tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/melbourne-festival-2017-44453/articlesMelbourne Festival 2017 – The Conversation2017-10-24T05:16:45Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/862202017-10-24T05:16:45Z2017-10-24T05:16:45ZBig bang: Germinal creates a universe out of nothing on stage<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191562/original/file-20171024-20375-1leeywf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Performers engage in theatrical world-building in Germinal. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bea Borgers</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In theatre-making, we often talk about world creation. “What is the world of the play?” teachers seriously ask their students, and dramaturgs their directors. This is because the process of making theatre is, in a very fundamental way, a process of building a complete universe in an empty black box: 19th-century Russia; Renaissance Venice in the imagination of the Elizabethan England; the existential wasteland post-WWII; and so on.</p>
<p>These worlds are built with only a few tools: light, costume, humans and their words, sound, a backdrop or relatively spare props; and this world-making with a very reduced palette is, in essence, the magic of theatre. </p>
<p>Halory Goerger and Antoine Defoort’s Germinal, staged as part of the Melbourne Festival, takes this world-building concept to the extreme, by making it the central conceit of the show: four performers on an almost bare stage have 80 minutes to build the known world from scratch. Where does one begin? At times mind-boggling, at times absurd, it is a joyous event, light but scintillatingly intelligent. It has enjoyed cult success, premiering at the prestigious Festival d'Avignon in 2013 and following on with seasons across Europe, Canada, the US, including at Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Belgium, Public Theater in New York, and PICA in Portland - and for a good reason. </p>
<p>World-making on stage is not just material, but ontological. Light, sound, space and bodies on stage are not merely as an empirical event, but also a closed system of signifying relationships. They might form a world in which a sock is a living creature. A world in which Godot never arrives. A world in which we sing instead of speaking. For the audience, half of the fun of going to theatre is in deciphering the rules of a staged universe.</p>
<p>Ever since the rise of cinema, theatre has increasingly understood its essence to be this cross-stitch of sock puppets and ontology, starting at least with Ionesco, Beckett, and Grotowski. Contemporary performance since the 1990s has been particularly fascinated by experimenting with meaning-making, from British theatre group Forced Entertainment and French choreographer Jerome Bel, via Australian director Daniel Schlusser, and the recent performances of <a href="https://theconversation.com/taylor-mac-makes-history-at-melbourne-festival-opening-85321">Taylor Mac at the Melbourne Festival</a>. It is no longer controversial to ask the audience to see the most glorious worlds created with the most minimalist means; and sometimes, as in the case of Forced Ents or Schlusser, six or seven worlds at once.</p>
<p>However, in recent years, I have noticed an interesting convergence between this theatrical world-making and broader questions around how scientific knowledge is created, and how in turn it lays basis for our reality. They are not naïve, anti-science works, but genuinely engagements with the way observable, empirical facts get progressively shorn of specificity and abstracted into principles. I have written elsewhere on David Weber-Krebs’ <a href="http://www.realtimearts.net/article/issue127/11974">Into the Big World</a>, an embodied choreography of this journey of lived fact into scientific principle, performed by two dancers on an almost empty stage to great effect.</p>
<p>Germinal is another passenger on the same bus. According to the artists themselves, it grew out of the process of deciding what the world of their performance would be – what elements would it contain, what rules would apply. Somehow, though, this initial process of dead serious world-making became the entire work, to a hilarious result.</p>
<p>Germinal opens like the Book of Genesis, without light. A single lightbulb illuminates the space in flashes. We see glimpses: four people tinkering at consoles, and not very well. It takes them a while to understand what operates the light. It takes them longer to understand how to form their thoughts as surtitles on the backdrop. It takes them an eternity to develop speech on stage – we take a detour through telepathy, among others. From then on, the four performers go through a kind of accelerated social evolution.</p>
<p>In terms of technology, Halory and Antoine, and their companions Beatriz and Arnaud, are working with what they have: the black walls and stage carpet, a microphone, projector, a laptop (“this book has only two pages!”), an intercom. Their progress is less concerned with engineering invention than with the evolution of thought and consciousness. They set rules - sometimes by discovery, sometimes by agreement - and each rule gives more detail to their world, while also narrowing their options down.</p>
<p>Rather early on, the question of being oneself, separate from others, is raised – and it becomes very pertinent when they are trying to decide how to divide one mic across four performers! At one point, they embark on listing what they know so far and agree that categories would make it easier to remember everything. Laboriously, they agree that things “that go pocpoc” when you hit them are somehow fundamentally different from “things that don’t go pocpoc”, such as light, trouble, and the joy of being together. </p>
