Back again with a quirky, charismatic energy and a colour scheme synonymous with fun and play, Funk (AD) by Holly Newsome’s Discotheque opened last night, roughly a year after award winning, Missing Lids featuring in last years Fringe Festival. The work unfolded into the space with discotheque music and samples from Pop culture, a signature aesthetic which Newsome hasplayed with over her choreographic explorations. Usually, we avoid the mainstream, and most references to it in the realm of contemporary dance, though that umbrella term in itself is ever evolving, but the structure of these comical references to Wii, Sims and many other virtual reality games, allows us an immediate entrance into the world of the piece and its given rules and edges. The use of gesture is on point, the bobbing and glitching in the performer’s qualities are things which recognisably live in the the quirky virtual world we see on our screens.

I do not question once the virtual existence of these characters, a credit to the choreographic crafting but also the commitment and clarity of the performers. The narrative of perfectionism is explored through snippets of character with a hyper positive 1950’s American dream, meets Barbie
approach, which is convincingly performed by Bree Timms. The rules of this world we watch as audience and consumers are clear and the small details have been paid attention to.

All performers are very well matched. The two male performers Chris Clegg and Levi Siaosi are of similar height and fluid but rhythmic movement qualities. In a section with heads fully covered by colourful stockings they’re movement quality creates cartoon-like, inhuman characters which is
super interesting to watch. The two females Holly Hepburn and Bree Timms are highly charismatic performers, with their ever present smiles and occasional glitching faces.

The colour sensitivity is something which I’ve been drawn to in both of Discotheque’s productions I have been present for. The attention to the colours which evoke fun and play drawing audience in to have a good time, with a hidden subtext of gender discrimination, false happiness and unrealistic perfection emerging as the work progresses.

The dancers sport matching pastel tracksuits, the males in baby pink and the females in baby blue. I love this upfront provocation to look into our attachment to blue and pink being gendered. The lighting throughout is subtly incredible, Elekis Poblete Teirney has a way of creating mood with
her attention to movement and colour. The vibe jumps from chaos, control and ecstasy within an instant and I’ve never seen the space illuminated in this way. And who doesn’t love bubbles, nothing which brings more wonder.

Though maybe not everyone’s artistic cup of tea or niche, I like the push to explore less of a serious contemporary dance route and enter a more lighthearted approach. Comedy is not to be feared when given the right amount of attention, something which Holly Newsome delves into well. Funk (AD) pushes past artists connecting just to other artists. Post show I spoke to a few audience members who were completely new to watching dance shows, it was their first ever. They were ecstatic and keen to see more work. I think that’s the goal of our work, right? To spread art further, create more entrance points and easy access for everyone to enjoy art.

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Funk (AD) is a new dance theatre work by Holly Newsome, a 2016 graduate of the New Zealand School of Dance. In an admirable move, she founded her project-based company Discotheque straight off graduation, and has been steadily making work ever since.

Having seen Newsome’s previous dances Shaving a Cactus (2016), Sweet Salt (2017), and Missing Lids (2018), it is a pleasure to observe the deepening of Newsome’s preoccupation with the strange, the quirky, and the sinister flesh of digital systems. Newsome recognises that difference is our contemporary age’s elusive object of desire, and thus the most fervently co-opted, absorbed, and commodified. Funk (AD) considers pastiche as a viable choreographic practice, or, indeed, as the fascia of contemporary life.

Funk(AD) is obsessed with what Hito Steyerl calls “the poor image”1, the fake and sardonic as biting critique. Newsome roasts life-style, or the styling of our lives: our practices of joy, intimacy, and community as well as those of surveillance and assimilation. Funk(AD) is a study of techno-systems of excitation and frustration: a dance of intercoms, escalators, and hand-dryers.

The performance is set to a disorienting cascade of digitally produced sound: computerised voice, synth, and melodies spliced and snatched from video games, waiting rooms, and elevators. The natural, the handmade, and the delicate has died, most likely strangled with a power cord. As John Giorno says, “LIFE IS A KILLER”2.

Newsome’s choreography is avidly creepy. For a large part of the piece, the performers cover their heads with a brightly coloured stocking. It is Botox gone wrong, the surrealist melting clock of the pharmacopornographic era. Gestural obsession pervades the dancing, with occasional, delightful urban dance inflections.

The dancers (Holly Hepburn, Bree Timms, Levi Siaosi, and Chris Clegg) deliveradmirable and committed performances.
I remember Siaosi’s crisp chest-popping, like cornflakes. Chris Clegg, lissome, captivates with unrivalled body sensitivity in his gorgeous becoming-liquid solo. Like silicone, or melted plastic.

Designer Elekis Tierney’s lights flash, disorient, expose, and dizzy. Tierney shows us that seeing is also a weaponised knowing: an exposure, a capture, and a persecution.

The triumph of Funk(AD) is to call attention to the anodyne as a violent and disturbing force. The pleasant, as Newsome tells it, tastes like arsenic.

1 Steyerl, H. (2009). In Defense of the Poor Image – Journal #10 November 2009 – e-flux.
2 Giorno, J. (2015). LIFE IS A KILLER [Acrylic on Canvas].

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