Roaming Bodies is a company of burgeoning independent artists, that bristles with talent. This show is a rich soup of choreography, sound and light that takes inspiration from the artist Matt Pine.
Dressed in a sheer white top and pants, Caspar Ilschner plays the audience in, on a modified trumpet. The sound is haunting and mournful, creating an intriguing  and whimsical atmosphere.
Ilschner puts the horn away, rather clunkily, once the doors shut and the light dims – it’s a pity the mood of the pre-show is lost and needs to be established all over again, which it does quickly.

Hollie Cohen has created an intricate AV design in the first scene of Stranded Pieces, where Ilschner rotates prone, on one side as if cellular, conjuring the beginnings of life.
On screen, cells mutate and replicate, shapes morph and shift in the microscopic realm – visuals in the time of virus is the first interpretation to spring to mind. The display is compelling.

Performing in the Dome Theatre at Bats Theatre is a bit like dancing in a wide corridor. Ilschner uses the space well and these limitations  are mitigated by the potentials of the lighting rig from from which Grace Newtown creates a vast array of visual effects. She also creates the highly textural set. She is assisted by intern, Max de Roy intern and Kaitlyn Johnston is responsible for the graphic design.

There is great truth in Ilschner’s performance, he is a highly skilled mover capable of a wide movement vocabulary and an ability to create phrases that simmer kinaesthetically. He lulls with flowing, pliable loops and disrupts with pent-up lurches and twitches. Interspersed are a few stock physical ‘tricks’ but these nestle organically within the whole. There is simplicity in his delivery; no unnecessary veneer. Repetition is used astutely and and there are, surprisingly, moments of gentle, goofy clowning.

His inimitable and indispensable partner in the work is sound artist Jackie Jenkins. From glops, to scritches, to snippets of a pop song, to pleasing sonorous riffs, Jenkins’s aural cache continues to grow as they make their mark on many performances in Wellington and beyond. The work rides on the depth of their maturing craft as well as the skill of Ilschner.

Deliberately, methodically, aspects of this onstage world are revealed and contemplated with naïve curiosity, as this man/creature constructs and learns about his environment then orders and codifies it – referencing the minimalist work of Pine throughout.  As is the way, order breaks down, causing mayhem, destruction and chaos. The music drives Ilschner, now in an unyielding white plastic suit with black stripes, into a frenzy of angular punched moves. Under startling blue light he becomes an unhappy dishevelled cosmonaut hurtling through space. The action, however, remains polite and could go further.

After the storm, the suited man maps and wanders arms moving away from the head in straight lines like antennae. He is bewildered, perplexed.

When Ilschner speaks, which almost breaks the spell, a psychological layer is added: the difficulties of the human mind and emotional realm when events, objects, time and space are not as they seem. This reality cannot fit nicely into a set place or box: ‘friends and foes apart’, ‘concept/reality’, ‘knowing up from down’, ‘keeping everything boxed up . . . safe in my mind’,   beliefs are not consolidated.  Abstract small black boxes, ‘stranded pieces’, on stage become concrete tangible things. It’s a risky twist in the performance, but the clever script, delivered with honesty, albeit underpowered vocally, adds depth.
Scenes then follow which consolidate and nudge the whole towards a conclusion.

One of the strongest aspects of this work is the sense of a thoughtful, logical journey: an overall satisfying arc.
Each component is well crafted and carefully placed. It is a gem of a show. 

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