body, carefully pulling the cotton wool of her ripped open poi/heart Cat said to me “this does not fit, I do not need this, neither do any of us, go back to where you came from and let us do our own job, our own governing, our own policing, we do not, nor have ever needed you for our people to be the continued rightful representatives of our bodies, our lands, our lives”.

Wow, that’s a big statement coming from such a small act. Gentle, but empowered – protestual, processional and ritualised art that asks us to face our own prejudices and institutional racism but does not seek to perpetuate violence and aggression through a creative act.

Performing fragments of image, (like reading the one line in a poem that really grabs you and takes your breath away), proved to be a winning formula for this young informed Maori artist, who beautifully combines her dance practice with the intelligence and tenacity of her research, academic interests and expression of her experience in Maori performing arts. I can see this work being developed into a full-length piece in the future, and look forward to the deepening of her exploration. Keep playing savage strangely.

'Hell On Earth' by Dorky Park: Choreographer/director Constanza Macras in Berlin

2009-05-14T14:05:00.000-07:00

Can I even write this review not understanding most of what was said in the theatrical scenes? My German is so bad. But I dare so. As they also dare create dance theatre on the margins of culture in Berlin in so many respects. So fresh off the plane from NZ I do it in my best Kiwi fashion and 'give it a go'. Coz this show moved me.

Staged at an acclaimed experimental theatre Hau (as old as they come in Europe) in Berlin's Kreuzberg, 'Hell On Earth' is the second incarnation of Argentinian choreographer Constanza Macras' collaboration with youths from one of Berlin's Turkish areas Neukolln. The first was 5 years ago, the young people younger. Now they're teenagers, not only facing a continued history of cultural marginalisation but an adolescence in which gender and sex politics awkwardly and sassily take the stage. What better place for an outlet and expression of so many clashes and liminally intimate interactions between displaced and entirely community based individuals?

With a blend of non professional youths and professional dancers/actors this work interweaves like moving ephemeral street scenes which dissolve, confront, entertain, move, amaze, enlighten, transform, embarrass, celebrate, protest, explode and then dissolve again. The set is idiosyncratic; there's a club (it is set up like a club actually, guarded by a bouncer), a diving board, a shower, plants, balconies..? and the lights are glaring through the whole work. Inside a mesmerising execution of dance with theatre is awkwardly placed video projections which scream volumes about isolation amidst the crowd. We're in the middle of Europe, do people even really notice each other? Cultural and sexual politics are squirming and writhing in the chaos of scenes between groups of sexually charged young Arabic boys and sexually evocative and intelligent young women, of a variety of cultures, claiming their individuality.

While a bouncer guards the stage and keeps a telling eye of the performance goings on- to begin with he blasts a group of young women in dresses with a massive fan, while an incredibly adept (actually flabbergasting) male break/dancer solos in a deconstruction of masculine fragility and strength combined. A group of male breakdancers together do the same thing falling over and over to a retired stasis, while text between people (evidently humourous judging from the response) prods at further adolescent sexual and cultural awkwardness. A striking young South American woman (who speaks alot) running into young boys and knocking them down with her large breasts to their and her horror is apparently drawn from real life, as is the enactment of a flamboyant gay Israeli confronting these youths with his eccentric behaviour.

People ignoring, teasing and provoking each other is highly charged. Young girls fight for the mic to sing their favourite R&B and Amy Winehouse songs while guys show off their best moves. Amidst all the posturing and goading and showing off are the most moving moments of intimacy between couples and individuals. One refuses to be part of masculine competition whereas a young woman shows off in red heels her amazingly sharp breakdance routine. The bouncer and the young South American do an uncomfortable duet which addresses attraction and abuse (within an age gap/paedophilia?), while a female and male breakdancer engage in a similarly awkward and aggressive love duet which goes nowhere. All these deconstructed pop cultural movements and references are so well executed and crafted that genuine moments of vulnerability and intimacy are heightened within and outside them. All performers are impressive. Whether they're speaking, posturing, leaping from balconies, hiding in the corner behind their mates, fooling around, doing beautiful dance solos and duets or just standing their looking lost, they're dynamic and clearly themselves.

At the forefront of this work conceptually is gender politics, real for this community and these people. Women celebrate their ability to move and their sex appeal which is powerful. They also speak a lot and take the piss. Similarly their continued vulnerability is leeked within such moments as a woman videoed running through an underground and being locked in while she is pursued by the bouncer. The camera lingers on her banging her fist on a glass door which is locked and screaming for help.