<p>Then there is the phone call to a helpdesk to request a world-building starter kit: the customer service operator strongly suggest not to go without their bonus package, the four laws of thermodynamics - as she says, all living organisms use them.</p>
<p>Germinal has the intentional naivete of a long brainstorm, made concrete with stage props, music and projection, but it rumbles through some incredibly sophisticated concepts, and the final reveal exposes the deep architecture of what has been created.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86220/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jana Perkovic does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Germinal has the intentional naivete of a long brainstorm, made concrete with stage props, music and projection, but it rumbles through some incredibly sophisticated concepts.Jana Perkovic, Sessional lecturer and researcher, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/861322017-10-23T03:43:48Z2017-10-23T03:43:48ZWe Love Arabs: accomplished satire offers food (and hummus) for thought<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191302/original/file-20171023-13955-1khbtf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hummus becomes a "choreographic texture" in We Love Arabs. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gadi Dagon</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>We Love Arabs, staged as part of the Melbourne Festival at the Malthouse Theatre, brings together dance and theatre to explore Middle Eastern politics, and is a unique pleasure to watch. Australian audiences might recognise a similar fusion in recent works such as Chunky Move’s <a href="http://chunkymove.com.au/our-works/current-repertoire/complexity-of-belonging/">Complexity of Belonging</a>, and Nicola Gunn’s <a href="http://malthousetheatre.com.au/whats-on/piece-for-person-and-ghetto-blaster">Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster</a>. </p>
<p>Devised by Israeli dancer and choreographer Hillel Kogan, the performance opens in silence. A spotlight illuminates Kogan, meditatively poised on one foot. After a moment, he breaks this pose and addresses the audience. “I would like to share with you some thoughts on the challenges I’m having with my creative process.” </p>
<p>From that point on, he barely stops talking, and narrates us through a hilariously tortured attempt at creating an artwork exploring the relations between Israeli Jews and Arabs.</p>
<p>The humour of We Love Arabs is masterful, and works at many levels: one does not need to understand contemporary dance, nor Middle Eastern politics to laugh, but there are treasures here for those who do. At the heart of the comedy is Kogan, who skewers himself in almost every way imaginable, from his identity as an Israeli Jew, to choreographer, dancer, and left-winger. We Love Arabs shows just how far “good intentions” can miss the mark.</p>
<p>The challenge facing Kogan’s creative process, initially, appears in vague terms. There are spaces, he tells us, where his body can “feel the space” - and the space his body - but there is also another space, a space which is “not him”. He ties himself in knots trying to find a way to articulate this “not me”. </p>
<p>At one level, this works by poking fun at dance and dancers. Kogan’s incessant inanities on the rehearsal floor, are all too familiar. This comedy extends throughout the choreography. Many of the jokes actually find their punchlines in gesture and form, allowing even the most unfamiliar audiences to dance an entry point. </p>
<p>Adi Boutrous is enlisted to perform as the “Arab dancer”. The dynamic is established quickly, as Kogan realises that Boutrous does not look like the stereotypical Arab he imagined. They need, Kogan insists, signs for the audience, so he requests Boutrous draw on him the Star of David. Then, on Boutrous’s forehead, he inscribes the Islamic crescent. Boutrous asks: “what did you draw on me?” Kogan replies: “the thing from the Mosque”. Boutrous, a brilliant comic foil, quietly responds: “I am a Christian”.</p>
<p>This exchange is one of many in the performance where the well meaning, left leaning artist reveals his ignorance and prejudice, a point which would seem heavy handed if not so well wrapped in comedy. As the work progresses, Kogan’s narcissism continues to manifest, culminating in the introduction of hummus as a “choreographic texture” that might unite them.</p>
<p>Throughout the performance we hear only a few words from Boutrous, who speaks - and indeed dances - only on the terms dictated by Kogan. The power dynamic depicted here speaks more broadly to issues of inequality. </p>
<p>The piece draws our attention to the problematic “help” provided by the well-intentioned, through 55 minutes of quite enjoyable self-flagellation. There is an issue here in that we might mistake the observation of a problem for the hard work of actually addressing it. Just as a woke-bro mansplaining feminism can recognise inequality while still being part of the problem, We Love Arabs takes an important step, but one that can all too readily fall into self-satisfaction.</p>
<p>The piece concludes with hummus and flat-bread. Boutros holds the bowl while Kogan tears off bits of bread, dips them in hummus and feeds them to the front row of the audience. Whispers ripple through the audience, “it’s the sacrament”, I hear. Indeed, the image is unmistakable, and it’s tempting to walk away with this image of peaceful communion. </p>
