HIGH UP IN THE TREES

Coming in. Going out.

{Incoming.}

Incoming:

Louise and I each receive a contributor’s copy of 1110/5, spring 2013, twenty-three postcards featuring the work of artists and writers, published by MIEL books. Just add a stamp, chimes Éireann. We could not be more thrilled to see our collaborative collage, A composition based on the stories collected from old seafarers (II) in print. And upon the reverse, the words of Shana Youngdahl, It Is Alice They Stare At.

 

One copy of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, with artwork illustrated by Yayoi Kusama, published by Penguin Classics, 2012



Outgoing:

Various zines, greeting cards, and lithographic offset prints as our 25% off sale continues until the end of May. (Type in the code MAY to receive the tasty discount, should our paper wares tempt you. We are ready to just add a stamp, in the name of symmetry completion.)

Incoming. Outgoing. It's as simple as that late on a Monday.








{Outgoing.}

Purchase a copy of 1110/5
Featuring writing by Jon McGregor, Roxane Gay, Juliana Spahr, Nick Flynn, Matt Bell, Amber Sparks, Neele Dellschaft, Matthew Welton, Shana Youngdahl, James Cihlar, Mensah Demany, Laressa Dickey, T.J. Jarrett, Ali Gharavi, Polly Atkin, Metta Sáma, Arlene Kim, Steve Himmer, Rachel Moritz, Hannah VanderHart, Carol Rowntree Jones & Valerie Wetlaufer
With images by Kathryn Clark, Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, Ilse Weisfelt, Ben Terrett, Shari Altman, Ivan deBoom, Elsa Mora, Marion de Man, Wil Freeborn, Heather Smith Jones, Mónica Naranjo Uribe, Yuko Matsui, Amy Friend, Lisa Congdon, Leo & Pipo, Lisa Solomon, Brian Aldrich, Cathy Cullis, Marie-Klara González, Camilla Engman, Helena de la Guardia, Thomas Sayers Ellis & Éireann Lorsung

+ Monday's gloom banishment looks like this. (One exciting parcel from MIEL books in hand. Thank-you. X)
+ In Amy's hands

Pharaohs and Sirens.

{Femme aux longs cheveux, Man Ray, 1929}


{Mother of pearl lorgnette opera glasses by Austrian optician Otto Schleiffelder with a magnification x5.}
 
Won over, converted, altered, and changed. A trip twice to the opera in recent weeks has led me to rethink the art form I knew and know so little about and I find myself sufficiently wooed, enticed, and on lookout for more. Eye-filling spectacle, skill, and tales familiar served as ample encouragement. Ceremony and costume happily aiding and abetting the transition, fostering along the way a new found appreciation for binoculars, those curious seeing devices that augment action and amplify beauty on stage. The grandeur! The polish! Just like Galileo (1564–1642) searching the magnificent magnified heavens (with the telescope that enabled a magnification of x30), I have watched the brilliance of a large production unfurl before my eyes. I have felt as though the only person in the theatre as I hold them up to my eyes. Looking at a performance, in part, through a pair of binoculars more likely found in a twitcher’s nest, I have felt as though I am viewing it as if through a stereoscope. The scene appears larger and in detail, and, more importantly, all mine. Such is the curious ownership a view through opera glasses imparts. Balanced in my hands, I have ancient Egypt. I can see the faces of the deliciously fake big cat pelts that drape the shoulders. It feels much like holding something precious, secret, my own select view. Is this the thrill of a lighting technician holding a performer in a ball of light, spot lit on the stage, supporting them in the perfect moving blob of white illumination? I press my eyes up close to the little rubber frames that support the lenses and I see stage makeup and fabric crease and shimmer. I see a fragment in this peep show. Something highlighted which otherwise would not have been. Yes, I’ve been swayed by their brilliance. They illuminated both Partenope’s suited suitors and Ethiopian slave garb in equal portion. When the optical aid yields treasure, I don’t care if I look pretentious in the dark. From Aida’s sets that toy with creating the all-important optical illusion of depth to the shadow play and smooth lines of the tickle that is Handel’s Partenope doused in Surrealist dream logic, I have been very lucky to have seen both productions this season. Graeme Murphy’s direction of Verdi’s Aida reminded me of silent and early film cinematic epic staging that can make a cast of many seem like hundreds, and the desire to make like an Egyptian frieze on the conveyor belt when next I am at the airport to pick up family will be hard to resist. It read like a painting beautifully orchestrated. The Nile an abstract band of blue. From Aida I took away with me in my pocket the sense that no detail is too small. From Partenope, a sense that the first idea that manifests is oft the one to chase. Drawing upon the influences of Man Ray, Breton, Max Ernst, and Dali, “...desire, [is] the sole motivating principle of the world, the only master that humans recognise. (André Breton). Seduction, that is what both were to me.