Anyho. It was pretty choice eh. It was so layered with cool performance art and subtle moments too. And while I don't understand a lot of the language and specific cultural references I can appreciate that the beauty of dance theatre is that in the moment, in so many spatial layers, issues of personal and collective cultural alienation and celebration can be evoked, heightened and transformed like in no other art form. While the work deals with serious themes of prejudice and dislocation it is ironic, humourous, intelligent without falling into rhetoric and most of all expressive. Together these things gave a fullness and richness in both generosity and love for both audience and performers. This community of performance makers and people created an authentic sense of hope and despair, age old themes readdressed in post-colonial, post-modern, urbanised and cynical times in a decolonising (eh Cat?) way. What a breath of fresh air. It was fresh, really truly. And I dunno if like 6 bows is normal in Europe either but the audience wasn't ashamed to express how much they liked it either and I was like, yay I'm in Europe!

Review by Alexa Wilson

http://www.dorkypark.org/ for anyone interested

Ellis reviews Forsythe at the Tate

2009-05-03T13:33:00.000-07:00

Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same Time
The Forsythe Company
Turbine Hall
Tate Modern
London
30 April 2009

Turbine Hall is vast, almost as high as it is long.

From the cafe we are guided down the long ramp, given cushions, and enter the Hall. The audience surrounds the performance space (except for a narrow 'entrance' at the far end from which the dancers come and go), and in the space there are many many plumb-lines (described as pendulums in the programme), weighted by cone-shaped metal 'heads'. They are effectively conical arrowheads, willing the lines downwards, and stopping about 30cm from the floor. Each set of (perhaps) 10 cones is connected to a puppeteer-like rig, set amongst the lighting rig.

The geometry of the space is striking, and in it the 16 dancers are already busy with that relentless angular freneticism so typical of much of Forsythe's movement. On the walls are digital clocks, counting upwards as the natural twilight filling the hall is gradually drowned out by a very simple lighting design (profiles directed as downward as the plumb-lines). The sound sparsely echoes throughout the hall: simple electronic harmonics calling and responding to each other.

The dancers are very clearly engaged with particular tasks directly related to the geometry—and movement possibilities—of the pendulums. Occasionally they brush too close to a weight, and gently correct their own 'mistake' as if they are responsible for resetting the drive of the pendulum towards stillness. At other times they very deliberately (and gently) set large areas of the weights into motion. That they are following instructions (or a 'score') is very clear, but what these instructions are does not seem important to me.

Dancers come and go, sometimes for a rest (out of sight), other times to stand and watch.

And that is it.

Over the 90 minutes (30 minutes shorter than advertised), the tone of the work barely shifts, the audience wanders about (or not), and ... that is it.

But, as in much of Forsythe's more 'formal' work (so different from Decreation for example), this deep simplicity inevitably reveals a mesmeric complexity. The drive of the weights towards stillness is framed by the dancers useless attempts to keep moving, or to resist gravity's pull to inertia. The physiological inevitability of their fatigue becomes increasingly apparent, whilst their weighted witnesses keep pulling: pulling downwards to stillness. At times, almost the entire room of weights is tilted off vertical—the slow pendulums of time—as if the dancers have made Turbine Hall itself sway to and fro. The scale and gentility of these effects is remarkable.

Forsythe himself is standing behind the audience across from where I am sitting. Occasionally, he calls a dancer over (or even off the performance space), gives instructions and then sends him or her back into the 'playing field'. And it is a very much like a coach calling an errant player from the field, loading him with new instructions, and firing him back 'out there'. The dramaturgy of this act is puzzling and I am still not convinced Forsythe expected to be noticed doing this. Combined with the design of the puppeteer-like structures for supporting the plumb-weights I find it hard not to think of Forsythe as a kind of Petrouchkan puppet master, willing his puppets into action, demanding that they resist the fatigue, and somehow overwhelm the relentless march of the plumb-lines towards the centre of the earth.

One more thing. At approximately 60 minutes into the performance, the building had a power surge of some kind. The music stopped, the clocks stopped, and some of the lights went out. I glanced at Forsythe at this point and he hardly skipped a beat, but the flurry of activity at the other end of the hall suggested that this was definitely not planned. It was a shame in so many ways, not least because it broke the company's play with—and the audience's meditation on—time, with their inevitably dying dance amongst, around, and against the geometry and physics of these long long arrowheads.

Simon Ellis

Note: Some images (taken on my phone) are here .

Battle Scarred Girl Power Super Group Dance on Edge of Sword, Threads Bared

2009-03-23T01:25:00.000-07:00

Littered with ironic self reflective critique and biodegradable props, Toxic White Elephant Shock is indeed a dangerous jumble sale overflowing with earnestly vital attitude and a genuine desire to say something.