<p>But this would be to miss one final joke: the irony that the body of Christ could bring the Jews and Arabs together. If there is a take away here, it is this: you should always question what you’re being fed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86132/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Asher Warren does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We Love Arabs is a complex satire that blends dance, theatre and hummus to investigate the politics of Israeli Jews and Arabs.Asher Warren, Tutor and Researcher in Theatre and Performance Studies, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/860512017-10-20T05:01:18Z2017-10-20T05:01:18ZTree of Codes wields dance, music and art to create new spectacle<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191148/original/file-20171020-1072-1cv4i7x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tree of Codes is less about drama, and more about the technical union of dance, music and art. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stephanie Berger HR</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It would do great disservice to Tree of Codes to consider it in dramatic terms. When it comes to the possible plot, emotions or even themes expressed, your guess is as good as mine. What we are often taught to expect from theatre – a gripping narrative rounded off with emotional catharsis – is a misleading framing for this work. No doubt this is the hidden expectation behind so many complaints of it being a “cold” performance.</p>
<p>Manchester International Festival commissioned Tree of Codes as a collaboration between contemporary ballet choreographer <a href="http://waynemcgregor.com/">Wayne McGregor</a>, installation artist <a href="http://www.olafureliasson.net/">Olafur Eliasson</a> and electronic producer-turned-musician <a href="https://pitchfork.com/artists/29228-jamie-xx/">Jamie xx</a> (of The xx), three artists with distinct, so-far-unrelated practices. The work spins off Jonathan Safran Foer’s lite postmodernist novel <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9583799-tree-of-codes">Tree of Codes</a>, itself a take on Polish avant-garde writer Bruno Schulz’s 1934 collection of short stories, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/244261.The_Street_of_Crocodiles">Street of Crocodiles</a>.</p>
<p>The thread of connections between these artists’ works is tenuous and very light in touch. Foer literally cut up Shulz’s words, all-but-excising the heavily symbolic family narrative. Take the right letters out and “Street of Crocodiles” became “Tree of Codes”. </p>
<p>Jamie xx used an algorithm to turn such cut-up pages, their words and spaces and voices, into vocalisations and rhythmic structures. Centre-stage, Wayne McGregor translated – perhaps – the leap between nature and technology, suggested by the title, into a complex choreography of atomic complication from base elements to fully formed society. </p>
<p>And Olafur Eliasson returned to colour-effect glass, one of his favourite materials, to create a vibrant candy-coloured container for the work, highly attuned to the shifts in the music, but operating on its own dramaturgy of slow reveal and layering.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191145/original/file-20171020-1045-zwlctg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191145/original/file-20171020-1045-zwlctg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191145/original/file-20171020-1045-zwlctg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191145/original/file-20171020-1045-zwlctg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191145/original/file-20171020-1045-zwlctg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191145/original/file-20171020-1045-zwlctg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191145/original/file-20171020-1045-zwlctg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191145/original/file-20171020-1045-zwlctg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Reflections amplify performers into a whole society.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ravi Deepres</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Very disciplined play with perception is at the heart of each of these artists’ works, but in very different and not necessarily related ways. All the heavy lifting in Tree of Codes is done by McGregor’s excellent dancers. They kick off the performance in pitch dark, as invisible figures with small lights attached, dancing themselves into mesmerising constellations. </p>
<p>From here, another fascinating sequence: a row of performers invisible but for an arm pushed through a mirrored funnel, the choreography refracted and multiplied into something like a fleshy flower, or a supernova. These are phenomenal stage scenes, signalling something like the birth of the universe.</p>
<p>From there on, McGregor leads us through a sequence of movement pieces that take us from a primeval, Adam-and-Eve, flesh-coloured costume sort of innocence to a massing of bodies reminiscent of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights">Hieronymus Bosch’s earthly delights</a>. Pointe shoes and coloured costumes are thrown into the mix, alongside choreographies of love and desire, and so on. </p>
<p>McGregor’s choreography has always had the ability to conjure split-second visual references: the elegance of Olympic sports, classical poses from Renaissance paintings, insectoid androids of the future. It can feel like big data crunched into movement. The movement is very distinct, with its absolutely rigid hips and waist, and all the dynamism concentrated in strong kicking legs and shoulders, as well as the flinging – no other way to call it – of female dancers. </p>
<p>They might be the best dancers in the world, and yet there is a flatness that their enormous skill engenders. Watching them contort and twist one another with apparent effortlessness, it is so easy to forget that not all movement requires equal effort, that flinging one’s leg vertical is not as easy as extending an arm horizontally. The effect is machine-like, a set of requirements for the dancing body that in themselves are strenuous and applause-worthy, but lose some of their impact because there is no emotion to it. It is body become (very competent) robot.</p>