{From the growing Foyer Suite, Mum and me in anticipation of Aida (in April).}


{And in May, in giddy anticipation of Partenope, with Louise too.}


{Theda Bara as Cleopatra, 1917}


{Stereoscope illustration, 1895 (Edinburgh Photographic Society)}
 
+ Opera glasses and Jealousy glasses (The College of Optometrists, London)

Windswept. (Of Birds and Fishes / Over Vissen en Vogels)

{Hold fast, lest you fly off.}

Flying back to me from the Netherlands, my prints created especially for the exhibition and collaborative artists' book Of Birds and Fishes / Over Vissen en Voggels. From this bed, with the wings of a bird, I flew to the sea as I slept last night is a work from 2010, and here, as refresher, if you will, a look at the process of printing and signing.

Now that the edition is returned to me, I have listed several prints of From this bed, with the wings of a bird, I flew to the sea as I slept last night (2010) in our online store.

Below, a closer look, one windswept day. And should you be tempted by this work, or indeed any other things Louise and I have listed in our online store at present, we will be having a mad May Sale come Monday. As of Monday and right through until month's end, everything in our store will be 25% off. Simply enter the word MAY to receive the discount, my dear ones near and far. Three little letters, m, a, y, one after the other and together a little happiness we hope it spells for you.
















{...I flew to the sea.}

Seven plus three.

{Seven recent instagram captures from the month of May but five days old, and three beautiful illustrations I found stored in a folder of images I find beautiful but which I unfortunately know little to nothing about. (Should you know the source of these Russian works or the tale they depict, do let me know. Guesses welcome.)}

Beautiful May, beautiful autumn, this Sunday night smattering random is brought to you by an eye rest much needed. Screen for screen, I grant you, but with fewer moving parts. You see, I am working on a zine I've long had in mind. A zine all about Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie's Hercule Poirot. Of it I can tell you, it involves screen captures of murders. It brings together my love of graphs and lists and order under the umbrella of fandom. That is the hope. It is a long way from complete.

Of zines, thank-you to those of you who placed an order over the weekend for my newest zine, Genova to Johannesburg (Johannesburg to Genova). Tomorrow, to the Post Office I shall head, no doubt capturing the pocket of the world I know as I go.

+ Agatha Chrisitie essay published for the first time
+ From Otto Neurath's The Transformer: Principles of Making Isotype Charts (via Brain Pickings)
+ The Golden Horse Express proves the best and most reliable postal service (Lisa's 1,000 doilies)
+ Percy the Hopeful (via Pasadena Mansions)
+ Louise and I are excited that editions of our newest collaborative artists' book, As inclination directs, is bound for the collections of both the State Library of N.S.W. and Victoria. We are thrilled!

Travelling from head to tail.

{Genova one way, Johannesburg the other.}

A deliciously quiet evening at week's end provides me with the perfect chance to introduce you to a recent zine that brings together collages from two independent artists' books of mine. This zine is a bound tête-bêche (from the French meaning "head-to-toe", and also often referred to as upside-down or reversible binding, it is a relative of dos-à-dos). You can begin your journey in Genova before flipping over to Johannesburg. Or vice versa, my friends. It's up to you.

In Genova, from the artists' book Before all colour faded (Ricordo di Genova), you will discover that washing lines make great pathways for those nimble of foot and whom are not afraid of heights. Whilst in Johannesburg, in the artists' book In search of a time the heart does not recall (Souvenir of Johannesburg), you may sight Diana monkeys eager for the old joys in Pritchard Street.

With a familiar character at the feet (I give you, Percy), and a volcano in the background (Guilfoyle's Volcano built in 1876, Royal Botanic Gardens), here is a closer look at Genova to Johannesburg (Johannesburg to Genova):












{Scenes from Genova and Johannesburg in hand at the Royal Botanic Gardens.}

+ You can purchase a copy of this zine for $8 through our online store

+ Some unusual and exquisite bindings, Chetlam's Library
+ A Captive Diana Monkey on a Wall against a Landscape with Four Colorful Birds in the Sky by the Dutch artists Melchicor d' Hondecoeter, 1690 (Toledo Museum of Art)
+ A charming tortoiseshell box for snuff or sweets with a micromosaic of an animated monkey clasping a cherry by the Italian artist Giacomo Raffaelli, 1794 (Toledo Museum of Art)
+ Looking very much forward to receiving my copy of 1110/5

In order to achieve a particular end.

{An afternoon of collage awaits.}


{A necklace of mice to frame Louise's Southern Boobook owls.}


{Something new and something collaborative takes final shape.}

proc·ess 1 |ˈpräˌses; ˈpräsəs; ˈprō-|
noun
1 a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end : no external noise could disturb the working process.

