Creature and Split

Of the four Dance Massive shows I saw this past week, three were duets. And all three of those duets were contained within very strict spatial parameters. Nick Power’s Between Tiny Cities happened within a circle of audience members. ( Full review in previous blog post.)

Seeing Creature by Jozsef Trefeli and Gabor Varga and then Lucy Guerin’s Split in a row, the similarity really stood out. After Between Tiny Cities a few days earlier, it was getting uncanny - all this dueting in the “round”…or in the case of Split, a square, in front of the audience. 

Uncanniness aside, each piece is unique and has something interesting to offer. You can’t really begin to compare them, as their intentions are completely different. 

In the case of Creature, Trefeli and Varga talk about their work as being about origins; about “ethnographic material under the lens of contemporary dance.” (Trefeli studied at VCA but has lived in Geneva for many years. Varga is Hungarian and also lives in Geneva). 

While I don’t profess to understand Creature on an archival or even socio-culture level, there was a clear sense of objects from various cultures (African, European and beyond) integrated into a movement work in perplexing and unusual ways. 

Creature, photo by Gregory Lorenzutti

Creature was set in a basketball court smack in the middle of the Carlton Baths. We sat in a square of chairs in very bright daylight. The exposed space, with clear glass walls on two sides, looks into a gym in one direction and the foyer in another.  A school assembly would not be out of place in there. 

The men marched in with floral scarves (or perhaps Hawaiian shirts) wrapped around their whole heads and faces. One was a lot smaller than the other, but they had similar long strides and proud chests. Little cymbals on their chunky boots clanked as they arranged poles, lumpy cloth parcels and what looked like small tree trunks around the floor. They marked space and lines with the objects or by lying themselves down on the ground, as if measuring distance with their lengths. 

Amongst the pacing, they broke out in complex, folkloric foot sweeping, the little instruments on their shoes accompanying the strong taps of their feet. At one point they took turns cracking loud whips. Later they crawled around in the tree trunk mask/hats (which stood up quite high over their heads) like strange humped animals. By then they were wearing the lumpy parcels, now turned inside out into shaggy coats with little cloth rectangles attached like thick feathers. 

I was wondering if they would reveal their faces and eventually they did. The piece took on a whole new personal and intimate dimension once they were identifiable humans rather than faceless tree heads. They sang loudly (folk music of some sort, not in English) and made tight eye contact with the audience. 

There was a lot going on in Creature and I just succumbed to the fact that even though I didn't personally recognise all the visuals, they are culturally significant to particular populations and the men were investigating and up-ending them with both respect and a slight tongue in cheek. 

There is clearly method and rigour in the choreography itself - the complex foot patterns, the clearly delineated floor pathways, the choice to reveal faces, to sing, to engage with particular objects - but why those choices...I would like to know more...

Creature remains, for me, a fairly cryptic piece, but one that successfully reflects the mens’ mission to “give birth to a new choreography…a “creature” abounding with codes, intentions and keys to its interpretation.” 

Without dissecting all the cultural meaning (that would probably require a phD), as a performance, it's definitely a new creature, confident in its difference and quite unique as a contemporary dance offering. 

After all the textures of Creature, Lucy Guerin’s Split is extremely sparce. I loved watching this piece in a way I haven’t enjoyed much contemporary dance in a while. Guerin has gone back to movement and space and formality (rather than the theatricality she has recently been exploring.)

Melanie Lane and Lillian Steiner in Split
Photo by Gregory Lorenzutti

It all happens in a large square delineated by white tape on a stark black floor. Two women - Lilian Steiner and Melanie Lane - inhabit the spacious square for quite a long sequence of unison movement. Gradually they bisect the square with more white tape into ever-shrinking halves until they are trapped on top of each other in a tiny square upstage. Paul Lim creates a new lighting state for each tinier square as if each is its own little chapter. 

Steiner is completely naked for the whole performance while Lane wears a light blue short sleeved sweater and matching long skirt, so they appear very different to each other. 

What starts as precise unison movement in the big square (little jumps, tight squats, a slap of the wrist or thigh, shaking cat paws - both big and small accents with subtle shifts of weight and momentum) takes on a different, more sinister feel as the woman become more competitive and grotesque.

As their square implodes, unison gives way to a more predatory dynamic with animalistic arm twisting, rough piggy backs and sinister mauling. At one late point in the piece, Steiner mimes scooping out Lane’s guts and eating them. Yet within all this unfriendly suggestion are plenty of moments of non-antagonism - not an affection per say, but at least an acceptance of each other in the same environment.