<p>Eliasson’s set is, to me, the highlight of the work, due to its exquisite use of reflection to shape movement, and of colour to shape mood. Gradually, a series of one-way mirrored backdrops amplifies the duets and trios into entire societies, painting them yellow for intensity, or blue for fuzzy distance. </p>
<p>Towards the end, as Jamie xx’s music brings about whiffs of German nightclub Berghain, the climax of the piece is generated almost entirely by the set. The glass screen that has descended onto the proscenium, between us and the dancers, opens up two windows slowly spinning round. As they turn, it is revealed that the cold blue light bathing the dancers is an illusion, tinted glass – they are dancing in bold, warm red.</p>
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<span class="caption">Olafur Eliasson’s sets shape mood with colour.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stephanie Berger HR</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Watching Tree of Codes at times feels like staring into the insides of a Swiss clock. This is why considering it dramatically is of no use. It is a phenomenally well executed show, but its brilliance is entirely in the stagecraft, in the technical accomplishments, the marriage of sound and set, movement and concept, the way it all comes together. How (and whether at all) it relates to early-20th-century modernism, I don’t know – but it is a feat of many-media intertextuality that makes one ponder the expressive use of technology of our time.</p>
<p>Performance mega-projects have been a staple since classical opera and ballet, forms that have been described as the “non-dramatic entertainment spectacle” branch of the performing arts. </p>
<p>But lately, mega-projects have been turning towards popular music and contemporary dance: think <a href="https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13974-tomorrow-in-a-year/">Tomorrow, In A Year</a>, an opera on Charles Darwin’s life by Danish performance artists Hotel Pro Forma and Swedish experimental pop group The Knife; or <a href="http://www.nickcave.com/news/shell-shock-opera/">Shell Shock</a> by Nick Cave and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.</p>
<p>Might this nascent form become the opera of the future? If so, we should develop a language to judge its technical prowess, rather than emotional realism.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="https://www.festival.melbourne/2017/events/tree-of-codes/#.WelVzxOCxBw">Tree of Codes</a> is showing as part of the Melbourne Festival until October 21.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86051/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jana Perkovic does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When it comes to plot, emotions or even themes, Tree of Codes is a mystery. But its technical prowess is undeniable.Jana Perkovic, Sessional lecturer and researcher, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/859842017-10-19T05:34:07Z2017-10-19T05:34:07Z7 Pleasures explores naked desire but fails to confront cliches<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190975/original/file-20171019-1048-19enzjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">7 Pleasures: to explore body politics with a troupe of muscular, lean, able bodied dancers, limits the kinds of questions one might ask. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marc Coudrais</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The promotional copy for Mette Ingvartsen’s 7 Pleasures, playing at the Arts Centre as part of the Melbourne Festival, claims the performance is “upending clichés about nudity”. But what are these cliches? Those which spring most readily to my mind centre around the “confrontational” use of nudity in contemporary dance and performance art. </p>
<p>These cliches are, perhaps, a function of time, as the performance art of the 60s and 70s is now so institutionalised it feels passé. How then, might one create contemporary performance with naked bodies that avoids revising the work of those (from Marina Abramović to Xavier Le Roi) who have come before?</p>
<p>7 Pleasures contributes by exploring the sensual and sexual connections between human and non-human, between subjects and objects. It does so through a series of sustained movements for 12 dancers, that riff on certain modes of sensual engagement.</p>
<p>7 Pleasures opens by separating the bodies of the performers from the collective body of the audience. Planted amongst us, they stand, undress and make their way on-stage. Their bodies fuse together, a draped assortment of bare parts; almost (but not quite) homogeneous. In silence, this organism swarms with slow, deliberate, fluidity across the floor: like ants, they formicate over a couch, around a table, arriving at last at the front of the stage, where they find one last remaining body and draw it into the fold.</p>
<p>This opening introduces the audience to the glacial pace of the work, and a modality more compositional than choreographic; a series of subtle tone paintings for flesh.</p>
<p>One could approach this work in terms of experience and sensation. However, there is strong cerebral organisation and structure to it. I was drawn to a particular sequence through the movements (or sections) in the work, as they offer one useful point of entry into what is otherwise a difficult piece to discuss.</p>
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<span class="caption">7 Pleasures explores the sensual and sexual connections between human and non-human, between subjects and objects.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marc Coudrais</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>After the introduction, the dancers disperse, and begin to engage with the objects that populate the sparse set. A pelvis rubs sensuously against the corner of a coffee table. A shag rug is caressed. An indoor potted Yukka plant is nuzzled. These objects become objects of desire. Then, the scene suddenly shifts: a new rhythm emerges, created by the frenetic flapping of male genitalia. It spreads like a virus; the whole troupe begins to shake, pulse, flap and quiver. </p>
