WIP '10 Showcase #3
03/08/2010 - 04/08/2010
Production Details
Season 3 of the Works in Progress Showcase series encompasses four new works by; Anna Bates, Jesse Quaid, Serene Lorimer and Alana Yee. Each of the choreographers are exploring stimulating themes within their works and embracing the unique set up Galatos offers which pledges an exciting show.
The programme encompasses themes including a scenic journey of the Twin Peaks with each performer completing specific tasks, exploration of context and identity, a duet performed under the influence of origami, and an improvised solo exploring the intrinsic space of self and Galatos.
WIP 10, a programme established by dance graduates from AUT, Unitec and the University of Auckland as part of a DANZ internship initiative, provides choreographers a chance to perform their original works in front of a supportive environment, receiving feedback from some of the dance industry’s top professionals.
At Galatos
Tuesday and Wednesday 3 and 4, 2010
Starts 7.30pm
$8 concession/ $10 adult
Technician: Stuart Phillips
An entrée, two mains and a really long dessert
Review by Jack Gray 05th Aug 2010
Station Project Lynch by Anna Bates
A group of women walk into a bar….
Bates tells us that we are sitting in approximately the right space or to change while it’s happening. Predictably the audience stay glued to their spots and it makes an interesting comment on our default couch potato mentality.
The ladies strut around; Evania Vallyon in black is vampy and like a werewolf. The music starts again, Emily Campbell in foxy fur and retro heels strides past, Jenny Nicholas saunters by in peachy top and grey trousers with her signature Princess Leia buns. Polka dot girl Zahra Killeen-Chance and Miriam Marler in a tough leather jacket also move nonchalantly through the space.
They start again, hands splayed, crouching, heads moving, bobbling. Twitches contrast with soft music. Bates goes walking past and tells a newcomer to sit on down.
Awkwardness. Repeat music and walk around again. Lip-synching: “you take me for a walk under the sycamore tree, the dark trees that blow baby”. Shoulder tension, twisted hands and jerky knees.
I start to think murderous thoughts. “Blah blah lesbian bar?” or at least I think that’s what my friend mumbles. As it is film noir-ish, I decide to survey the scene: There are a couple of park-hands and patterned lights and black and white zigzagged papery floor mats.
The performers progress to the couch in little interludes. I notice a TV with an image of a whirring fan. A slow, meaningful reprise is happening in the corner and on the chair. Lifting, breathing, inhaling. There is a deliberate pick up of the chair. “Coming in for the prowl” mutters my friend. Nodding, mouth open, face-to-face sitting opposite on chairs.
Inwardly I think this piece could play all night long in a bar inhabited by people who don’t know its happening. My last note is a scrawl saying “Twin Peaks-ish”. I am later pleased to be told by one of the dancers that the score was based on still images captured from the Twin Peaks TV show and conceptualised for a Choreographic Methods paper at Auckland University playing with “a live, shifting dialogue between collaborative and non collaborative practices”.
Fold Me Finite by Serene Lorimer
Sam Wood is sitting at a desk with a piece of paper and announces “How to fold a butterfly. “Pick it up and flip it over. Crease it, fold it in half” she chimes like a child who has rote-learnt something. Jesse Quaid enters and throws Wood off the chair and resumes the instructions.
The lighting is from both low and angled above, creating a condensed space. The black curtains are strewn across the background showing peeps of concrete behind. Quaid splats against the faux wooden floor: dirty and dusty from nights of seedy dance parties.
When their dance becomes a duet, they are fast, lithe with clean and crisp lines. Their movements echo the spoken text, folding, lefts and rights and spinning. Although it seems somewhat literal, the execution is springy with tidy feet, constantly manipulating each other, the flow; the stop, start, turn, lie, placed and transferring of weight.
This piece is a revision of a work made for last years Unitec 3rd Year Graduation performance where these performers, choreographer and WIP producers all came from. Lorimer’s notes say: “It is natural to shift easily between manipulating an object to our will, manipulating a person to our desire”.
As a viewer, I wonder what it might be like if the text was dropped so that the movement could have its own abstract meaning for the audience; whether the masculine vests and trousers were purposeful as a visual statement, considering two women performed it. And lastly if the blankness on the faces could be developed to look at other performative states maybe about objectivity and desire, that could take both the movement and audience’s imagination to other places.
Tracing Terra Firma by Jesse Quaid
A solo by Quaid begins crouching in a silhouetted light. Chirping cicadas and a hum prompts her body to undulate with fast hand moves and a deep lunge. Sweeping, swiping, dipping, stirring, shoulders, elbows all in continuous motion.