A series of simultaneous statements, the work constantly accumulates and disintegrates, the molten (yes, hot) performers weave an interdependent web of movement, sound, situation, and riotous theatrics that threatens to overwhelm, barely under control, displaying characteristics of the natural disasters so often referenced in the piece. All performed strongly and deserve credit for their effort, execution and commitment. The group emanated a strong identity which was an invaluable expressive component of the work. I feel this was a desired and intentional part of the works anatomy. Wilson's approach to her work addresses more than it's brief incarnation on stage, she is keenly aware of the wider social and historical contexts of her performances and these are constantly referenced in the work, exhibiting a desire for it to explode from the formalised event and commune with the wider world - starting by literally smashing the fourth wall and demanding audience participation.

Each of the participants (7 women, 1 man) have a distinct identity/look that is maintained throughout the work (excepting Packham's brief incarnation as Alexa Wilson herself). This identity seems to be a ritualised version of themselves. Not a persona, more of an offering - to be burnt in sacrifice, part of a faith healing for society? Their bodies are treated like banners - slogans, attitudes and motions pass through or are spattered over them, a sort of psychophysical action painting. The use of group nudity near the beginning of the piece was very strong, both confrontational and grounding, that particular section generated a lot of atmosphere and opened the door to the rest of the work, an overture of sorts containing all the major concerns of the piece.

More expressive than explorative, Wilson and co have a lot to say. They cram an incredible amount of ideas into a scant hour and a half. Rarely settling for one thing at a time, Wilson uses simultaneity to achieve density. Although her images and staging can be interpreted a number of ways, the actions and intentions of the dancers are sharply defined. Thus simultaneous layering of many strong elements (as opposed to one thing which isn't quite anything exactly but almost many things) is a sensible choice for generating depth. Having seen and been involved in a number of Wilsons works I recognise this tactic and am tempted to think this is an easy choice for her creatively. However this is easily the most complex and large scale work she has tackled and it was satisfying to see her style achieved with assurance and higher than usual production values.

The movement language was a mash up of functional actions, martial arts, wild krumpy urban tribal shit, contemporary softness and, um.. Power Shapes. Naked Power Shapes! Love it. The theatrics and movements are generally affected - this isn't a criticism in itself cos it's mostly very watchable. When the performers are required to be intense they do so either with force of personality or often violent physicality. This certainly has impact, but only for so long. To Wilsons credit she does find a remarkable number of ways to make it work but I feel the law of diminishing returns should be acknowledged: As the piece progressed conceptual and emotional complexity accumulated, but expressive complexity not so much - the same wild aggressive approach was used throughout most of the piece and I felt it began to misfire towards the end. Anyway, what are the other options? would they dilute Alexa's strong style?

The work is cabled with a healthy dose of electronic current. Live video feeds lend the drama of confrontational breaking news, live effected vocals from Brennan saturate the space with murky bestial textures, dance floor killers and soulful odes to the moon. Pre composed sound from both Brennan and Charlotte 90 jousted and slid back and forth to support each of the many many sections of the work. I liked the almost sound clash set up of the musicians; one just offstage to either side, taking turns to fill the invisible spaces of the theatre. Their co operation/collaboration almost seemed to provide an example of the communication and clarity between sexes that was desperately called for by dancer Yee at one point.
Both had notable onstage moments: Charlotte 90's stone cold chorus support for Alexas rap song, and Brennans wild thrashings and wrestlings as Box Head.

Toxic White Elephant Shock has the frenetic energy of a film trailer and an admirable desire to be current and involved with the world. Refusing to retreat into discipline bound obscurity it claws at the boundaries and draws in many energies, all wound into an ecstatic dance of celebration and warning. A truly spiritual effort. Thanks guys.

Josh Rutter

Violent Babies: Improv duet with Kristian Larsen and Julia Milsom

2009-03-07T00:15:00.000-08:00

Man, I've been a party hardy kinda girl lately, in all the most unlikely and likely crevices of Auckland doing shameless things so seeing two of my dance peers Kristian Larsen and Julia Milsom duet in 'Violent Babies' as part of an evening of performance with music improvisational collective Vitamin S at Whammy Bar was next level.