When earlier today Louise posted a part of her drawing process, it led me to think about my own methods of working. I can work anywhere, be it collage or writing. I’ve no especial requirements. Background noise is not an issue for me, so long as it is background noise and not foreground fuzz. Nor is at issue for Louise. No, so long as the mind remains focused on the task at hand, the house could burn down around us and we’d neither of us know. Correction, we’d neither of us care (if you’ll pardon my exaggeration fanciful and forgive my point hammering). So long as one is engaged in that beautiful oft-rare zone of focus, all else can crumble. When the mind is not full of chatter and tasks to later do, one can dance in peace until the moment departs. For it is, for me, fleeting. It can depart after hours on the floor collaging or it can make hasty retreat after less than an hour of writing. It is best grabbed with both hands when it appears (as I seem to always be writing to those I teach painting to through Open Universities Australia for RMIT). For contrary to common belief, it is not shortness of time that leads to work going unfinished and challenges not met, it is the absence of want. It is the lack of idea or desire. Without this, it is very hard to work. It is near impossible.
 
However, you can court desire, you can coax it from resting place. You can pretend to ignore it or summon it cheekily from a film seen in the late morning. Suddenly there it is, sitting beside you in the darkened cinema, woofing down your popcorn. You can organise it and anticipate it through practice and disciple too. My own idea creature appears with water. Watering the garden, showering, or washing the dishes, it is not as yet too fussed. Indeed, for me, the focus of working is akin to being in an infinite swimming pool. Submerged under the water, I can hear other noises in the distance, but they are not near. They are muffled and thus easily blocked out or pushed away. I ignore these distractions and remain with blinkers in place of goggles on. Blinkers that vanish as quickly as they’ve formed and I am then left with my ideas and beginnings to flesh out, polish, and complete.
 
For me, my studio is a drawing board, or a blank page. My materials are stored throughout the house. Glue, scissors, brushes, collected source material, weights to press paper, and so on. In all, my studio could be said to be 58cm X 90cm, the size of my main drawing board. It is how much space is enough. I do not need a larger space that I would only fill with paper towers and things for later. I don’t need natural light, though it is preferable and far kinder a mistress. I do not need much, really, but I do need a spark, an idea to chase like a figure running ahead of me in the woods. Idea hunting is physical stuff, don’t be fooled. If you’ve a net, I advise it. I say net, but, well, you know I mean focus. This is what I have been thinking about today and I wish, like Louise, that I could have another stab at answering Professor Sasha Grishin’s question about whether or not artists care about where there work ultimately ends up after it has been created. Off the cuff, Louise said that she did not mind where the work ended up, and I agreed. Perhaps what she meant and I agreed with was that at the time of blinkered process, all else fades away, that such things, important though they are, come second to the work.
 
+ Just your regular Saturday
+ Dusty Sisters Riverbath
+ 10 of 1,000

Wend one's way.

{As Inclination Directs in hand.}

Earlier today a walk was taken. A promenade Williamstown way. An amble, if you will, with an artists’ book recently completed tucked under wing, and the promise of ice-cream in a waffle cone for breakfast dangling as carrot to a donkey. Gone were yesterday’s rainclouds that scuppered our photo shoot plans. In its place clement weather ANZAC day, the perfect backdrop for our most recent collaborative artists’ book. An edition of ten, this single-colour printed work folded into a concertina now features the delicate hand-colourings of Louise. The sky is tickled sunset, and the lawns are a little greener too. There is light behind the clouds. It is fitting, really, all this walking about, as the stroll is first and foremost what this work salutes. As Inclination Directs, as title suggests, is full of characters sauntering, dawdling, meandering, rambling, traipsing. Some mooch. Others swan. Some make grander gesture as they perambulate up and down the pier.

More on this work and its plans soon, but for now, I give you glorious autumn.












{With our new book in hand, we are standing before the M.V. John Batman (built Launceston, December 1986) and the M.V. Little Gem (built by Port Jackson Steamship in 1947). We are squinting in the sun. Oh, Autumn, you marvel.}

+ Good luck Martha!

Monstrous is misshapen.

{Yet another misread sign.}

Recently published, Finding Your Inner Monster, for Fjord Review, my last Dance Massive 2013 piece. Such giddiness! Thanks Penelope. You can also read it here.

Monster Body
Atlanta Eke
 
Presented by Dancehouse with support of the Keir Foundation
Part of Dance Massive 2013
 
Saturday 23rd March
Sylvia Staehli Theatre
Dancehouse
 
Monstrous is misshapen. It is disgusting and ghastly. It is hideous and grotesque. The opposite of lovely—any thesaurus can give you a list longer than a fiend’s tale of words to describe a creature ugly, malformed, repulsive, repellent and horrifying.
 
