Dancing Geek

I managed to double up the awesome this Friday by travelling to Lincoln to see both my Dad, and Retina‘s latest piece, Antipode.  Having been lucky enough to work with Filip (company director) on a couple of different occasions in Derby it was great to see him in the Q&A afterwards as well – bonus!

The piece consists of four male dancers and a double bass player.  Whilst the guys are doing their thing on stage, the musician is playing, recording and mixing loops of his music, percussion and other clever tricks real time – an absolute treat for the audience (and probably the dancers too).

The dancing itself was mostly gorgeous to watch, and pretty full on for the whole hour.  Cue sweat patterns – all part of being a male dancer though, at least we don’t have to pretend that we don’t sweat.  There were the odd times when the unison wasn’t together, I caught a couple of moments where someone stopped to wait for the others to catch up and so on, but my Dad never saw any of that so maybe I’m being too picky.

The lifts were great fun, and even managed to perplex me as to how it was done on a couple – wonderful and frustrating at the same time.  The duets in general were excellent fun to watch and you could see the smiles on the dancers’ faces.  They even admitted afterwards that part of that was having to egg each other to keep going as energy levels started to flag.

Having 4 guys dance together was brilliant for me, as I got to see the differences between them and how, whilst I might not have the facility of one or the strength of another, they each had different limitations and natural abilities that made them unique and I’m no different.  I will admit to being horribly jealous at times, they’re all a few years younger than me, thus managing to make me feel old at 28, but mostly I was inspired and determined to find/create more opportunities to dance.

There’s only a couple of more dates down South to catch this, but it’s worth it – and if you don’t manage to see this one then check out Retina anyway.  They’ve been producing consistently great quality dance for a while now, and being based in the East Midlands it’s a real treat for us to have this based in our region, rather than down in London.

Dance4 in Nottingham runs an annual festival in October “to promote the work of artists who don’t classify their work as belonging to one particular art form, but instead challenge the boundaries of dance and performance” to quote Dance4′s new director, Paul Russ.  This year I finally dragged myself the measly 30 minute drive from Derby to get involved in nottdance09, and I’m very glad I did.

I’ll admit that my reasons were selfish, there were two workshops being run this year: one to share ideas and techniques, the other an artistic process.  Given that both these followed a performance by those running the workshop the evening before I could hardly miss them.

My only criticism of the whole affair would be the difficulty in finding the venues – and I’ve been to them before!  Given that it’s going to be dark at 8pm in October none of the entrances from the roads were lit or any signposts, resulting in being late for one performance and missing another entirely!  May I humbly suggest even just a large canvas sign that marks the turning you need to take off the main road – so that those of us driving over don’t miss out.  Both Lakeside Arts and Sandfield Theatre are so hidden from view, that I never even found the latter.  Of course, next time you can bet that I’ll being doing daytime reckie drives and getting full and complete instructions from friends before heading off (I swear Sandfield Theatre has moved!)

My involvement therefore was limited to the two workshops and their performances the night before.  The first, ‘The Swimmer’ by Rachel Krische, I missed the first half of, but thankfully those of us who were late (a fair sized group in the end) were allowed in to enjoy the second half of her piece.  Whilst the piece is improvised each time, there are strict rules, an improvisation score, and a specific improvisation technique used in this piece and it was these interacting layers that Rachel was able to introduce us to in the workshop.

The workshop itself was a wonderful process.  Rachel’s piece derives from choreography by Deborah Hay, and her teaching on awareness in dance.  The joining of these two areas that I have recently thrown myself into was hugely enjoyable and quite moving.  Seeing how these different layers of movement, awareness, internal questioning, and movement score could all interact and be maintained as a loose whole within the mind of the performer was fascinating and personally very inspiring.  I hope that I will be able to impart some of this in the work that I am doing at the moment with Chaos.

I still find it difficult to explain what the workshop involved, without just writing it out in minute detail, but the end result was dance that invited you to watch it, and without necessarily intending to communicate any great meaning or purpose was still captivating and engrossing to watch.  Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, sometimes playful, sometimes lost, it didn’t restrict itself to one thing but was open and free – the constraints of the score and movement serving to simply provide a frame in which to express oneself creatively.  A throughly enjoyable process to watch and to participate in, I am very glad I was able to experience this from both points of view.

At the same event as Rachel’s performance was a piece by Robert Hylton called ‘I don’t know, what do you think?’  Worth mentioning for his use of voiceover, and a beautiful piece of body-popping to Iranian drumming.  It involved the audience’s direct feedback and interaction, an interesting idea, but one that generally felt like under-rehearsed improvisation (if that doesn’t sound like too much of an oxymoron).  Those parts where he had clearly had time to develop them on his own were highly enjoyable, but the interaction with the audience felt a little awkward – which to be fair is something you can’t rehearse except in performance and this was the piece’s first outing.

The second evening’s performance I went to see was Oblivia’s ‘Entertainment Island 1′.  The first of three performances the group are developing from 2008 to 2010.  This is not an easy piece to watch, it lasts 50 minutes and seeks not to entertain but to show the core of what popular entertainment is.  There is a lot of repetition, but since their movement is not fixed to one meaning this means the audience has plenty of time to allow different interpretations and understandings of what is being shown to arise.  They describe their process as taking an idea that is too big, i.e. popular culture, and then working on it to produce something tangible and performable.  Given my current fascination with the idea of the new Information Age and its impact on global society, the idea of being able to find a route to dance was very appealing, even though my final style would almost certainly differ wildly from that of Oblivia.

Two of the artists ran the workshop the following morning, and with a group of just 4 attendees it was a wonderfully intimate and immediate environment – feedback was almost instant as we passed work between ourselves.  Given that Oblivia is a group of 3-4 artists themselves it was useful to try their practices in such a small group as well.