Ok, so, it's a rainy wild night and its a bar, not just a bar, but a very familiar one. It's Auckland's most Indie bar for live experimental bands and performances and these dudes rocked out on the floor to 8 people (maybe 10) muso's and one girlfriend to begin a duet labelled 'a punch drunk love duet'. I was like, I'm brave, but THIS is brave. Hats off. I know they these two are a Vitamin S special team but I ain't seen it before and it was inter- resting! There were so many layers. Ouch.

First of all there's the bar, the 7 attentive male gazes and maybe 2 females peering through the dark with intent through beams from corners of the bar and various passersby, who thought at moments that they were punters at the bar. Second, there's what I bring to this duet in my own post man/woman drama phase... there's always this. Near impossible to extricate. So what DID I see?

I saw two friends/peers, a man and a woman, dance improvise together in a near empty bar on a rainy night, competing with several other shows. They come from very different places inside their dance practice and are probably in very different spaces right now, but they somehow found a common ground. What is that? A tension? A chemistry? A need to express together in a particular way? It's all good!

They are both beautiful movers and seem most comfortable when soloing. But soloing around one another is still a duet. In fact its the duet of our times. Two people immersed in their own journey, themselves, the intricacies of their own embodiment and feelings and the performance of that to us. It is totally apt for me in that moment. And I'm getting drunk!

Milsom is strident, she is bold, risky, articulate and comfortable within her power as a mover and a woman. Her attentiveness to the improvised music is on, and her interaction with Larsen timely and sensitive. She's in your face (in a good way) and she knows how and when to retreat to dark spaces of the bar for variety. Larsen muses in his dancing. I thought at one moment during a solo when he was quite close to us, 'you know what? It is so bloody good to see a man dance in this way in this context in a such a masculine space'. His gentleness and thought processes were hiding and revealled simultaneously inside this vulnerable explorational dance. It too had power. I didn't know what the hell was going on but I was really intrigued by the gender dynamics because whatever was going on for each of them they managed to still hold a space with and for each other which had respect.

The moments of contact were loaded and vulnerable. Whether it was an intimate confrontation or a placing away onto a pillar (repeated nicely to the sound) only to slide down or a leap on top to crush, it smacked of relationship. It's hard to say what this relationship was, two people, dancers, friends, man and woman, happy to dance around each other for each other, with each other, for us. Steps in the strange narcississm vs entertainment factor of performing. Who is improv for? Who is dance for? Milsom performed more for us while Larsen was happy to perform for himself and each worked and juxtaposed. Of course this line was and is blurry. I liked all of that.

They both supported each other, they were not alone, while their was still a major sense of space which created solitude inside this duet. There was also the fact that they both knew I was there and maybe gonna write something. God but who cares what I or anyone thinks? Have a good time I say, which it looked like they did. It was working for me and judging from the applause, for the rest of the onlookers too. I'd say most people could relate as well as admire, because the duet spoke volumes about relationships. Plus I was projecting I'm sure. I love the way dance is always so appropriate and inappropriate in public spaces, how it makes people uncomfortable because it is the body talking and we are largely so fucking unembodied as a culture these days.

Sweet shit guys. Keep up the explorations. It's really cool.

Review of Yellingmouth review website

2009-03-05T19:19:00.000-08:00

Hey I can see some movement in the dark. Is it people fumbling around searching for a voice, a community, freedom, discussion, alternatives, each other, a life, SUPPORT? In Auckland contemporary dance march 09 its starting to happen. Thanks the internet.

For something so 'ephemeral' and misunderstood, especially in a stage of metamorphosis between old skool and new skool ways, NZ dance needs real support. New voices need space to grow and bounce off each other. AWAY from formalised institutions. Its called progression.

It has nothing to do with rebellion or frowning upon the establishment as some may accuse but rather to do with creating ACTS, which stir authentic responses into a literary next level practice of call and response communication from current dance ACTIVISTS. I call them activists because they are pushing way for new and diverse spaces, ideas, ways, processes and presentations to emerge.

It has been happening this entire decade and prior to this with the likes of Sean Curham, Charles Koroneho and Mau. I call it a MOVEMENT. A gesture if you will, performance art ACTS, happenings, postmodern introversions... extroverted. I have been at the heart of this ongoing emergence and struggle for new ways to come out of new people this decade and its been tough but FUCKEN EXCITING.

Things seem to take time to really gestate in the rhizome way but they have POWER because no one or no thing is making them grow, they are just growing. Alone together. These practitioners are responding to the world, to their own call to be alive in the world in these uniquely embodied and highly intelligent ways. Just as any plant or animal does. And they deserve our attention and love. Not to be ignored and marginalised. That is an old skool paradigm.