What does it take to make a monster? What tells you something is monstrous? Is it the body that oozes and weeps and excretes? Is it the body that fails, that does not measure up or conform? Or the body that creaks, fits, thrusts, gyrates? Is it the wearing of a mask? Is it making what is internal in all its unsavoury and blemished guile part of a tableau of shock and repulsion? Is it to be found in the making of this “mess” visible and by giving negative thoughts about the self a physical form? There are many ways to become a monster; to reveal, indeed, revel in the monstrous. You can do it through sound, action, dance, and gesture. And you can form a monster through costume, all disfigured and unkempt. You can even combine the two—a monstrous acting hideous monster. It looks and acts the part. Yes, monsters can be drawn from a body perfect that grunts and cavorts in unguarded movements so as to disturb your everyday perception of what is attractive and what is not; what is appropriate and what is not; what is acceptable and what is not.
 
So often that which we find monstrous or displeasing is linked in some way to perceived gross deformity, be it by appearance or actions. Things that are deemed to be in someway less than perfect, polished and normal. Things which go against the flow, bucking the natural order. Such things are threatening, we are told. Such things create ripples where smoothness is sought. These things too bumpy, too fleshy, too sinewy. These things too guttural in their sound, too icky in their expulsion of waste. The beautiful long has been celebrated; why not a little monster unleash? Do you find it repulsive when I lie in my own urine, propped up like an odalisque? Who says so and according to whom? You? Why this normal function is detestable seems a reasonable question to ask, asserts Atlanta Eke, the performer and choreographer of Monster Body.
 
Upon arrival, these things are made clear. If they were not already, all is indicated by the performance of the waiting dancer-cum-monster as you enter the downstairs space, Sylvia Staehli Theatre, of Dancehouse. There upon a roughly constructed podium, Atlanta Eke stands naked. She is spinning a hula-hoop and she is wearing a monster mask. She has become some sort of lizard hybrid who makes the task of the perpetual spin seem effortless. The body works hard but no error is made. Spin, spin, spin around her body it does. This metamorphosis is as confronting and amusing as you may imagine. Resting against the podium on which she stands, a mirror that reflects the gaze of the audience already seated and the moving blur of feet of those still filing past. The gate-keeping gyrating monster watches the audience negotiating the theatre space and we watch her. General admission, sit anywhere, but be wary of the front row. Participation can often be called for. That there is seating for the brave. Perhaps, too, the latecomer and those not able to climb the theatre steps.
 
This is the last performance I am seeing as part of Dance Massive 2013. Monster Body, part of Next Wave’s Kickstart Program 2011, premiered in May 2012, as part of the Next Wave Festival, and has been reworked since then. It feels to me something of a work in flux, as changeable as its audience. A conversation, almost. Who is watching whom? Is this equation an even one? Can it ever be? From Eke’s own description of performing Monster Body in an underground space, I am not sure.

I’ve performed it in a few different contexts and it can be performed as a solo show and with other performers. I’ve performed it at various festivals so the space within which it’s performed can be very different. At MONA FOMA, I performed it in a huge underground space on a very small stage to a crowd that had been boozing on all day at a music festival. They were very rowdy but also very responsive to the work. It’s very different to perform it in a theatre where everyone is well behaved.[i]

Long has Eke felt there to be an imbalance in the performer and audience relationship. All too often, we, the audience, no longer singular individuals but lumped together, are told we gape and ogle and sit tantalized by skill, majesty and spectacular contortions on stage. Not for us, in Monster Body, the cloak of darkness. We are drenched in bright and unforgiving light. We are to be seen as we watch. We are to be reflected in the mirror at her feet. We are to be accountable, this much is clear. And we are to be confronted too. There is something about this performance that can also make a terrific collective prude of its audience. Where is safe to look? Nowhere.

…and I’m challenging the relationship of the spectator. People are used to being in the darkness watching something that they supposedly can’t do and I don’t agree with that relationship. Or they’re sitting there in the darkness, objectifying the body on stage, there’s an imbalance of power there. The lights are on in Monster Body, I’m not trying to create a complicated relationship with the people I’m in a space with.[ii]

Before me, a row of four women titter at the sight of our robotic monster still hula-hooping. There is a sense that one or more have been brought along and they have no idea what they are seeing or about to witness. This is one part of the excitement of a festival, taking a punt, and I recognise that feeling of anticipation melded with curiosity. Soon though, this curiosity tips into something else and one of the women proceeds to take photos of the gyrating dancer with a pink lizard face. Upon her iPhone, she takes photos. The pretend shutter sound set to loud, her actions are not discreet. She is objectifying the monster before her. Stealing an image. She is performing the task that this very performance is looking to address. Even when asked politely by Dancehouse staff and those seated nearby, she persists in taking photos. Photos that I have no idea what she will do with or who she would send them to. Does one message a photo of a naked monster to a friend still stuck at work or to their parents? So bemusing this ‘performance’ that I almost think it a part of the choreography, but then I am always mistaking performance art for real life—or do I mean vice versa?
 