The light transfers from spot to spot, flickers, dim. As the motifs are explored, I consider the constant timing and wonder where the tension might/could build. Even lower lunges. Electronic buzzes and spats play. Is it a praying mantis dance?
Asking her afterwards if this was a new piece she replies it was an improvisation she has worked on for three weeks. It seems to be a personal experiment that sits in a flux of places that she seems curious about without necessarily having arrived at one particular destination.
Her notes say: “What is this? Hmmmmmmmm…… Perhaps it is a fragile construct of habitual patterns and forms, teetering on the fluid edge between past and futures, or a mental and physical house of cards in four dimensions, or just a body playing in time and space.”
Use Chopsticks Much? by Alana Yee in collaboration with Will Barling
Video Interlude #1: An elderly Chinese man being interviewed (with a banana as microphone) tells us his name is Martin Yee (Yee’s grandfather). His father came to
Dance Interlude #1: Yee rolls over slowly all in black. Barling sits at a couch in jeans, ‘stroking’ himself in a sexual and voyeuristic way. Her legs are wide and gaping, she is soft and beautiful: Slick, black shiny bob, necklace and shoes. Her movement is clean, directional and gentle in contrast to his fevered ‘spanking of the banana’ that he throws at her lying body upon climax.
Video Interlude #2: “When I was a little kid, we lived on the same street that Carmen Rupe had a dairy on… I would pour coffee for Carmen’s clients… A man once asked how much would I cost?” reminisces Yee’s middle-aged mother. She speaks of how Carmen influenced her, being so glamorous and colourful. “Had quite an impact,” she says as she fondly shows a picture of Godzilla-sized bewigged Carmen in her “hey-day” then talks about Carmen’s strip club “The Balcony”. Her definition of herself is “Kiwinese – Chinese background behind me and living the
Dance Interlude #2: Barling enters energetically and tries twice to wrestle reluctant women out of the crowd till one gets up and does a 10 second impromptu salsa with him. He announces himself as “Nick Sabatino” and dryly comments on the state of the audience full of “Hobos and Hippies”. He then draws our attention to the top of the stairs where “Miss Yee” appears wearing a fabulously Lady Gaga-esque newspaper and post-it note avant garde creation with crazy white sunnies and high heels. A friend can’t help herself and says out loud “Nice legs!”. Sabatino takes Miss Yee to a couch decked out with Chinese fans for a hilarious TV talk show style segment. He offers her a cup of tea, which she eagerly accepts. “I love tea,” she says as he bleats on about Chinese tea and Green tea like an infomercial. “Your English is pretty good?”, “
Video interlude #3: A young long haired teenage boy (Yee’s little brother) starts with a traditional Maori mihi and says he wants to be an archaeologist and loves consoles and games. He wants to take martial arts to be a good fighter. When asked what he considers herself to be he says staunchly, “Full on Maori since I’ve never been to my Dad’s country.”
Dance Interlude #3: Barling glides down the staircase singing an original ballad rendition of Tina Turner classic ‘Private Dancer’. It is soulful and beautifully expressed. Yee is dressed in a sexy transparent black and gold shift with splits at the thigh, at first doing a deadpan salsa before it transforms into fast swipes, with beautiful groundedness and movement that tells a story.
Video interlude #4: A younger boy (Yee’s nephew?) says he loves video games, DVD’s and that he wants to be a racing car driver. When asked where he is from he says without hesitation, “Born here, half Samoan, quarter Maori, palagi and a little Russian” (maybe Chinese but he spoke so quickly).
Dance interlude #4: Yee is standing with a
Watcher Celine Sumic summed it up brilliantly I thought when she described her experience of the night to me as “a smorgasbord… no not really a smorgasbord… more like an entrée followed by two mains… and a really long dessert”.
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Comments
Raewyn Whyte August 5th, 2010
Clever use of objects in Dance Interlude #2 to emphasise issues around stereotyping/collectivisation of "Asians" in the New Zealand popular imagination -- the talkshow host had such difficulty with Yee's Chinese-ness that it was a Japanese tea set from which he offered green tea, Japanese fans were used as the backdrop to the "interview", and he gave his guest a Japanese Lucky Gold Waving Cat as a thank-you gift.
And the flag, very poignant in the closing interlude, so unusual to see a NZ flag wielded in any kind of non-ceremonial performance...