<p>The bodies draw together to become a locomotive orgy of touching, joining and rubbing that steams around the stage. It descends upon the potted Yukka; which also begins to shake and quiver. Then the couch. With increasing frenzy, cushions are scattered, furniture is thrown around, things are unravelled. The endurance of the dancers is remarkable, as their wild, pulsing bodies go on and on, the soundtrack of drums driving faster and faster. Finally, this section of the work crashes like a wave, leaving us with darkness and silence.</p>
<p>The next section of the work keeps us in the shadows, shifting mood entirely. The bodies again engage in sensual acts with objects, but here the objects serve to mediate human-to-human sensuality. Bowls, ropes, straps, pipes, strips of paper and metallic balls all pass between people as conduits for sensation. </p>
<p>These scenes raise a series of questions which have, in recent years, emerged as a new branch of inquiry within (or better, from) the humanities. This includes a new consideration of the agency and experience of things we categorise as “non-human”, including animals and objects. For this reason, the turn has been understood broadly by the term “post-humanities”.</p>
<p>As I watched the Yukka and the couch get roughed up, it seemed to me a violation. But how could I know? How much do we, as humans, impose our own schema of sense and experience on things? How would we ask a non-human thing for consent? The second and final section seems to answer this clearly. We don’t. We use these things selfishly, we enlist them into our battles. </p>
<p>The anthropocentric nature of relations between humans and non-humans becomes most explicit in the fourth and final section, where the bodies are divided into clothed and unclothed, and the performers build up a primal, rhythmic grunting and chanting. They come together, unified and facing us in what appears to be worship, with one of the dancers venturing to climb out into the audience. In this gesture of togetherness, the post-human concerns are replaced with an encompassing “pre-humanism” that erases difference though anthropological cliché, and shares an uncomfortable proximity to the logic of the Paleo diet.</p>
<p>It is the human body that 7 Pleasures ultimately revolves around. However, to explore body politics with a troupe of muscular, lean, able bodied dancers, with only Ligia Lewis breaking the homogeneous whiteness, limits the kinds of questions one might ask. In comparison to recent contributions such as <a href="http://www.clairecunningham.co.uk/production/give-me-a-reason-to-live/">Claire Cunningham’s Give Me A Reason to Live</a> (2015), and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIOczdZzddM">Force Majeure’s Nothing to Lose</a> (2015), 7 Pleasures struggles to confront.</p>
<p><em>7 Pleasures is at the Arts Centre Melbourne <a href="https://www.festival.melbourne/2017/events/7-pleasures/#.Wegt0BOCxBw">until October 22</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85984/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Asher Warren does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Mette Ingvartsen’s 7 Pleasures aims to upend
clichés about nudity. But the ‘confrontational’ use of nudity in dance and performance art is itself now something of a cliche.Asher Warren, Tutor and Researcher in Theatre and Performance Studies, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/853872017-10-09T04:34:59Z2017-10-09T04:34:59ZCaravan delivers a glimpse of women on the edge with sweet comedy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189315/original/file-20171009-25779-y2au3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nicci Wilks and Susie Dee in Caravan. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tim Grey Photography</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Despite its forays into dark subject matter, Caravan, staged as part of the Melbourne Festival, is a rather sweet comedy. Described as a “darkly comic look at life on the margins”, it is also a curious blend of vaudeville with faint notes of magic-realism. It delivers cheery choreographed sequences set to popular music, rapid-fire comic delivery, while touching on the social realities of gender and class disparity.</p>
<p>The play is staged in a retro caravan, parked in the forecourt of the Malthouse Theatre. The audience looks out onto a distinctly Melbourne skyscape, adorned in the distance by the Arts Centre spire. The sprawling metropolitan horizon, with its lights and multistorey buildings, provides a contrast to the humble and squat form of the caravan where most of the action takes place.</p>
<p>The show follows the fractious relationship between an elderly mother and her daughter living together in a caravan. Donna (Nicci Wilks) cares for her mother Judy (Susie Dee), who lies in a double bed, diva-like, under quilted bedspreads, wearing an incongruous wig. Donna is listless as she negotiates the dreariness of her role as full-time caregiver for Judy. She administers medicines and performs unseemly labours of care, while obsessively searching for potential romantic hook-ups on Tinder.</p>
<p>The script is a work of collaboration drawing on the talents of writers including Angus Cerini, Patricia Cornelius, Wayne Macauley and Melissa Reeves. Over a series of dinners, each of the writers was allocated a prompt for developing the themes of the play, including “the body, death and organ donation”. Unsurprisingly, the dialogue is awash with these fleshy motifs, lending it a visceral quality, as well as a curious sensuality and warmth. </p>