And thus begins the Monster Body journey that is equal parts confronting, compelling, disturbing, flawed, humorous, and sad. Built upon a base of anger, the imagery I recall today remains as disturbing as it was playful. When humorous, it is. As Eke performs a series of high kicks naked, she makes with her mouth the supposed noise the body could make if talk it could. Each position has a noise, a loud noise. Eke lets us hear what a leg raised thus sounds like. A foot placed on the ground could sound like this. An arm raised to make fourth position could sound like this. I enjoy this play with the body as one giant machine that makes unattractive noises as it exerts itself. Noises that we do not normally hear aloud as we work, dance, perform our day to day. But the body creaks and groans. This we all know and perhaps Eke here is showing us what it is saying. As she moves her body across the stage as if part of footage rewound, so too her vocal sounds. This play makes you smile. The delight at the mechanisms of the body and the sounds it can make. Many of us, in privacy of our own homes or as children, have played with this idea of giving an action a sound. Swoosh go imaginary swords or wands so why not a leg too?
 
However, as with all things humorous, it caresses the sad, and soon these loud grunts take on some other form. These sounds distort and control the face, and there is helplessness to the dance. Who is in control here? Perhaps the balance of responsible objectification (is there such a thing?) cannot be met. We all love a performance. To sit in a theatre and project onto the dancers something of ourselves. For some, the dancer is a canvas for ideas. For others, something to marvel at. For some it is to see a dancer become music and music in turn become dance. Too many are the reasons to list, and I am not entirely sure that the audience cannot help but appreciate. Nevertheless, Eke and her fellow dancers try, as we, the audience, are assaulted by the quintet of hooded women during a faux intermission within the performance. Hooded, the dancers are reduced to body parts that jiggle. No faces seen. A grotesque spectacle created. And all the while Beyonce’s Run The World (Girls) is shown to suggest the opposite. There is little of empowerment here for the audience to take away with them. No pat upon the back either.

When making a performance I work to lose something of myself, to take risks, to change, to alter my understanding of the world. When considering the context of its presentation I work to set up a situation where there is a possibility for the audience to lose something of themselves. I do not enlighten or empower the audience but simply offer a space where something else can happen. There is trauma, but mostly felt on my behalf.[iii]

For all its parts perhaps needing further refinement or extending, the overall effect is strong, nausea-inducing strong. In the space of near-to an hour we’ve seen the body restricted, distorted, urinated upon, wiped down, cleaned up, restrained, hooded, masked and so on. Dark ground has been covered and we’ve been given chance to feel ourselves the torturer who pulls the black hood over a woman’s face only to find it made our stomach lurch. And we have seen Eke in homage to artists Yayoi Kusama (b.1929–) and Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010). The early Naked Happenings as a means of obliteration of Kusama and the sexually explicit and raw fabric works of Bourgeois come instantly to mind, particularly as Eke steps into a flesh-coloured suit that she proceeds to fill with pink balloons of water. She distorts her form and disturbs the natural balance of her body by doing so. Once wearing the suit replete now with growths about the ankles, knees, abdomen, buttocks, breasts, arms, and wrists, Eke is effectively trapped in a costume, indeed, in a role in which she cannot dance. The ultimate restriction witnessed. The body can no longer do what previously it revealed in, both on a personal, intimate level, and as comment on social confines.
 
There are many parts of Monster Body that haunt, none more so than the finale, which sees Eke paint her face from the lips outward in some creepy childlike state of play. Seated before a mirror, she draws her makeup on. She looks in the mirror and sees the audience reflected. The voyeurism of the audience is enough to make the skin crawl and feel uncomfortable. A garish fluorescent pink lipstick is made to extend outward until the whole face is covered and obscured. A mask once more worn, a mirror to the one of rubber that she wore at the beginning of the performance. This neat symmetry forms a gruesome end. The lights go off. Her face alone is illuminated. It glows, the paint. There, in the dark, a brilliant pink face suspended. It screams silently. It looks part angry, part distressed. It is one terrifying and unsettling image. A severed head, angrily floating. It signals the end and I for one cannot wait to escape the theatre. This is one dark cave I have been dragged into and I very much want to leave.

[i] Atlanta Eke in conversation with Krissi Weiss for Beat Magazine, Monster Body, March 2013
[ii] Atlanta Eke, Beat Magazine, March 2013
[iii] Atlanta Eke in conversation about Monster Body, Massive Chats: Atlanta Eke, 18th March, 2013

Choreographer/Performer: Atlanta Eke
Performers: Amanda Betlehem, Tim Birnie, Tessa Broadby, Ashlea English, Sarah Ling
Production Manager: Abbey Leonard
Stage Manager: Gillian Butcher
Sound Design: Tessa Broadby
Lighting Design: Sophie Beirne
Videographer: Sarah Ling
Set Design: Ashlea English
Costume Design: Amanda Betlehem

The fourth month of the year.

