Dunedin ballroom dancing stalwart Stan Robilliard was buried yesterday. His famous remark that “Dancing is a vertical expression of a horizontal desire” is, I think, an apt overarching statement for the show Capturing Other, which opened in the Fortune Theatre Studio yesterday.

“Where lie the limits of the individual body?” is the question that introduces Capturing Other in the Dunedin Fringe booklet. It is a good question to contemplate as the four works on the programme are laid out before us in the intimate confines of the performance space. 

It’s a rich feast; sexy, provocative, puzzling and for the most part enthralling. 

Still Lives, choreographed and performed by Julie Van Renen with Geoff Gilson, is a pleasing on the eye well-crafted dance poem. There is innovative lighting and soundscape, hanging bananas which evoke a sense of picture postcard exoticism, and a pretty carpet that serves as a floor covering and landscape.

This slide show through a relationship begins with female high heel hip swivel, swishy skirt shimmy followed by the ritualistic dressing of the male with said female in attendance.

There is a sense of journey, of willowy eye-pleasing chewage of movement, as these two gorgeous ones navigate the ins and outs of their togetherness. Sometimes it appears as an  ‘all for courtship show’ until the woman finishes standing, beautifully, on top of the male’s shoulders by miraculous means. Tenderness, support, acrobatic feats and languid moves lull us in to this romance, even if intentions are somewhat blurry until they finally disappear, buried from our view beneath a carpet entwined with roses as an old person sings quietly. 

Change of scene – throughout the show there are in fact compelling intra-acts – and a laptop is placed as a triangle onstage, sounds gurgling – I am intrigued already. Dance Like a Butterfly Dreamboy, by Josh Rutter, creates a particular world as objects are placed deliberately on stage, including glasses with orange beroccas, fizzing. Stephen Bain is convincing; a sleazy, greasy tracksuit clad trainer reeking of pent up ‘issues’.

Boy’s stuff going on here. Two ‘athletes’ (Josh Rutter and Geoff Gilson), in lovely aqua rain jackets and super satin shorts, jump rope in feats of one-upmanship while trainer guy orchestrates / conducts their moves, shrill whistle spurting; a simmering dictator. I can see where this narrative is going.

Music by Clubfoot pounds us through some very funny routines of cajoled, manipulated squats, rond de jambs, flaps, twitches, in a crazy siva soup of movement that is not about ‘making friends’ with the audience or anybody else. Serious training going on here.

These guys are ‘here to win’ as they don boxing gloves and commence to ‘dance like a butterfly, sting like a bee’ under, around and over the outstretched arms of their trainer. Very funny! 

Frenetic training stations are chalked on the floor by trainer guy, and boxing boys dance desperately to fulfill the brief. Whiffs of sweat and erotic tension float across the beroccas.

 

And BINGO! As the build up becomes agonizingly taut, trainer guy jumps one of the boxers and all this action takes on a tinge of the homoerotic.

Male identity explored through ‘game’ (yes), ‘ritual’ (yes) and pedagogy’ (huh?) leads to excellent entertainment and a strong dance work. Not sure how complex it is though but then I’m not male.

I didn’t have the programme notes for this entire show and have read them in retrospect for Anna Bate’s work, The Adventures of Ghost Heart and Still Horse. It seems that the work, performed with a cluster of music sources, is a reflection on the work of 20^th century philosopher Bakhtin. Whoosh … That’s the sound of the ‘concepts’ driving this piece flying over my head. 

It’s the second time I have seen the work and I’m still completely bamboozled, although this time I did arrive at a reading of it as an ode to Santa Claus, complete with a vulvaesque red Xmas decoration (macro and heart micro) and a grey beard fetish that then doubles as a woolly mammoth look-alike contest.

I’m trying not to be flippant here; this is indeed me trying to ‘read’ this work. It feels a little desperate. I love the experimentation – the macro micro use of the video – which does give a sense of the internal and external landscape, I realise in retrospect, having read the programme notes. I love silver goddesses from the front of a Rolls Royce, especially covered in spit. I appreciate the intense and focused stare and delivery of the performers (Anna Bate and Julie Van Renen) but the pace and rhythm of the work is so monotonous that in the end despite all of the intriguing things that are onstage I am bored and confused.

Phew quite a full programme already, but wait there’s more.

Josh Rutter downstage – parka head lamp – crouching over some kind of unknown (to me) technological device, conjures onto stage a mouth puckering shamanic female samurai (Sarah Iwaskow), in face-distorted torch light, to launch us into Lightspeed Love, choreographed by Geoff Gilson. This powerhouse piece moves forward on shuffling sneaker-clad feet as this female figure unravels, unwraps and dances with a garish plastic dinosaur until she meets her match, when Gilson appears as a magnificent illuminated Godzilla. 

This deconstruction of the ‘love duet’ is well paced, funny and compelling as layers and layers are stripped away to reveal a raw and slightly dangerous sexuality. The electric performers commit fully as they thrash their way to a near naked conclusion. I appreciate how hard the choreographer pushes at his theme and the place we arrive at in the midst of a technological whirl of sound, videographic doodles and light: dishevelled, disarmed and agog at the potential between male and female energy.

It is heartening to see how this group of artists are maturing creatively. Their next challenge is to find an audience for their work. 
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