<p>The play runs for about an hour and a half, without traditional scene breaks. Rather, a series of visual gags and stylised movement sequences provide breaks in the dialogue.</p>
<p>The play begins with a monologue by Donna; she appears, cigarette in mouth, having just returned from buying a glistening chunk of liver for dinner from a “stubby-fingered” butcher. She steals a moment outside to check in with her dating app. As she assesses the men on her phone, all the while swiping left, Judy’s voice pierces the night: “Fucken get in ’ere!” Donna begrudgingly abandons Tinder to tend to Judy.</p>
<p>Then, like a cabinet of curiosities, the wall of the caravan lowers, revealing the scene inside. Here, the set and costume design by Mag Horwell comes to life. A kitchenette, complete with cooking stove and implements, is where Donna unceremoniously fries liver; there’s an iconic table and bench seat; lace curtains adorn the windows; a shelf is littered with medication and another is adorned with a blend of kitsch ornaments.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189316/original/file-20171009-25749-1519ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189316/original/file-20171009-25749-1519ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189316/original/file-20171009-25749-1519ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189316/original/file-20171009-25749-1519ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189316/original/file-20171009-25749-1519ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189316/original/file-20171009-25749-1519ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189316/original/file-20171009-25749-1519ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189316/original/file-20171009-25749-1519ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Caravan is staged in a caravan in the Malthouse Theatre’s forecourt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tim Grey Photography</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As the play progresses, the dialogue volleys back and forth between the pair, as they negotiate their disappointments and decades-long rivalry. Wilks and Dee deliver energised performances. Wilks’ speech is relentless, rapid-fire, with a distinct Australian wilt to the accent. In contrast, Dee plays on the slower, more rhythmic qualities of the script, which overall dispenses with naturalism.</p>
<p>Judy reveals to Donna the fraught relationship she shared with her own mother, openly stating: “I didn’t like the smell of her.” This lends the play an almost epic quality, placing Donna and Judy’s relationship in a longer historical and narrative arc, in which daughters stage a perennial struggle to escape their domineering mothers.</p>
<p>As she lies in bed, Judy regales Donna with stories of her sexual exploits as a much younger woman, providing the audience rare glimpses into an elderly woman’s sexuality, while inspiring raucous laughter. For instance, Judy describes one lover as having had a “tongue like a hungry beaver, keeping time with my inner clock”. All the while Judy tries to hoodwink Donna into giving her a glass of red, which is strictly against doctor’s orders.</p>
<p>Each scene playfully delves into the pair’s psychosexual dynamic, showing the mother-daughter pair as unabashed, desiring subjects. Judy confesses to Donna, “I fucked in the forest once”, while Donna indulges in sexual fantasies about Mr Wood, her next Tinder date who, she thinks, will smell like “singed hair and animal flesh”.</p>
<p>At about three-quarters in, their fraught relationship finally comes to a head during a heated exchange, when Judy exclaims: “If I had my time again, I’d use a coat-hanger on you!” This prompts Donna to retaliate:
“Nasty, horrible, old bags die alone!” She attempts to leave the caravan but returns to find an ailing Judy collapsed on the floor. The pathos of this scene, handled with aplomb by both Dee and Wilks, threatens to break with the play’s comedic presentation but is ultimately restored by a gag.</p>
<p>The play is a unique two-hander, which puts the lives of marginalised women at the centre of dramatic action. Underneath the comedic overtures, deeper issues bubble to the surface. The pair are mutually bound to each through a need for love but are also stuck with each other because of their economic disenfranchisement. However, far from being social realist, or overtly political, Caravan’s highly stylised dialogue and action have the effect of transforming ordinary, working-class life and lingo into poetry.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="https://www.festival.melbourne/2017/events/caravan/#.WdrFfBOCxBw">Caravan</a> will be showing as part of the Melbourne Festival until October 22.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85387/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sandra D'urso does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Caravan tells the tale of a mother and daughter who live in a caravan. Staged in the Malthouse Theatre’s forecourt, it is a sweet look at class and gender.Sandra D'urso, Researcher, The Australian Centre, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/853262017-10-06T04:32:59Z2017-10-06T04:32:59ZAncestry, storytelling, and fighting racism with rap<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189106/original/file-20171006-25779-luz4x9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Joelistics (left) and James Mangohig in In Between Two. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">WilliamYang</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“We are our ancestors’ unfinished sentences, we are their wildest dreams and their most elaborate re-mixes,” says Asian-Australian rapper Joelistics’ (Joel Ma) at the end of a breathtaking 70 minutes of beats, raps, and storytelling in <a href="http://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/events/in-between-two/">In Between Two</a>. It is a verbal tribute to his ancestors that opens up a kind of cosmic dance for all of us, for elders past and present, and for those of us born here, who came here, and those whose identity is complex and multiple.</p>
