SEA CHANGE by The Wet Hot Beauties
Parnell Baths, Judges Bay Road, Auckland
21/02/2017 - 26/02/2017
Production Details
Created by The Wet Hot Beauties
Presented by Trilogy
Trilogy presents the Wet Hot Beauties in
SEA CHANGE
A metamorphosis of mermaids! A war cry of water ballerinas! A flotilla of femininity! Trilogy present the Wet Hot Beauties in Sea Change, a splash-tacular water ballet championing grrl power.
This February, as part of the Auckland Fringe and Pride Festivals, the award-winning Wet Hot Beauties make a spectacular splash at the Parnell Baths in their latest professionally choreographed water ballet offering, Sea Change.
More than 80 water ballerinas create a dazzling aquatic kaleidoscope, built on an emotional narrative based on profound transformation. Drawing from deeply personal experiences, Sea Change explores through dance the roles women play in today’s society. The work challenges the demands and expectations placed on modern women, as well as celebrates their resilience, courage and power. Set to a pumping sound track of legendary divas, Sea Change aims to entertain, inspire and uplift, and illustrates how community and belonging can set us all free.
Presented by Trilogy, Sea Change is more than a show – it’s a movement! A siren’s call to others to shine bright like a diamond. A powerful war cry to join the Wet Hot Beauties on the crusade to create joy one dive bomb at a time.
Wet Hot Beauties are an all inclusive, body positive water ballet company with a tradition of producing community-focused, feel-good water ballets both in the pool and at the beach. Wet Hot Beauties have produced two previous Fringe shows, Sirens and Swan Song, both of which were sold out, critically acclaimed, crowd favourites.
Please note:
This is an outdoor, all weather event. Show will go on rain or shine.
Parking limited. Best parking along Tamaki Drive and walk over train/pedestrian bridge to Parnell Baths.
Patrons agree to take due personal care inside the venue and abide by the health and safety regulations of Parnell Baths.
Poolside tickets are general admission seated. Gallery tickets are general admission standing with no seating but a birds-eye view! Some view restrictions.
Supported by Parnell Baths CLMNZ, and Creative Communities Scheme
Tickets: $30 – $40
Bookings: https://www.iticket.co.nz/events/2017/feb/sea-change
Dance ,
70 mins
Womanly vignettes from the Beauties
Review by Felicity Molloy 22nd Feb 2017
A profound and notable transformation occurs as dark comes down at the Parnell Baths. The night trains’ luminescent carriages pile on past and pool attendants haul out dividing ropes. The children’s playground locks in the scene of motherhood and its final splashes leaves space for the onset murmur of women, black-costumed, pink-eyed and gliding across wet concrete paths to usher us in. Onset vignettes of anticipation. A single pink ribbon our only barrier.
There are 80 beauties in this show, facing the performance coordinates of dance. At the edge of the pool, two beauties lean against each and rock their hips. Sea Change is a set of splendid dances, mostly set in group form in the hip height water, and set to music that foregrounds repetitive mantra-like words. In the splish splash cacophony of wet bodies, the mixed mode music becomes a conglomerate prompt – “What they’ve done to me” “Knowing what could happen”, “But I’m actually good” and other germane lyrics reveal emotive turbulences underlying the women (and one male’s) spirited movements.
Faces alive, wry, laughing, and grave are also sometimes at odds with the machinations of upper arm and body display, though they are gracefully released into the water, floated gently on the surface of water and sometimes faces and whole bodies dive under water. These soft references to synchronised swimming are as much a thought-provoking picture of control, support, grace and care. Beautiful backs, shoulders and breasts break back out of the water, and sometimes a bottom’s curve or leg completes the distinctive textural pride of women’s form.
Prolific imaginings of womanly life surface in fluorescent light: kitchen metaphors, a clean plate as mirror, rubber gloves and the metaphorical menstrual stream of red silk, make each gesture, embrace or even the odd provocative smirk, as the edge of the pool becomes a ballet barre, a flagrant recognition of female restraint, normalcy and the deepest urge for self-sufficiency. Through their community in dance, each of these women let us into life interpretations, and it is in a sense of wistful and sudden emotion, we watch them go. Wet Hot Beauties, way to go.
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