{April's instagram.}

Simple Friday fare, this nineteenth day of April. A lineup of recent instagram captures, the grist to my mill, a procession of love, a gallery of quiet highlights. Beginning with a book to save up for (Nostalgia: The Russian Empire of Czar Nicholas II features the photos so beautifully coloured by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii), in this collection you will also find my parents on a Moomba float in 1968 (that's my Dad playing the banjo, and my Mum wearing the green dress); a staircase in need of additional work at RMIT (Foresters' Hall, completed in 1888 for the Acient Order of Foresters); new coloured pencils (at last!); and something for Lisa Solomon.

+ Delight! Hilarity! Found via Anna Castagnoli’s blog, Le figure dei libri, a video from the recent Bologna Children’s Book Fair. On the 27th of Marzo, Paolo Canton from Topipittori, gave our site the thumbs up. At around the 13-minute mark, Gracia & Louise pop up on the screen.

Something in progress. Something fluid, not fixed.

{A phantasm off the Jersey Coast.}

My third piece for Fjord Review, Work in Progress, Ritual & Dance, has been published. Rewind to March. Partake in a Shamanistic ritual. Read on, please.

[Gu:t] 굿
Work-in-progress performance and forum
Thursday 21st March, 2013
As part of Dance Massive 2013

On a warm March evening, myself and a handful of other curious souls climbed the narrow steps of the aptly named Tower Theatre. The space is dark, and we are quiet as we enter, cloaked by the hush darkened spaces require. The theatre seats 100, but it feels smaller. It feels close and intimate. We negotiate the darkness and find a seat, production notes in hand. There is the feeling of having entered someplace else. We’ve left the theatre, as it were, and we are seeing what normally we would not be able to see: [Gu:t] 굿, conceived and performed by Soo Yeun You and Albert David, is a work in progress, and an intriguing part of Dance Massive 2013. Long forgotten is the hubbub of diners in the foyer below.

At this remove, we are viewing a Korean shamanistic ritual. In the small central alcove, two figures can be seen. One lying supine; the other performing the ceremony. Through them a meeting place is brought forth. No longer a theatre, this is "a meeting place to redefine landscape in a frame: life-death, yin-yang, two cultures." (Soo Yeun You, artistic notes.) We, though formally the audience, are part of the ceremony, the landscape. We are witnessing the final days of Soo Yeun You’s grandmother. She is being tended by the Soo Yeun You’s grandfather. We are drawn into the recollections so personal yet it does not feel intrusive. This is owing to the two dancers, Soo Yeun You, who is trained in Korean traditional dance, and senior Torres Strait Island man and former member of Bangarra Dance Theatre, Albert David. It is also owing to the darkened space created by Priya Namana’s set design with its mirror suspended above reflecting the bodies of the dancers with the transient clarity a pool of water creating "the perception of a spiritual space in the dance ritual" (Soo Yeun You in interview, Massive Chats, 25th February, 2013). And it is in the subtle lighting design of Alexandre Malta, which casts the appearance of plant fronds across the bodies of the performers, and creates a red ball of sun too. It is in the sound of two cultures fused, overlapped, balanced in one performance as told through the composition by Gus Maclillan. If there is one thing a festival of dance has taught me, it is the strong reminder of its transformative powers.

“[Gu:t] 굿 concerns the essence of Yin and Yang, and looking at two cultural perspectives from our Korean and Torres Strait Island traditions to draw a landscape in dance space.”
(Soo Yeun You)

[Gu:t] 굿 evokes and remembers two grandmothers: Soo Yeun You’s grandmother (from the opening ritual), and Albert David’s grandmother, who suffered a stroke. Albert David cared for her before she died, "together with his spiritual connection with his ancestors" (Soo Yeun You, artistic notes), and it is this exploration of the spiritual experience which we are now seeing as both memory, ceremony, and dance. This is the starting point and it is brilliant and rich, and inclusive as it is personal.

For me, the memory that remains is one of both performers’ personal connection to the piece. Such intensity partnered with fluidity. Yin and Yang, remember. Fire and Water. Life and Death. It is in the image of Albert David, as he covers himself in the ceremonial white paint that later Soo Yeun You uses to write upon the floor. It is in the long white scarf that links this world with the spirit world. It is in every considered movement and extension of arm.

In the twenty-minute discussion with the audience that followed the dance, the two artists explained their working process, elaborating upon their personal experiences that directly feed into the work, and sharing their cultural beliefs. The issue of whether so intimate a piece could be performed in a venue larger than the Malthouse’s Tower Theatre is raised, but in answer to this one needs only to look at the intimacy that these two can create in the video of the first stage of the development (filmed by Lindesay Dresden and edited by Cobie Orger). It is filmed in the large and light space upstairs at Dancehouse. This space is the opposite of the dark enclaves of the Tower Theatre and yet the audience (of the film) feels no further away. The intimacy is conveyed by the focus and intensity, the strength of the dancers. It is conveyed by the subject, and enhanced by an audience transfixed. Yes, it could easily work in a larger space, as Soo Yeun You’s earlier work in Reliquary with Gina Rings, which looked at the links between Korean and Australian Indigenous spirituality, also shows. A space responds to performance. A performance transforms a space. It makes an intimate ritual one night, and something else the next. And I can only look forward to seeing the evolution of this piece and others similar, to seeing the connections between cultures drawn through dance.

