Last Thursday, I experienced my first programme of this year’s Resolution festival at The Place. It consisted of three around 20-minute-long pieces (as usual at this festival) which, shortly, could be described as a speculative lecture, dark drama, and buffoonery. All three performances were well made and presented and deserved to be documented textually.
LOREN MCK – LESBIAN DANCE THEORY (PART 1 – AGAIN): LIBERATING A SPECULATIVE FIELD
Lesbian Dance Theory already exists. Loren is working in relation to the field and resistance to its origins.
This seriously humorous lecture and multimedia performance centres around dialogues, practices, histories and futures of those who identify as, with or adjacent to the term Lesbian.
Cast and Credits
Performer: Loren McK
Technical support: Courtney Nettleford and Nic Collins
R&D support: Sophie Holland, Sean Murray and Osian Meilir
Mentors: Florence Peake and Martin Hargreaves
Interviewees: Eve Stainton, Florence Peake, Shivaangee Agrawal, Jules Cunningham, Jay Yule and Eleanor Perry
The first performance was my favourite in terms of how it was created and performed. It was a lecture-performance with video excerpts projected on the screen broken into strips and unevenly (in width and depth) distributed through the stage space. The strips, each about one meter wide and ten meters high, all had different embroidery and, as a result, had various looks.
It was a solo (one performer on stage live) but supported by several other dancers speculating about Lesbian Dance Theory (in their audio and video interviews), as well as Loren was multiplied on the screen (probably videoed in Siobhan Davies Studios) when she was dancing at the end of her piece.
It was an airy gesture dance with nuanced and delicate long fingers and head movement. The dancer floated through the stage space with intricately organised but simple steps. This kind of dance opened the evening and closed the lecture-performance. Besides, it was performed in a miniature form while the dancer was reading from her smartphone (in one hand) while the other hand was dancing involuntarily. This dance seemed to be in indecision or when there was a lost enthusiasm and tiredness of fighting and resisting the establishment. I could feel the frustration. I also feel invisible most of the time. I guess most of us expreience it quite often.
It also reminded me of what I feel when I dance what I like and present it in the way I like, and at the same time, I understand that this is not what is expected from dancing (to entertain, infect with energy, excite – to be considered a successful dance), then one way or another you feel weird. I cannot precisely name the feeling; it is something close to guilt.
Loren’s dance was devoid flirting with the audience and deliberately emphasised expressionlessness. As if in a whisper, as if the dancer is modest and does not show herself in full glory, while this may also be the desired and/or feasible range of movements for this dancer. Yet, it was performed effortlessly, which, as we all know, is not easy to accomplish.
The performance was supposed to challenge a widespread perception of a dance performance – it indeed did. At the same time, I got used to seeing this kind of work, and now this is what I feel comfortable about, willing to see more, and can appreciate.
I do not identify myself with and do not relate to the lesbian community; yet, I feel some sameness (shared values) with Loren in terms of her artistic philosophy and how this work was made and presented. The performer was utterly sincere; she directly spoke about what she felt at the moment. Any topic/theme raised by the artist in performance would be a pleasure for me to watch/experience, yet the chosen topic is exciting, and I empathise it.
The work presented some puzzle pieces of the Lesbian Dance Theory that outlined a picture of the theory. I would like to see the continuation of this work and collect more puzzle pieces to make this picture even more manifested.
THE SHAPE OF A DAY – BEA BIDAULT AND THEO ARRAN
The Shape of a Day is a contemporary dance duet, created by Bea Bidault and Theo Arran.
The performance takes the audience on a journey where the subtlety and details embedded bring human behavior closer to dance, as well as exploring the abstract movements and rhythms that bring the narrative together.
‘Nobody can question that things fall again. A man gets sick and suddenly on a Wednesday relapses. A pencil on the table falls twice in a row. […] Theoretically, nothing or no one would think of falling again, but the same is bound to, mainly because they fall back without conscience, falling again like never before.’
Julio Cortázar
The duet explores how a couple takes care of one another, what losing the ability to relate with our surroundings means, and how animism relates to the concepts of purpose, identity and being alive.