Steiner and Lane are both fantastic. Steiner appears incredibly comfortable in her bareness and she’s a fluid, effortless mover, shifting between larger bodyweight changes and more micro-ripples with a muscular lightness. Lane is equally able with the intricate choreography but has a more solid, slightly heavier presence. Their unison is nearly flawless and as their relationship becomes more complex, their commitment and investment seems to grow. 

For all its imagery, Split still feels like a pure dance exploration with all the precision and formality that defines much of Guerin's work. It’s a simple premise, but there’s something spellbinding about its attention to detail and crisp execution. 

Creature 
Carlton Baths
 17-19 March

Split
Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall
17 - 26 March

www.dancemassive.com.au

Clouds Above Berlin

Melanie Lane and Antony Hamilton in Black Project 1.
Photo by Ponch Hawkes.

The local arts community talks a lot about  Melbourne contemporary dance being highly "conceptual." A trite description, perhaps, and hard to actually define, but one that we tend to slap onto any complex or highly intellectualized dance piece. Conceptual in the sense that its motivation or inspiration comes from questions or concepts beyond dance and the piece, as a whole, may have little to do with the physical language of dance. Conceptual in the way that most contemporary arts are conceptual - hybrids of ideas, sources, media aiming to create a synthesized whole.

Local audiences watch a lot of dance works with little actual dancing in them and many works feel more academic and formal than visceral. Recently two different factions of the Green Room Awards - the dance panel (of which I am a member) and the "hybrid" panel - passionately debated which panel should give excellence awards to a substantial number of "dance" works presented in Melbourne in the past year  (BalletLab's Aviary and Chunky Move's Connected - to name a few), highlighting the difficulty in defining where a dance work stops and a "hybrid," (whatever that is) takes over.

I'm glad we have smart, thinking dance makers - dance makers that are excited about exploring ideas and detailed interplays of art forms and willing to take risks with challenging and abstract subjects. (These dance makers, are, of course, not limited to Melbourne nor is the broad "conceptual" label.)

When I have the rare pleasure of experiencing a work where concept and kinaesthesia unite in rare and meaningful harmony, I am ecstatic. It lingers in my mind's eye for days. That experience doesn't happen that frequently - often I see a lot of interesting ideas that don't make for engaging performance, dance or otherwise. Many would say that is the way with all contemporary art and we persevere anyway for that amazing 10% that hits all the right buttons.

These thoughts were in my mind after CloudsAbove Berlin, a double bill of  Antony Hamilton's Black Project 1 and Melanie Lane's Tilted Fawn. They are both works slavishly devoted to abstract concepts that involve carving space. Neither one has all that much "dancing" to speak of and they both are relentless in their slowly unfolding methods. This is not to say that they are unappealing works, on the contrary, Black Project 1 is quite brilliant.

 Hamilton's interest and talent with graffiti and visual design is an ongoing inspiration. We saw it in Blazeblue Oneline (also at Arts House) and he's been building on it throughout subsequent works.
With Black Project 1, Hamiliton sucessfully creates a kinetic performance of the creation of an abstract artwork - and that's as hard to do as it sounds! With its intense blackness and slow build, I can't say that I could sit through it a second time, as it might blow my concentration-meter, but I appreciate its conceptual intent AND follow-thru. Starting from complete stillness and blackness everywhere (and I DO mean blackness - see photo above,) it builds, 45 minutes later, to an environment littered with two and three-dimensional geometric designs.

There's a black floor and big black wall and two dancers (Hamilton and Lane) painted in head to toe black and very dark lighting. It opens (not surprisingly in blackness) with the duo laying together in an off-kilter heap like two fallen soldiers. But by work's end, the space is filled with white circles inside circles on the ground, puffs of aerosal paint cascading along the wall, a mess of white, various-sized balls spilling on the floor and zig-zags of tape strips of intricate patterns. Hamilton and Lane, in some sort of gradually intensifying trance, create the geometries.  They start with micro fits and jerks and miniscule surges of energy through limbs - little electric shocks -  and build momentum through straight, circling propeller arms and bent-knee shunts that travel infintesimally through space. There are extended periods of stillness and bursts of hip-hop-inspired, slow-motion riffs.

Antony Hamilton and Melanie Lane in Black Project 1.
Photo by Ponch Hawkes. 