Oblivia is not a dance group, though movement is important in their performance, and as such the workshop was not dance focussed, but the framework of a process that we worked through is transferable enough for me to be able to take those parts that appealed and apply them to my current piece with Chaos.  Doing Qi Gong as a warm-up was a fun experience, and the size of the group meant that when we started to do creative warm-ups to connect we were already reading each other well after only 30-40 minutes of meeting most of the people in the room!

For me, the most interesting part of the process was the letting go of ownership of ideas by swapping work between the two pairs.  First we swapped ideas, then the development of those ideas and then we performed what we saw straight after creating a natural process of decay of superfluous parts of the performance, and a sifting of only those memes, concepts or ideas that stayed in your head.  Interestingly enough I managed to completely miss out the fact that the phrase I had just seen had started with the declaration “I’m going to kill myself!” – an impactful lesson in what is and isn’t picked up by the viewer.  This process of repeating what you’ve just seen was a wonderful way to explore ideas that are easily repeated, I’m not sure if it would work with dance that involved lifts or partner work, but as always in Chaos, it is by trying to take on each other’s movement that we learn to push outside of our own known comfort zone, and the results of trying to repeat this in a different context will be illuminating whatever the quality of the result.

I learnt a lot from this year’s festival (not least how to find Lakeside Arts in the dark) and I look forward to more of Dance4′s calendar throughout the year.

And another thing…

Another very important aspect of the workshops, and which applies to both of them, was the opportunity to meet some wonderful people.  Knowing that you have a shared interest to start with someone, and going through these engaging learning experiences together is a wonderful way to make new friends and I’m very pleased to have managed to get an email address or two with a view to making more dance happen in the future.  I don’t want to use the N-word, but the opportunity to make new connections and relationships is of massive value for all involved.

An entertaining piece that occasionally feels self-indulgent, Sense of Self was definitely worth going to see.

This piece was at times strikingly beautiful, the wonderful movement of the dancers playing only one part in this.  The imaginative use of light and dark, the luxurious animal skin rug, and the wonderfully complementary soundtrack, which never demanded your attention be drawn from the performers, but merged into a whole with the rest of the piece, all added their own layer of aesthetic enjoyment.

When the two performers danced together, you could see how well they knew and trusted each other, a complete union of movement that was delightful to watch.  The fluidity of their movement together was such that the two seemingly switched places without me noticing on a number of occasions- an interesting effect in the context of a piece discussing identity.

There were times however, during the non-contact duet, the latter section with the dress and when working with the balloons, when their previously excellent discernment in both content and duration no longer applied.

The non-contact duet looked like an exercise in changing levels, whilst the dancers grew intentionally and progressively more tired.  This length of this section felt excessive to address issues around wanting to be the same and yet different, or to highlight the amount of energy we put into maintaining such a state.  Not that these are not important areas to explore, but the more literal interpretation leaves less room for open-ended exploration and as such was not as rewarding to watch for such a length of time.

The latter section with the dress I found merely confusing.  Again, it felt like a more literal interpretation of sexuality and objectification, lacking the space to encourage thoughts to run it simply brought me back to this rather solid point, a cycle which quickly grew old.

I will openly acknowledge that the lack may lie with myself.  Such literal interpretations may expose only my own creative short-comings, however so much of the rest of the piece had obvious roots (clothing, evolution, social labelling, etc.) and yet still allowed a deeper, richer exploration of the subject for me whilst also remaining entertaining.  That so much of the piece achieved this so well makes these other areas seem unfinished, which is a shame, though I am pleased to note that it did not ruin the overall quality of the piece.

The third section I noted for criticism was the closing section.  The sense of climax and resolution was nicely achieved, in that it was very successful.  However the text again felt as though it was not yet ready, and the balloons seemed excessive and indulgent in a piece that had otherwise achieved so much with elegant minimalism.

As a spectacle, the text was enjoyable, in keeping with the rest of the piece, and had the potential to be very striking.  I think it could have been improved however by either reducing the amount of text and allowing more time for it to be digested or increasing the amount and leading the audience on a particular journey with it, the unfolding of a pathway through their ideas and exploration of identity.  As it was, I felt the volume was dictated by the book used, set at an arbitrary amount, and the choices made therefore equally arbitrary and unguided.  The sense of being guided through a journey of words had such potential here, I really liked the format they used, I just wish it had been more carefully crafted.

The balloons however I remain solidly against.  Other than adding an interesting framing and texture to the piece through their presence on stage throughout, they seem to me completely unnecessary.  The small gesture with the hat was enough to convey the issue of identity in celebration as a topic, and further exploration rather than self-indulgent whimsy would have been preferred.

My choice to pick apart what I see as the flaws of this piece should not indicate any displeasure but rather my enjoyment at working on the presentation of such ideas, whether they be my own or someone else’s work.  This was truly an enjoyable hour of performance that I would recommend to others.  Those moments that did shine were bright enough to more than accomodate a few darker spots.

Using a dyno-torch gave such an ethereal quality of lighting that I simply ceased to look for any interpretation and allowed my senses to be thrilled with the visual display being provided, a feast for the eyes and the soul.  The harsh contrast of flickering flourescent tubes that followed were an excellent way to support their exploration of identity through the lighting, as well as forcing a reaction from myself as a viewer.

The interconnectedness of their duets were so complex, and so smooth, as to elicit the bittersweet pang of jealousy and joy that I feel whenever seeing dance so skillfully executed as to leave me uncertain that I could ever match such grace.

The piece was skillfully crafted as a whole, the injection of humour or unison movement as a moment of respite and relief for the viewer were welcome.  Not too much or too little, it serves as an example of the fine choices made in assembling this performance.

(A performance by Melanie Demers and Laila Diallo – 5 November 2009, Deda, Derby.)