In the black empty longish rectangle of the Basement performance area Van Renen starts the show with a lyrical solo that ends when her ice cream falls out of its cone.  It is funny, and the fun continues with the arrival of her two friends to make the requisite big fuss and clean up.  “That ice cream came into your life for a purpose” she is told by way of comfort, and the text on the back of a box of cones is read out.  It enjoins eaters “to crunch your way to the top”.

This episode then turns into a “trust fall” dance exercise, where a dancer falls backwards to be caught by a mate – but here they are just human, and there are a couple of misses!  Then there is another game that turns into a folding dance of going up and down – falling in love?

The vacuous optimism of the lyrics of the song “Catch a Falling Star” lead the girls on, as does trite advice provided from time to time by a father figure (unnamed, perhaps some one’s dad?).

There is a falling out with friends, falling off the radar, falling sick (during which a blood pressure cuff is introduced), falling off the wagon (which Hayday says she was never on) and where she tap dances amateurishly and talks with the audience.

Tunes are repeated, good sized silver stars keep turning up, and the tips of cones get eaten.  A 4 pane window frame and a plastic carton of ice cream also come and go, and the audience continues to laugh at the jokes from this range of interludes.  The three casually dressed dancers also come and go, but always return in the end as supportive friends, admirably mixing dance with spoken words, even having a good romp together.

The window frame is to recall a quote from Tom Waits “let me fall out of the window with confetti in my hair” but maybe that is advice that they do not take, as somehow the end is not quite as light hearted and funny as the beginning of the show, with Elsworth playing out a scene where she becomes more aggressive in her ‘climb to the top’ and her friends think she needs to apologise for being a pain.  So she is left sitting alone as if to think things through.  But her friends do return and they circle about her, until as a finale some 9 or 12 individual cones are carefully placed on the floor, only to be squashed and left as crumbs.

 A well thought-out, successful hour of dance where falls are danced and acted out, stupid advice given and taken, and where the dancers as three friends combine dance and talk to make the audience laugh and think.

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Sometimes you go to a performance and you leave wondering what you’ll write about it. The Way We Fall was simply brilliant and I’m not sure there’s a lot else that needs to be said. However…

The choreography, by Jessie McCall,  was clever, the dancers, Anitra Hayday, Sarah Elsworth and Julie van Renen, were beautiful and very funny, the soundscape, by Emi Pogoni, was quirky and the lighting was mostly minimal, except for a section with intense strobing. The Advice Giving Guest was also perfect – here in Dunedin Michael Elsworth played his part to perfection, dry and unassuming with beautiful elocution.

The motif of falling was expressed in a plethora of ways – falling stars, falling in love, falling off the wagon, falling in, out and down, and falling about with laughter (that part was the audience). Each was depicted using the minimal props (a window frame, a sphygmomanometer (one of my all time favourite words so I apologise but I had to use it – it means a blood pressure cuff..) and ice cream cones which summoned the Advisor and his not always very good advice).

I wondered about the ice cream in a cone at the start with van Renen’s opening solo – it seemed as though it was going to be a gimmick but it very quickly became a very clever use of a prop that I can’t imagine many performers would see as practical or useful for their creative process. It worked really well and seemed to intensify the emotive expression of several of the pieces, not least when van Renen dropped the ice cream and Hayday and Elsworth came tearing in screeching about ‘slip hazards’ and ‘disasters’. This very comic and relatable episode following hard on the heels of van Renen’s beautiful dancing set the scene for the show – twists of beauty followed by turns of hilarity.

Hayday’s drunken tap performance was great – the tapping itself not so much but then, she had fallen off the wagon much to her peers’ disapproval – but her expressive face and sharp comments had the audience in stitches, particularly those she sat down with.

Elsworth’s solo was perhaps the darkest but she danced every movement to her fingertips, each part of each movement articulated with care and definition and it made for mesmerising watching. 

The Community Gallery is a great little space for dance and was set up very differently to the last time I watched contemporary dance there. The seating was set in quite high and slightly precarious tiers, leaving a relatively small space for the exuberant dancers to move in but they used every inch of it.

I came home and I tweeted about this show and then I went to sleep and I dreamt about it. I don’t usually do either of those things so, my advice is, if you can, go to the last performance of The Way We Fall tonight or else start a petition to have it come to a town near you.

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A series of movement studies inspired by the common idea – to fall –are central to this dance work. Some of these ideas are fun, some charming, some simplistic and some more complex. The common denominator of an ice cream cone and biting the end off once the ice cream has fallen in the opening sequence serves as a link but does not generate depth in the ‘stories’. There are good ideas which have more room for development.

Three dancers, Sarah Elsworth, Julie van Renen and Anitra Hayday work closely together and have a good rapport both with each other and the audience. The venue however, seems a strange choice as the museum installation environment clearly did not reflect the work, and the floor was every dancer’s dread, concrete.

The idea of even eating an ice-cream in a museum presents an environmental quandary.

That said, the space was used well and the simple prop of a window frame provides an effective way to focus our sight lines and attention.

Advice for life – theirs or ours? Both? is randomly delivered by a ‘voice’ (possibly Al Green although that is not credited)  and the soundscape is effectively balanced and created by Emily Pogoni.

A personal opinion, but the rather girlie look could have well been avoided, and I felt that the content at times needed to be taken a little more seriously.

The “Catch a falling star” section utilised lovely glittery show time stars effectively, and this tune and its sense of catchy childhood memory was a constant recurring theme both musically and conceptually. Dance genres and personal viewpoints were interlaced and it was an accessible and entertaining hour of dance in an interesting venue. 

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