For years, dancers have struggled to have a voice and be honoured in NZ within the realm of writing in a public space. This maverick vs institutionalised organism has created some fascinating tensions and debates, to which I have also contributed. I consider myself a forunner in this MOVEMENT. People doing stuff, together, anywhere, everywhere, with or without money and support. Really LOOKING. Really SEEING and FEELING. Creating because they want to, in/outside an increasingly commercialised, capitalist world market. Dance thinkers are on the go. And there's nothing that can stop them.

Late Night Choreographers stopped breathing when it got funded and institutionalised itself. Riddled with internal and bad blood politics we learnt that the cut throat way is not the way of activists. Or 'revolutionary'. It died a natural death because of the fight for money.

So we now have a website (how cohesively anarchic) linking minds, bodies, ideas, gestures, acts, etc etc together. I say jump in. Don't be shy, but have respect. Anything that doesn't come from respect is not the new skool way. You can examine and criticise and tease if you want but if you do it because you LOVE it your intention is clean.

Thanks to Cat Gwynne we now have a reviewing website for practitioners and dance thinkers to have a legitimate and musing space to move and be interpreted through a genuine lens and understanding which comes from other practitioners looking at their actions and somatically transmuting them in 'phenomenological' (thanks michael) written texts. Ha. Ie. reviews. Dance can't evolve without thought processes and ideas evolving before, after and during movement. Discussion, articulation, communication, reflection helps SUPPORT this action.

Chur Cat.

And just to contradict myself because I can't and will about rebellion I have a quote to end with from The ABC of Enlightment by Osho:

“The birth of the rebel is the death of the old. To me, rebelliousness is the essential quality of a spiritual person. It is spirituality in its absolute purity.”

'LightBulbMan' written and directed by Jacob Tamaiparea. Review by Alexa Wilson

2009-03-01T01:40:00.000-08:00

Omg. These guys are amazing. They're fresh, clever, charismatic, funny and talented as hell. There's nothing hotter (in all ways) than a performance work that takes heavy themes, universal and specific, and twists them inside out in an essence of anger and sadness using humour, smartness and pop culture refs to wind it back into a fist of rawness, anger and sadness with an anti-hero wise zen anti-climax fuck you ending. Love it. I don't know shit about comics but I love rap and not only are these guys original and satirical with wordplay so fast you could miss it but they know how to seduce you with good acting and savy streetwise quixotics.

Director and performer Jacob Tamaiparea (LightBulbMan- with a lampshade head) and his multifarious collaborating sidekick Rangi Rangitukunoa who plays friend Zac, evil drug lord boss Shoes, Jose the (puppet) monkey and icon Ice Cube literally bounce off each other in a simple fusion of characters and journeys set around a charity soup kitchen. While LightBulbMan's journey seems simple yet profound, like fucken gotta get outta this shithole working for this shithead, actor Rangitukunoa juxtaposes it with a shapeshifting dance of characters within characters who distract Lightbulb man (maybe all in his head anyway) from leaving the soup kitchen. Hero only to himself really LightbulbMan confuses only himself through fear and within a mixture of rap mixed with live musician beats and rock guitar riffs takes the hip hop musical murder mystery satire to its death by implying that to stay is to die, that his boss Shoes has already killed him spiritually and that the death to leave is a thriller worth waiting for. Salvation and eureka is quitting. The best idea he's ever had.

This genius in its simplicity and realness is clothed by a multitude of sequences framing humourously just how fucked working in both hospitality and the irony of charity in its warped capitalist joke really is. The crack up and beautiful shakespearean poise of Jacob's LightBulbMan mixed with a comically boyish but totally manly confusion vs Rangi's manifold sweet but then terrifyingly maniacal and cackling alteregos was so supremely comic book anti-hero stuff I was cackling like a dick myself in the front row secretly hoping for some audience activity. But I knew that no one else belonged on this stage, so choicely li-fi in its veneer, because these guys had it covered. Their energy was bowl you over material. Dynamic, intense, fun. Light? Hard to say. I like it that way.

ps. I know my brother's puppet monkey is in sweet hands.

2009-02-20T23:08:00.000-08:00

Kia ora koutou katoa,

Welcome to Yellingmouth.blogspot, the new review site for Auckland dance. We are hoping to have everything sussed before the Auckland Fringe starts, so keep an eye out for our first review, which will be of Jacob Tamaiparea's LightBulbMan. (Even though this is under the theatre section of the fringe, we gonna review it anywayz, coz any hiphop musical's gotta have some sort of shakin' in it!). We wish Jacob well for his season, and look forward to the show.

Mauri Ora,

Cat Gwynne