<p>In Between Two brings together wordsmith-performers Joelistics and James Mangohig, both Australians with Asian-born fathers. When the two men met some years ago in Darwin, they forged an immediate bond built on their shared devotion to hip-hop, Regurgitator (a Brisbane band with an Asian-Australian rocker on lead vocals), and the fact that both had white mothers who married Asian men.</p>
<p>Ma grew up in Sydney when racist rhetoric and bullying spiked following Pauline Hanson’s famous warning that, “We are in danger of being swamped by Asians”. He recalls of the time that “suddenly, where you came from was important”. He raps back to Hanson, serving up doses of the ugly rhetoric of that time such as the observation that “mixed race” kids such as himself had eyes that formed a “slight incline, as in not a full slope”. At one point Ma observes wittily, “That cultural cringe, I own the shit out of it.”</p>
<p>Fundamentally, this is an evening of Australian family stories, ones that cross continents, countries, and cultures. Each man presents distillations of parents, grandparents, and siblings, as the other performer underscores the tale with beats and notes on the guitar, bass, beat machine, and keyboards.</p>
<p>Produced by <a href="http://www.caap.org.au/">Contemporary Asian Australian Performance</a>, In Between Two is a continuation of a series of Asian-American storytelling using a form developed by photographer and master storyteller William Yang. Earlier this year this resulted in <a href="https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/2017/AF17-Festival-Hospitality-The-Backstories.pdf">Backstories</a> at the Adelaide International Festival. Dramaturged by Yang and Annette Shun Wah, and sensitively directed by Suzanne Chaundy, the new iteration, like the earlier ones, involves the careful curation of family photos shown on large screens at the back of the stage as the performer speaks directly to the audience.</p>
<p>The pairing of Ma and Mangohig is particularly well-suited, as both have extraordinarily different tales to tell. That both are charismatic, even charming, as entertainers and human beings, adds a further dimension and sense of ease for the audience. The two men are, quite simply, very much at home on stage.</p>
<p>Ma’s family story is the stuff of novels. His grandmother Edith, an Australian-born Chinese beauty, was matched with a handsome young man from Hong Kong who, in 1933, selected her to be his bride from a series of photos. The couple settled in Sydney and eventually ran Chequers, one of the world’s great nightclubs during its heyday in the 1960s. His parents, “hippies” who travelled the world together, broke up by the time he was two years old.</p>
<p>Mangohig, by contrast, grew up in a church-centred evangelical environment with a preacher father who hailed from a small town in the south of the Philippines. His mother, the daughter of conservative Dutch migrants, overcame parental objections to the marriage, and the couple settled in Darwin, where Mangohig’s musical interests were developed in church. Frequent family trips to the Philippines made him at home in both cultures.</p>
<p>Both men experienced crises in young adulthood, finding redemption through music. For Mangohig, this meant leaving Darwin, a short, unsuitable marriage, and accepting the condemnation from his church that he was “no longer using his talent for God”. Ma, who spent his teen years “living up to the negative” expectations of others, came to see that it wasn’t simply that he “wasn’t Australian enough [or] Chinese enough,” but that he was often simply “too stoned.”</p>
<p>“The art of sampling,” Ma recalls, meant “finding those little nuggets of gold” and making something new out of them. This is where the life paths of both men connect today. Indeed, in the crafting of their stories composed of these little nuggets of gold, Ma and Mangohig show that they are their ancestors’ most elaborate re-mixes.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="http://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/events/in-between-two/">In Between Two</a> is showing as part of the OzAsia Festival. It will be staged as part of the Melbourne Festival from October 11-15.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85326/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Peterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Australian rapper Joelistics and producer James Mangohig bring their family histories to the stage through a breathtaking display of beats, raps and storytelling.William Peterson, Senior Lecturer in Drama, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/853212017-10-06T03:02:42Z2017-10-06T03:02:42ZTaylor Mac makes history at Melbourne Festival opening<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189097/original/file-20171006-15464-1sbdmm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Taylor Mac performs in The Inauguration at the Melbourne Festival. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jim Lee</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Taylor Mac described The Inauguration, which helped launch the 2017 Melbourne Festival, as “a Radical Faerie realness ritual”. The Inauguration was a 90-minute show featuring selections from Mac’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, which spans 241 years (1776-2017) of American popular music across 24 hours. In 2016 Mac performed the full 24-hour marathon in New York City.</p>
<p>The durational aspects of A 24-Decade History of Popular Music were necessarily lost in The Inauguration’s whistlestop tour. But Mac’s six headliner performances across 27 hours this October incorporate the festival itself into a durational Radical Faerie realness ritual. I left The Inauguration wanting to attend all 27 hours.</p>
