Sorry for the delay this month readers. I promised Naomi, our revered creative producer at FORM Dance Projects and, in my case, editor in chief, that I would hold off this month’s blog post as I was performing at the Kia Mau festival in Wellington Aotearoa (NZ) where I was sure to see a slew of other dance productions. Did I though? Did I?
Ahh, that’s a big no.
My excuse. Time was tight. Very tight. Fly in, drop off the set, which was encased in a specially made box with an aluminium frame I cut to size WITH A HAND HELD HACKSAW, WHICH TOOK THREE DAYS TO CONSTRUCT!
‘Why didn’t I just use an electric saw which would have expedited the build by approximately three days?’ you may well ask.
Answer- To save my fingers from almost inevitable demise.
I planned to unfurl my set piece upon arrival so it could settle. The set piece in question is a mat woven from plastic drinking straws, two metres in diameter which hangs in the air as the sun in our Aboriginal flag and doubles as a projection surface, transforming the mat into a time portal and the images appear as if they belong to another world. However, the mat took weeks to weave and is so fragile it needs special measures of maintenance. Heavy weights can’t be applied to it to speed the flattening process, nor heat lamps or else the straws become brittle and dessicate. Steam can’t be applied either or the adhesive on the sticky tape holding it together will no longer remain sticky.
I hadn’t performed the work, titled plenty serious TALK TALK, for six years so it was inevitable additional repairs would have to be made to the mat in order for the piece to match the majesty of the venue in which I was allocated to perform housed within Te Papa Tongarewa, the National Museum of New Zealand. Stupidly I figured this task would take a half an hour. I underestimated this task by about six hours.
By day three I was cactus. In by 9am to check the mat, discuss lighting alterations needed to accommodate unexpected changes to my use of the space, which incidentally had great acoustics for the substantial live spoken word elements. Then out by 11.30am only to return at 2pm for a 2.30pm start to plot, top and tail and full tech, to finish by a projected 10pm.
This work is what we call a “lights and tights” show, meaning it has next to no big production values and takes a small staff to install and run. Ideal for touring and if it wasn’t for that bloody mat, I and everybody else involved would probably concur.
But I digress.
Being a solo it can also unexpectedly take its toll as there’s no buffer, all responsibility is on the sole performer to pull through. Alternatively, being part of an ensemble cast means being buoyed by others when your energy is running low, laughing and generally being kept company to bide your time when minor production hitches and inevitable scheduling glitches arise, whereby time seems to either drag or come to an unceremonious halt.
After my show closed I didn’t want to see the inside of a theatre for a good while, however I made an exception for Carly Sheppard, another Australian Indigenous performer because at one time she was a student of mine at NAISDA Dance College.
What can I say about Carly?
Well I think our shared experience associated with one particular annual End Of Year Show production (EOYS), titled Ref’s Party really sums it up perfectly. I had a tight deadline of five weeks to pull the show together. During the previous term I had been developing the overarching narrative underpinning the show together with the then graduating class of which Carly Sheppard was a member. The show was inspired by a 1970s movie titled Don’s Party, written by David Williamson. The movie’s narrative takes place at a party on the eve of the national election in 1969 in a suburban household. By comparison my narrative’s party was held in 1967, on the eve of the national referendum to grant Aboriginal Australians citizenship. Whereas Williamson’s characters are representative of the suburban voter, my characters were animated representations of the elements surrounding the event including Ref, who was the personification of the actual referendum and Bill, the other item attached to the agenda, Tenner, the ten percent of people who voted against the referendum and Gov, the government body of the day.
Needless to say, my vision was ambitious as this was a big departure from the usual EOYS proceedings which had developed into something more akin to a cabaret event showcasing a variety of dances. Carly was right there with me while her classmates were entertaining themselves, napping, chatting, stretching and doing crunches, waiting for me to make a dance on them. So I figured they could wait while together Carly and I realised each character and the ways they would intersect and interact with one another. We imagined what and how each character would talk and manifested physical affectations for each of them. Sadly Carly left the college before performing in the show herself but returned to see the outcome. I remember us talking animatedly about the whole show and recapping her role in the realisation of the concept.
Fast forward well over a decade later and Carly Sheppard’s show A Nightime Travesty, devised and performed with Kamarra Bell-Wykes (Jagera/Butchulla) is a deliciously surreal apocalyptic romp. Set on the last flight from earthly devastation Carly and Kamarra play an assortment of characters from a nod to quintessentially ocker Australian cultural icons including elements from the popular long running TV variety show Hey Hey It’s Saturday, to more heady Shakespearean hags. This show plays fast and loose and while not a dance production per se, it takes a canny choreographic nous to juxtapose so many seemingly disparate elements against one another, to take the audience on the once in a lifetime ride and invest in the absurdist characters and their equally absurd trajectories.
This show, its content and her approach, the deft which was employed, it never came as a surprise, but who knew Carly could sing? Well I do now.
My favourite moments in the show, the interlaced monologues, Kamarra as the lothario Captain with curiously powerful thumbs, against Carly’s troubled ingénue who has fallen for the Captain’s phallic charm.
So that was the Kia Mau festival for me. This blog was more a tour chronicle than a review. Special mention must go to the trip to a place called Zealandia reserve, which has a 500 year plan to restore their vast acreage back to a pristine state before anthropogenic intervention (aka human occupation) with my producer Fenn Gordon acting as very generous and knowledgeable host. To my Moriori lighting designer Karen Norris, who at a pinch became an accomplished lighting operator and who prompted me to look outside the theatre and into the rest of the esteemed surrounds of The Papa. Lastly to Phill Downing, the best sound collaborator, engineer and operator who somehow manages to ground us all with his gentle creative, yet firm, no bull$#!t approach to… well… everything really.
‘til next month. Or more accurately, next fortnight. You won’t be able to guess what’s in store, but it involves a big company and ice. Chew on that for a bit.
Vicki Van Hout
FORM Dance Projects
Blogger in Residence
P.S. As my mat hung in the Soundings Theatre within the Te Papa Tongarewa Museum, I wondered, ‘Does this means I have officially exhibited here?’ Well does it?