Cast and Credits
Choreographers: Theo Arran and Bea Bidault
Performers: Edd Arnold and Bea Bidault
Mentor: Lali Ayguadé
Rehearsal Director: Theo Arran
Strangely enough, they did not credit music/sound creators while using some music and text (recordings) in the performance.
The dancers wore black: Bea – shirt dress knee length, Edd – long sleeve shirt and trousers, both – ankle length socks. Possibly, because of the black costumes, but also based on what dancers projected and which music/sound was applied, the piece created a dark and dramatic atmosphere. It raised associations with the WWII time (to be honest, being focused on dance, I did not really follow the text/music recordings, which possibly specified another time period). The dance would perfectly work without any music/sound accompaniment. The movement was powerful, exquisite and telling.
Two souls dancing? A human being and their angel? The choreography seemed unisex/universal to me: it could be performed by two male or two female dancers. Bea and Edd were quite identical in terms of movement. If this is a couple, they express themselves similarly and exist on equal rights in the relationship. Watching their dance, for some time, I thought they represented siblings.
This dance had a storyline. To me, on that day, the piece represented a progression of the level of intimacy in a couple (in fact, considering this dance, I could think of any couple: mother and child, teacher and student, friends, siblings, and many more).
They started in a perfect unison, like swimming in the same river in parallel, just glancing at each other sometimes. Their dance had a beautiful flow; in the beginning, they synchronously moved a lot in parter, playing with balance and moving from knees. When they met eventually, their following dance was hand in hand literally. Later, Edd fell, and Bea had an expressive gesture dance. They finished their dance firmly embracing each other.
NEFELI KENTONI – WALL OF BABEL
Three bodies on stage, confronting each other’s tongue; mother tongue.
They are in a state of constant translation; until words are not enough, until movement is not enough, until taste, music, memories are not enough.
The Wall of Babel, is a multilingual performance piece interrogating concepts of identity, language, and translation. The fragmented narrative of the performance taking the structure of the human cycle and revolves around the characters growth and their attempts for communication. The audience does not always understand what the three bodies say, but it is present throughout.
Cast and Credits
Writer/Director: Nefeli Kentoni
Performers and Devisers: Melina Koutsofta, Santi Guillamon, Pablo Temboury, Fatima Rodriguez, Kenny Lai
Music Composition: Manos Stratis
Musicians: Manos Stratis, Elana Sasson
Production Assistant: Marita Anastasi
The use of live music and vocal, whimsical technology (overhead projector that I remember being used at school at the end of the 1980s) and the number of people (ten, eight of them in person present on stage) involved in this (most probably, low-budget) production were impressive.
Everyone wore sports shorts, long socks, and short sleeve shirts, with a bit of a variety in colours and styles. All the created characters were adorable!
What I find the most interesting is the number of different frames. There is a frame of the action produced by three performers (speaking three other than English languages) as a core of the piece, but there are also two narrators (speaking English) who direct the performers. The narrators are higher in the hierarchy in this case. I wish the performers rebelled against the narrators, but instead, the narrators joined the ‘play’ of the performers at the end. There is also an accompaniment (generated by the musician and vocalist) that amplifies what happens. Additionally, one more layer is the projection that provided a translation of the performers throughout the performance and created visuals and lighting effects during the war part. In fact, as a rule, any dance performance has a sound accompaniment and lighting (but those who produce them do not appear on stage), yet, in this performance, sound and visuals were manually managed in front of the audience.
The idea of playing with different languages is amusing. It was fun to observe people expressing themselves differently not only with different languages but also with different facial expressions, which are culturally based. How would they interact without directions from the narrators? How readily the performers rushed to explore the theme of connecting their tongues (that seems potentially threatening, in particular remembering COVID no touching regulations)…
People as puppets/toys (or screws?) in the hands of power-holders? People who do not express their own will (only follow instructions)?
The war act was not fun for me (while it was cleverly directed). I do not want people even pretend/imagine shooting each other.
Eka Zharinova 