I love a good fly-in/ fly-out scenario. This past week that’s just what I did. I flew to Naarm (Melbourne) to catch a few events at the Yirramboi Festival. Here I experienced the usual gamut of reactions including intrigue, perplexity and sheer unadulterated horror. Oh and of course joy. Plenty of joy.
So, what shall I regale you with first, dear readers?
In chronological order it is then.
First up I briefly worked the foyer of the Melbourne recital hall before sitting slam dunk in the middle of the seating bank for renowned drag artist Miss Ellaneous’ new work titled Tina – A Tropical Love Story. Miss Ellaneous, aka Ben Graetz, regaled us with their introduction to, and longtime relationship with, the musical stylings of Tina Turner, which began for them in the early 1980s.
Tina aka Miss Ellaneous aka Ben encouraged us to get up and dance, and for those of you who know me, I don’t need to be asked twice. So, when Turner’s blockbuster single What’s Love Got To Do With It was belting over the speakers, the impulse to move took control. What began as a mere seat jiggle morphed into a standing explosion of somatic joy, which was only momentarily quelled by the restraints of etiquette, which forced me to vacate my seat, so I could boogie in the aisles.
The show was held together by Graetz overarching coming of/out of age narrative, which began in his childhood locale of Darwin and took him to Sydney, Britain and beyond. This raucous cabaret was well choreographed by Torres Strait Islander contemporary and house/ ballroom dancer Sani Townson, which I should have recognised through the energetic numbers performed by back up dancers Glory Tuohy Daniel and Cleopatra Pryce.
The great thing about this show is Graetz’ ability to include local artists in every line-up, such is the reach of their network. A highlight of which was influencer and singer Thomas Bevan’s (aka 2Joocee) rendition of Turner’s Simply The Best, which was so arresting the audience went from raucous to hushed to let the mesmerising voice of Bevan seep into our souls. It was that good. So good!
Next up I was amongst a chosen few, care of Blakdance, invited to see an excerpt of fellow Wiradjuri choreographer Joel Bray’s up and coming work for the Rising Festival, titled Monolith.
This is where my level of intrigue was piqued.
Six of us squashed into an eight-seater Uber and made our way to Kensington. To the Town Hall? Or a similar civic centre, an oversized rendered building, flanked by not one, but two, small ornamental, cannons. This sight certainly set a curious tone.
After a quick cuppa we were ushered into the hall. I love these places because the wooden flooring reminds me of my formative dance training which also took place under oiled or varnished boards. Once you have danced on wood, the touch of whatever synthetic material tarkett consists of, pales into comparison.
What sets Bray’s work apart from the Indigenous contemporary dance theatre crowd is his fearless enquiry, more often than not, expanding upon his autobiographical queer agenda coupled with his intent to break that wall that separates the spectator from the performance. Bray creates impermanent inclusive worlds for all to fleetingly inhabit. Monolith is, however, a departure in that respect. If I can incorrectly quote Bray, “It’s full on dance”, meaning the performers go for it ‘hell bent for leather’ so to speak, and from the snippet I saw, they certainly do.
The online dictionary I consulted supplies two meanings for monolith, the first, as a large single upright block of stone, especially one shaped into or serving as a pillar or monument, and the second, a large, impersonal political, corporate, or social structure regarded as indivisible and slow to change. Here is where the intrigue kicks in. Of Bray’s Monolith he proposes the dancer’s bodies are both. However the stone monolith Bray refers to is a megalith a natural topographic site, and the social structure Bray refers to is not merely slow but indomitable, formidable. In effect, Bray’s monolith belongs in that Australian Indigenous paradigm also known as The Dreaming, endowed with the ability to shape shift and transcend time.
This is why I love dance. It is the ultimate meditation whereby the impossible becomes a place in which the body dwells, in search of, but not necessarily, finding an answer.
And so I come to my last experience of the Yirramboi Festival this year, to the Chunky Move studio turned theatre to see Mythosoma, an Antipodean Pacific co-creation by divisor performers Ooshcon, Jada Narkle, Nancy Wijohn, and Moana Ete. As adaptable spaces go, Chunky Move’s transformation into black box is one of the best, while still providing an atmosphere of intimacy, it inadvertently renders Bangarra and Sydney Dance Company’s in-house theatres seem a little pokey by comparison.
I was curious about the title Mythosoma. In the Yirramboi marketing copy Mythosoma (a term I had never previously seen) was defined as a living symbiotic ritual where healing, creation, and reciprocity unfold in real time. The closest term I had found, when letting my fingers traverse the Google sphere, was mythopoeia, a term coined by J.R.R. Tolkien, which encompasses the manifestation of fictional places like the world where Tolkien’s hobbits live or Dorothy’s land of Oz, or the narratives that confirm and affirm the beliefs of a social collective, or finally, the process of creating a myth, a fiction, in order to reveal a greater truth. Hence mythosoma makes sense for me as the embodied form of Tolkien’s mythopoeia.
As a side note I was heartened by the fact that these two terms were generated by creative arts practitioners.
Additionally, once I realised that, although there was spoken text in the mix, Mythosoma was not to be deciphered as a linear narrative, rather as a poetic offering much like the dance component, to be apprehended as an expressive abstraction, I started to relax and enjoy the performers physical exertions. And the combined physicality on display was compelling, from the shaking duet which opened the show and which felt as if the dancers were possessed, to the solos, performed by each dancer in turn which showcased their singular genres and aesthetic preferences.
There were moments within the show which were imbued with a pedestrian ambiance, which curiously prompted more surreal unease than the vignettes which possibly alluded to another alternate dimension.
Oh, I almost forgot attending an exhibition titled PLATFORM held at Abbotsford Convent. Maybe I did that on purpose. Subconsciously of course. Because on one wall there was a blown-up photo of my face with my hand covering it. The horror was the craggy lined depiction of it simply dominating the gallery space. I had previously thought I might look like this in another twenty years or so. But no. What a rude awakening. However, my old self also appeared strangely exotic. Go figure.
My personal horror was extended to shots of myself awkwardly trying to move in pointe shoes. I couldn’t get up onto the box and looked very inept indeed. It didn’t matter that this was the point of that scene, a metaphor for failed assimilation to the colonialist ideal, my face flushed and I visibly cringed every time my eyes met the offending images of inability.
For in PLATFORM the renowned portrait photographer Jody Haines astutely captured myself along with other Indigenous choreographic peers Karly Sheppard, Joel Bray and Kamarra Bell-Wykes in moments of candour during our respective artistic developments (of which Bray’s Monolith is a product).
Ahh well. I am back and suitably buggered from this whirlwind festival foray.
Until next month.
Vicki Van Hout
FORM Dance Projects
Blogger in Residence