Conceived and performed by Soo Yeun You, Albert David
Choreography: Soo Yeun You
Set design: Priya Namana
Lighting design: Alexandre Malta
Composition: Gus Macmillan
Costume design: India Flint
Producer: Kath Papas Productions

Be on one's mettle.

{Passing through, undetected for the time being (A Souvenir of Bangor), 2009}

Events this week have led me to discover something hitherto unknown. I am not, it seems, the character in films and plays that is heroic and daring, full of dash and flair. Can-do can-fix seems not my stuffing when outside of art’s confines. I possess no lion’s heart and quick wit oft escapes me. Lord of the misrule, Falstaff I am not. No, I am the bumbler, the extra, the side-dweller on fringe’s fringe. I am unlikely to accept the adventure of time-travel should it strike, and this is a new realisation to me and my wild fantasies. I am unlikely to be brilliant in a crisis should the world come further unstitched or an uprising occur. Instead, I am the witness who fails to recall what model of car the villains drove as they made good their escape. I am afraid of the dark, and of robbers and their friends the thieves, and of walking through the woods at night. There is more of the Black Books Manny sliced sideways with Fran to me than there is Birgitte Nyborg or Police Captain Laure Berthaud, but then perhaps I give too much away of my character and my current DVD indulgences. 

But one thing I am not afraid of is the art and indulgence of vicarious travel and so today I take you with me to Bangor, north west Wales. Passing through, undetected for the time being (A Souvenir of Bangor), is an eighteen page artists’ book of mine from 2009. 

+ Turn the pages one by one




















{Several page details from the artists' book Passing through, undetected for the time being (A Souvenir of Bangor), 2009. Remember?}

The body and its brilliant workings.

{Is that you there?}


{A futile excerise at Omi.}

Here, for those keen to see what it is I saw in March as part of Dance Massive 2013 is my piece, On reflection, published on Fjord Review.

DUAL
Stephanie Lake
Wednesday 13th March
Arts House 

247 Days
Chunky Move
Saturday 16th March
Malthouse Theatre 

dance for the time being — Southern Exposure
Russell Dumas
Monday 18th March
Dancehouse

Organs, teeth, flesh, bone. Part indestructible, part fallible. That the body is a marvellous tool none would deny. All this and more one knows and during a thirteen-day festival expects to see in someway put to the test. The body and its limits. The body and its brilliant workings. It can bend. It can turn into liquid silk. It can roll and it can convulse. It can operate as if possessed. Faces can be blank. They can be expressive. Fun can be poked, and the mirror proves always a fascination. Literally, in the sense of Anouk van Dijk’s new work for Chunky Move, 247 Days (premiered as part of Dance Massive 2013 at the Malthouse), in which dancers engage with their reflections. And less literally, in the sense of the dancers in many of the performances I have seen as part of the festival, reflecting something of ourselves, our thoughts, hopes, worries, and dreams. They serve as a canvas for us to explore our own ideas about why it is we are here and what it is we do with this time allotted us. Stephanie Lake’s work DUAL reflects and reveals with its ‘choreographic puzzle that fuses jagged yet slippery pieces’ (Stephanie Lake, artistic notes), and dance for the time being — Southern Exposure directed by Russell Dumas ‘explores audience empathy through the relationship between quotidian and the performative’ (Russell Dumas, artistic notes).

The body marvellous and relationships in the broadest sense are what links, for me, the three varied performances seen at Arts House, Meat Market, in North Melbourne; Merlyn Theatre, Malthouse; and upstairs at Dancehouse late in the afternoon. Relationships are tricky things to negotiate, DUAL, 247 Days, and dance for the time being — Southern Exposure show us. Relationships with each other. Relationships with our own bodies. The body in relation to the world. From the languid, meditative dance for the time being to the one-plus-one-does-not-always-equal-two equation of DUAL, to the more angst driven 247 Days ‘kaleidoscope of impressions echoing in the room’ (Anouk van Dijk, artistic notes), there is more than one way to explore, confront, and address this.

In dance for the time being, the set design is the time of day. 5pm upstairs at Dancehouse yields a beautiful early autumn light. Four long windows temporarily lay four increasingly longer light patches on the floor. These slow shifting rectangles are in turn reflected on the wall opposite the windows. On any given day, sunlight’s participation permitting, this performance occurs. Such beautiful simplicity. Throughout the 60-minute performance, the light moves in echo of the dancers and vice versa, it seems. I cannot help but wonder if those who saw the performances at 7pm and 7.30pm (on other nights throughout the Dance Massive 2013 festival) knew what they were missing.

