I feel that I will be forced to edit my responses to dance related action occurring this past month, as there was just too much of it. However this is a good thing right? No, it shouldn’t be a question, it is definitely good. Great even.
From Campbelltown Arts Centre’s annual Movement Movement dance industry panel to the FORM Dance Projects’ comprehensive IDEA workshops, showings and forums, to the Sydney Dance Company INDance and the Sydney Opera House’s Unwrapped season offerings, not to mention the Dance scheduled as part of the Sydney Fringe Festival. Yes, our city has really shined the spotlight on all things embodied.
I am not going to address each event in any specific order, chronological or otherwise. Instead I will just present my responses as they re-materialize in my consciousness.
Here goes.
Kristina Chan’s Brightness, presented as part of the INDance program was nothing if not refreshing. Part of a performative triptych beginning with A Feint Existence and followed by Mountain, Brightness was a real standout experience. I must confess up front that I did not witness this performance live, however I wanted to see the show so much I hounded Kristina’s people until I was given access to the studio recording.
Watching a video of a live performance has its advantages and disadvantages. In this case I would hazard a guess and say I was at a distinct advantage, because the camera was able to zoom in on the featured highly nuanced gesture and give it the weight it so obviously deserved.
Immediately I was plunged to the very depths of the oceanic floor. This placement was confirmed by the busy fingers of one of the dancers as they skimmed the other dancer’s body, in this two hander, like the frill of a sea mollusc as it traverses its underwater terrain. James Brown’s score, which very seldomly demarcated the aural experience and which worked in tandem with the low level lighting briefly catching an iridescence hidden within the costuming as the light penetrated from above the oceanic depths.
Once I got my aquatic bearings my dynamic and temporal expectations changed. Akin to watching a good David Attenborough documentary I became more sensitive to the minutiae of change.
The dance within Brightness took skill and required patience from the audience to appreciate its unfolding action. The repertoire was not loud and declarative, nor full of spectacle or overly celebratory. The very title brightness might’ve at first made the title seem like a furphy, for the show’s brilliance lay in Chan’s ability to quash the anthropocentric perspective. There were very few recognisable ‘steps’ as Chan had created a specific dance language to express her agenda rather than resort to the tropes of any one specific western genre. This takes both skill and courage. Courage to buck the trend to be readily defined, or packaged.
While watching Brightness I was prompted to remember two other artists. Dean Walsh for his unrelenting dedication sea conservation which prompted him to develop a movement vocabulary and a series of works around his practice of deep sea scuba diving including Fathom and Prime: Orderly and Linda Luke for her work Some Other Body featured within the YouMove company program titled Dance Meets Music whereby dancer Angela French performed an endless series of spinal undulations, while balancing a line of equidistant smooth black rocks. In Some Other Body French was also able to eschew her human form and enable a vision of animal-otherness come to the fore.
I guess Kristina Chan’s Brightness still looms large in my psyche as the theme that dominates her work similarly dominates my practice, as a bi-product of an Australian Aboriginal tenet, whereby we humans are but part of the fabric of existence rather than sitting at the apex bending and manipulating all things in the pursuit of increasing convenience.
Over the course of a week, myself and my FORM Dance Projects’ IDEA workshop participants endeavoured to place our egos aside in order to animate the ordinarily overlooked subjects (as/and objects) within our narratives. That meant bestowing first person status to a chair, an item of clothing, a tyre, or a hole in the ground.
It is almost inevitable that human expression of flora and fauna will experience an artistic uptake in a time when we as humans are being increasingly forced to ‘stay in our own lane’, to confine our humanly representations most analogously aligned to ourselves. As we turn away from our ability for placing ourselves in other people’s shoes our only recourse for exercising empathy is to give voice to any otherness in the cosmos.
This is not necessarily a bad thing.
In abrupt contrast to my IDEA workshop content and Kristina Chan’s Brightness was Alistair Mcindoe’s Plagiary, presented as part of the Sydney Opera House’s UnWrapped program. Plagiary was less an exposition on the successful pervasiveness of AI in our society than a revelation of its pitfalls. For what began as a novel exploration quickly became a monotonous gimmick.
Perhaps I was partly to blame for my overall perception as I did not don the glasses which would have concealed the generated text which was projected on a screen above the action and which orchestrated the choreography for the ensemble of dancers. Supplied to the dancers as an aural stream of continuous verbal direction via earpieces, the directions consisted of both literal bodily and metaphorical commands, the movement could either be read in tandem with the text shown above or interpreted independently with the glasses on.
This device was further explored by voicing the AI generated text in a simulated interview by two of the dancers. Each night a dance pioneer was brought back to life in this segment. Upon my viewing of this work it was Hanya Holm, considered one of the major influences in the American Modern Dance movement.
I couldn’t help but think in this case that if the work was referencing the artists from which it drew its material then it should’ be in effect been titled Provenance instead of Plagiary.
Also, how quickly we forget that Merce Cunningham had in fact been using AI as early as 1989. However, whereas Macindoe’s use of AI was used as a form of commentary and as a cautionary warning, Cunninghan began choreographing on the computer using a program called Life Forms in order to actively push the boundaries of human form.
I am sad that I will not get to see the inevitable reference to Cunningham in one of the Plagiary performances as this AI reference looping would possibly be the best and most surreal performances of all. Alternatively, perhaps this possibility is best left in the realm of my imagination.
However, the measure of a good work is not always in the satisfaction upon viewing it, but in the duration of ruminations it generates afterwards. And this work still reverberates in my mind.
Last but not least I was invited to see Wiradjuri classical dancer/choreographer Ella Havelka perform with her ensemble in collaboration with Romanian-Australian cellist Paul Ghica in a performance titled Cellodance to music by award-winning Australian composer Lance Gurisik, paired alongside Arvo Pärt, and J.S. Bach. This was a playful presentation which spoke to the origin of ballet’s social function through the use of contemporary gesture. I am very proud, as a Wiradjuri countryman, of Havelka’s generosity and drive. Cellodance was a testament to her commitment to explore the boundaries of her chosen dance genre while the ELLA Foundation she seeded, raises funds for Aboriginal dancers to access what is usually a very expensive endeavour. All I can say in relation to this formidable young woman is… “Watch this space!”
P.S. I haven’t quite finished listening and reviewing this year’s Movement Movement forums as they are quite comprehensive as usual. We need these as much as the dance itself as above all we are reminded through our industry discourse that we are the cultural custodians, the holders of knowledge of how we conduct ourselves and how we would like to be remembered.
Until next month.
Vicki Van Hout
FORM Dance Projects
Blogger in Residence