<p>Mac, who uses lowercase “judy” as a gender pronoun, joined performance art, drag, cabaret and audience participation, backed by a five-member onstage band. Song selections, which were not chronological, included the Pete Seeger song (later sung by the Byrds) “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbPl91kTFro">Turn! Turn! Turn</a>”; Tori Amos’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Croz1_USr3U">Precious Things</a>”; the country/western classic “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mynzbmrtp9I">Ghost Riders in the Sky</a>”; Laura Branigan’s 1982 hit “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=355Fk8drgZE">Gloria</a>”; and Irving Berlin’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr29Bfa9JQo">All Alone</a>”. Matt Ray’s beautiful and surprising musical arrangements, which often seemed to position harmonies as melodies, rendered familiar songs strange.</p>
<p>Mac wore gorgeous costumes and headpieces designed by longtime collaborator Machine Dazzle. At some points during the show, Machine Dazzle appeared on stage, also in avant-garde drag, to oversee a costume change. The designer’s presence emphasised collaboration and production: the show is made anew during each performance.</p>
<p>The show is about the ways communities are created from disaster. In line with this aim, Mac’s performance philosophy involves “incorporating the calamity”. For instance, early in the show, Mac fell while descending stairs from the stage to the orchestra. For the next few minutes, Mac worked a series of pratfalls into the performance.</p>
<p>Mac’s most premeditated calamity was audience participation. Over the course of the show we were instructed to applaud an arts administrator, shame each other and ourselves for (and then celebrate) having multiple sexual partners, speak on cue, and dance. Everyone hates audience participation, Mac explained, which was the point: our discomfort and our failures as participants were the disaster from which our community would be built.</p>
<p>A number of audience members were brought up on stage. In one instance, Mac invited the oldest and youngest audience members — a man over 75 and children under 10 — on stage and instructed the children to copy the older man’s dance moves. This moment honoured elders while exploding the idea that a show about queering American history was not for children.</p>
<p>Mac’s rendition of the song “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss1CXo8QMi8">The Surrey with the Fringe on Top</a>”, from the 1943 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma!, rendered white supremacy ridiculous by making it cuddly. Mac invited three blonde men on stage and dressed two of them in armbands with swastikas on them. Sitting beside them, with the third man on all fours in front of them playing the surrey-pulling horse, Mac sang. </p>
<p>As the song went on, Mac positioned the blondes so that one was lying in judy’s lap while the other leaned against judy’s shoulder. Mac suggested that we could think back to these cuddly Nazis the next time we were confronted by white supremacists in the news.</p>
<p>A challenge of Mac’s performances in Melbourne is performing a show about American history in an Australian context. Mac was well informed, frequently referencing the same-sex marriage postal survey and the offshore detention of refugees. The audience was receptive and supportive, applauding and sometimes calling out affirmations: it was a left-wing crowd. But, perhaps inevitably, the commentary on Australia struck me as more analogous than integral.</p>
<p>The Inauguration’s final number, a camp appropriation of a homophobic <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZnpdomkKAg">Ted Nugent</a> song, exemplified the way Mac framed audience participation as queer ritual. Mac instructed audience members to dance with a person of their same gender during the song (specifying that non-binary and genderqueer people could dance with whomever they wished). Our dance, Mac explained, would metaphorically kill Ted Nugent.</p>
<p>We complied, but there was a great deal of talking and laughing. Mac let this go on for a while and then stopped the music. Mac explained that we’d had our fun and now we were going to dance seriously. Pulling a male audience member up on stage, Mac demonstrated how we should dance: arms around each other, body to body, without speaking.</p>
<p>The audience member moved his hands to Mac’s behind, and Mac issued a gentle correction: “That’s fine if it’s consensual,” but it wasn’t how we were being instructed to dance. Moving the man’s hands up to waist level, Mac told us this was how to be good participants. We danced, holding each other.</p>
<p>Mac’s instruction in queer public intimacy pushed our boundaries while caring for us. For me, this final song felt like a taste of what the durational versions of the performance could do: the first step toward a community built on calamity.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Taylor Mac will perform <a href="https://www.festival.melbourne/2017/events/a-24-decade-history-of-popular-music/#.WdbeihOCxBw">all 24 hours of the show</a> in four six-hour chapters, and close out the festival with <a href="https://www.festival.melbourne/2017/events/the-wrap/#.WdbenBOCxBw">The Wrap</a>, a 90-minute reprise of songs from the 24 decades with contributions from local artists.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85321/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Balkin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Taylor Mac’s 90-minute version of a 24-hour history of pop music is a hit, determined to forge a renewed sense community with the audience.Sarah Balkin, Lecturer, English and Theatre Studies, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.