At Chunky Move, something else entirely less natural even though the reflection is true. Sixteen tall panels are employed to create one giant mirrored back wall. Upon arrival, it reflects the audience. Reflecting the slow fill of the theatre, the palpable anticipation, the wait. The sensation of seeing yourself on stage, albeit unrecognizable and part of a sea of faces framed by a red backdrop created by the momentarily empty seating, is curious, but this soon is obscured. The mirrors come to reflect the dancers, but as the mirrored wall is made up of a series of joined panels, the lines created at each join fragment the vision. An ordered grid of intersecting lines that run vertically and horizontally, the multifaceted staging distorts the figures as they run, leap, caress, break down, and writhe. Six dancers multiplied, you would expect to see the cast reflected reach dizzying figures, but the mirror is chiefly used as distortion throughout. The mirrors are used to particularly beautiful effect in the beginning with dancer Lauren Langlois rotating before each panel and engaging in repeated part playful, part exploratory face-pulling. And later when the mirrors are literally pulled apart and divided into four separate columns too. Sixteen panels divisible by four, each foursome bent into a right angle. A mirrored right angle is a brilliant plaything. If you stand before a mirrored right angle, you will see yourself reflected four times. So far, so simple. And yet, from the audience, this appears more than smoke and mirrors. Suddenly five dancers appear where previous there was one. Moreover, which one is the “real” dancer and which four are the reflections alone? Suddenly, all is not so simple. Here, the private face and the public face meet. Dancers are shown caught in unguarded moments. And in moments of study. The dangerous play this affords creates so beautiful and confusing a visual image. The darkness of the set enhancing all trickery a simple mirror can work.

In DUAL, there is no literal mirror but a conversation between two bodies that serves as one. A solo is performed by Alisdair Macindoe in part one. A second solo by Sara Black, forming part two, follows this. Two separate solos, two separate worlds, two contrasting tales. However, this again is not what seems. One plus one does not always add up to equal two, you will recall. In part three, we are presented with their duet and it is now that the story makes sense, interlocks, intercrosses. Where once it appeared that Macindoe was playing with pressing imaginary buttons on the floor, scrambling their code or perhaps toying with pieces of debris, come part three, we see he is actually lifting the arms of fellow dancer Black. She is lying supine on the floor, he is squatting over her. He toys with her limbs the way couples, people, families, animals all do. The beautiful push and pull of relationships and the familiarity of intimacy. It is part playful and part controlling. In the third part, where the two dancers come together the story is no longer fragmented and we see the “whole.” We see how their stories combine. The strong connection between the dancers perfectly conveys their shifting emotional states as we see their relationship fuse. Their dance is the mirror, the reflection. Its soundtrack (composer, Robin Fox) naturally follows this considered pattern. Two distinct musical scores that then meld together to present a new and thus supposed complete meaning.

In the Russell Dumas piece, the soundtrack is created by the sounds of the dancers breathing. Sitting close to the stage, you can hear them inhale and exhale throughout the performance. This minimalism is paired with the squeaks bare feet make upon polished floorboards, a sound similar to (but altogether friendlier in pitch) basketball sneakers on court. As with the third part of DUAL, where figures interlock and wrap around one another, here, once more, limbs are used to intertwine, to restrain, playfully or otherwise. Forearms can be used to mask the face. Arms can loop around the middle of another dancer’s body ensuring that one is fastened in place, held back, restricted. As one tries to break into a canter, the other holds them back, a tender awkwardness created. Just as two people at opposing ends of the stage can engage in a humorous game that makes tennis spectators of its audience. As the dancers pass an imaginary ball of sound between each other, the audience seated along two sides of the stage that is central, move in unison our heads from left to right and back again. We follow the ball Macindoe tosses to Black that she in turn lobs back to him. Such playful moments in both performances beautifully executed. With seven dancers performing in dance for the time being, for the paired sequences, one dancer exits the stage, proving Chunky Move’s anxiety correct: there isn’t always someone for everyone. Someone misses out. Someone loses himself or herself in another. Someone steals another away. And relationships, in all their complexities, are shown as an endless loop. This is the ongoing pattern of things, over and over and over. The incorporation of spoken word in the performance leaves little room for ambiguity. Things repeat. This is the way of the world, and nothing changes.

Like the ceiling fans above, the dancers in dance for the time being, are not in time with one another. They operate on different settings, speeds, and yet they are all doing the one thing and they are all on time. This ties in beautifully with DUAL, for me, with how things look the same, or mirror, but are distinct. The common thread I have drawn between these works may turn out to be invisible; such is the intensity of the festival experience. Night after night, a different performance is seen. Links form naturally and one work feeds into the next. This is harmony and there is much play, the end of all things signaled by a dancer’s sneeze.

+ How quietly decadent the Easter holidays with its serves of pav, slow strolls, cards, finds, and leisure.