 Other than blasts of strobe light and the strips of slowly-revealing white tape, Black Project 1  is a visually dark piece with a droning, industrial soundtrack (by Robert Henke, Vainio and Fennesz.) It's definitely not a walk in the park for viewers, but there is reward at the end in the sense of journey, albeit (intentionally) slowly, somewhere. The end is different to the beginning (the dancers have travelled from stage left to right by the finish) and the links from A to B are clear.

 Tilted Fawn doesn't have a similar trajectory. Lane's solo (which opens the program) is also relentless. It's also dark (although not quite so literally black) in colour and tone, but it's missing that satisfaction of trajectory and journey. It so soloptic and dry in its 40 minute long exploration of sounds and spatial architecture that it loses connection to audience.

Lane collaborates with a sound artist named Chris Clark who has assembled different compositions inside cardboard bricks. As Lane arranges the rectangles around the minimalist space into shapes and sculptures (at one time a boat, another a neatly staked rectangle), various sound collages are created. The activity is mono-dynamic and doesn't sustain interest for its lengthy duration. Lane walks around stage, moves boxes, thoughtfully stares at said boxes and occassionally breaks into pedestrian stride to strike a dancerly poses. On a pure "conceptual" level, it's well-trodden territory and the physical activity is too subdued to make an impact.

Melanie Lane stacking bricks in Tilted Fawn.
Photo by Ponch Hawkes.

 I have to admit, by 15 minutes in, I was struggling to connect to the activity in front of me. But then... I returned from a heavy blink and Lane was in the centre of the space in only a nude bodystocking and some rickety platform shoes (covered by the body stocking) contorting into the most amazingly awkward curves, throwing her weight onto the sides of her feet, whacking her ankles and wrists in uncomfortable flexions and supinations. It was awesome - amazing. I was gobsmacked. Where did this grotesque and intriguing body come from? Was this the same women who was building bricks?

After this breakout (maybe 5 minutes or so), Lane went back to brick-stacking with the same pedestrian intention and low-energy dynamic as before. And she kept doing this for what seemed like a very long time. Then there was a black out and it ended.

In theory, "concepts" are cool- but watching amazingly articulate bodies do things beyond ordinary is, for me, anyway, so much cooler. When concepts and bodies converge - well, that's rare and total coolness.


Clouds Above Berlin
Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall
7 - 11 March, 2012

Expectation by Carlee Mellow

Carlee Mellow. Image by Igor Sapina. 

Carlee Mellow is one of the busiest contemporary dancers in Australia - she’s collaborated with everyone from Sandra Parker and Chunky Move to Deborah Hay, Lucy Guerin and Phillip Adams. She’s a consistently strong, sharp technician and a distinct physical personality. Having such a wide breath of experience, her influences are diverse, with a particular interest in working with vocal and improvisational scores, a substantial component of Expectation, her first full length solo show.

Although solo may not be the best way to describe it. While Mellow was the only body on stage, Expectation was really a three-hander with the lightening design of Bluebottle and the sound score (which loops in the live sounds from stage) by Kelly Ryall. Expectation sat closer to the realm of dance theatre than contemporary dance, if you are into such distinctions.

It was concerned with mood, light and perception and most significantly, a constantly shifting spatial perspective on Mellow’s body doing oddly compelling things. She tottered around with what looked like a paper bag on her head; she levitated feet first up a wall; she danced a tight, muscly dance bathed in a red glow. All these physicalizations were very far away or very close. They felt either highly intimate or rather impersonal and some of them were truly bizarre. Bluebottle’s exceptional use of the huge auditorium-like space and the live cackles, tinkles, pin-dropping and crinkling sounds that filtered through Ryall’s score created a distinct sensation of unnerve and disorientation. Mellow peppered her closely-held energy and her raw, guttural utterances with glimpses of sensuality, but she never revealed too much.  

Expectation had echoes of pieces like Helen Herbertson’s Morphia Series and Disagreeable Object by Michelle Heaven where the excitement of the works was in both the constant surprise of changing atmospheric states and the commitment of the artists to traverse unhinged places. It’s no surprise that Bluebottle has designed all of these projects - their dexterity with light and stage design is consistently phenomenal.  

With its collection of unrelated and unsettling vignettes and crystal clear design, Expectation was not easy to interpret, but was, none-the-less, mesmorizing and disconcerting from start to finish. Mellow has the sensibility of a theatre maker with the foundations of a dancer. It’s no wonder that, with her highest-calibre collaborators, she conceived a unique experience that both delivered and undercut expectation. 

Expectation

Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall

9 - 14 November 2010