Undergound Dancenorth
PICA, Perth
Awesome Festival 2008
There is a moment that I savour when I see a great show and that is when the lights go down at the end and you are left with yourself in the darkness revelling in the moment to take breath and nod your head vigorously. And this is where I was on Friday night at PICA…
Dancenorth is a company on the rise. I saw a work of theirs 6 or 7 years ago in Hobart which was a collaboration with an indigenous dance group from the north somewhere (Tiwi Islands maybe?). This work didn’t gel well together at all - the section I had the most problems with was when the all-white dancenorth group came out dressed in Captain Cook era garb to surround the indigenous dancers, oh dear.
Since then I have heard nothing until a year or two ago, there was some rumblings from Townsville that I could hear in Melbourne. Something was happening…and it seemed to be happening around a new Artistic Director - Gavin Webber. I heard my colleagues Ben Cisterne and Luke Smiles talk about Underground which they designed for and it was overwhelmingly positive.
So here I was in Perth, after a Mobile States tour of the country watching the QLD company perform. The first thing I noticed was just the way that these performers were on stage. They were alive, aware and available to each other. You got the sense that anything could happen at any time and generally I was constantly surprised by what happened. This also was present in the set, the lighting and also the sound as vending machines would fall on performers, catch on fire and open to reveal a deeper backstage area - amazing and yet so simple.
Every element in the piece had a purpose, was visible and had an internal logic. The physicality had direction and fitted both with the characterisation and the flow of the work. (This work had been worked upon by four of the six dancers and the choreographer since 2004 and this was very evident, if only all work inthe country could have this sort of focus.)
The characterisation was not overwraught but it was clear who these people were, both as stereotypes and also as idiosyncratic individuals. And it was truly in the doing of things, in the actual application of the choreography that we are revealed the character - not in the acting of it. That through task based activity we understand who they are, this is nothing new - but I think it is important to mention in the context of dance theatre where the focus of the work is not always clear - i.e is this being led from the movement or is it being led from the narrative? These questions make me think a lot of Dumb Type and the way they construct their work - in Memorandum for example the people we see on stage are very much themselves - they are dancers and they take on the liveness that dancers can claim, but they also are characters that we identify with. There were a number of moments where I felt like I was in a Dumb Type show - especially where Hsin-Ju Chiu was holding up the words on paper to the audience.
A lot of the work created situations where an extended reality was set up - where time slows or speeds up, or where fantasies are played out whilst real situations occur around them. In none of this did I feel like this was strange or out of sync with the rest of the scene, somehow the work managed to create such a strong world that we understood the logic of it, but also accepted when new ideas were introduced. The transformation of a Taiwanese girl from commuter to martial artist to vending machine is completely unrealistic, but I accepted it and also continued to follow her character.
There was a sequence where the vending machines opened to reveal a mirror space, much like Alice and her looking glass - this was clearly not a real space,but another world. And so what could be played out here was a memory or another time/space. The ‘real’ world existed in front of the vending machines - and even when they were moved to the upstage - the commuters were still in the real space. This sequence was so well put together and so powerful that I was transfixed (and in the words of an American accented girl behind me “this is fucking awesome”)
Time played an interesting role in the piece as well, the opening and closing sequences portraying our travel to these spaces and our looped patterning when in here. Gavin Webber talks of making oneself smaller and smaller, trying to avoid eye contact and trying not to touch each other. This is true - public transport funnels us into a very small space and asks us to do something that is alien to our Australian society - be close to each other.
I personally find myself feeling satisfied if I have negotiated a train or tram ride without connecting with people - the opposite of this is when someone intervenes in this space who is loud, drunk or not conventional - how are we all changed by this? I was reminded of a time on a tram when a man was verbally assaulting these three Chinese students by making monkey actions. And no-one said or did anything - not even me. I thought long and hard about that situation - when does one stand up in that sort of situation? - how far does it need to go? But I digress….
I could go on and on about it <and I probably will add more to this post>, but suffice to say - Underground was a very well realised production, the physicality and commitment of the performers, the integration of set, lighting and sound and the maturity of concept all came together to create an experience that left me energised, moved and wanting to see it again.
I have been working with a small group of performers and artists on some basics of the Viewpoints at CIA Studios.The focus has been on games, mainly on childhood games. The cross over between the Viewpoints and basic games have become clearer to me. Inside an improvisation rules begin to develop and if the performers are aware of the situation then they will acknowledge the rule and work with it. Indeed it is the rules that create the specificity within the improvisation, as performers play within them or choose to break them.
On Tuesday night two groups created two games;
Game One – Knee touching
Rules
- Have to hop on one leg
- Have to try and touch the knee that is raised
- Once you touch it three times the toucher can change legs
Game Two – Slow Death
Rules
- a large group stands on a chessboard like imaginary grid
- consecutive turns
- each player controls another player on a grid (left, forward, right, back)
- a player ‘takes’ another player when they move into the square the other is occupying
- There are two winners at the end
I have also been looking at freeware applications that use onboard mobile phone GPS to track players in space. These are readily available for phones like the N-Series and E-Series Nokia phones and of course the now almost ubiquitous iPhone.
There was a lot of talk at Electrofringe this year about privacy and how important it was to people in this day and age. There was a lot of conversation about Facebook and how it was impossible to get your personal details off that site etc etc. There was a response to this - that perhaps people cared less about their privacy these days (??).
The ability to track people through mobile phone use has apparently taken away some of our freedoms and ability to disappear into anonymity. I feel the opposite when I see the above graphic. I feel exhiliarated, that a satellite has tracked me through a small chip on my mobile phone as I move along the ground and then drawn a line on a map. AWESOME! Big Brother is me, and I am tracking myself.
I have just spent the week in Albury Wodonga at a residency called ‘A Month in the Country’ which is run by Hothouse Theatre. In the beautiful surrounds of the farmhouse out there Willoh and I worked on the next Blood Policy show The Outside working on scripting and storyboarding. As part of the residency we were obliged to take a workshop which we conducted at the great little rural school at Rutherglen (a nearby town on the NSW side of the border).
Part of the 2 hour workshop that Willoh and I ran was a short section at the end where we asked the young people if they had any questions of us. I have done this before for all ages of children and it is worthwhile for them to understand that a creative career is possible and that here are some people who are doing it. Hothouse Theatre and Murray Arts ( a local organisation who manages the workshops for Hothouse) are making these small connections worthwhile.
On our return to the farmhouse we were shown a fantastic initiative of the local Albury Council a community bread oven. Many cultures lives revolve around food and especially a staple food like bread. What I love about this idea was that the community and cultural development officer went to Canada and saw this and then got the council to commit funds to it being built. Here is someone with a thought to the future, with a new set of ideas about how social connectivity can occur in a simple way.
On my return to Melbourne I was struck by the interest in the Mayoral race in the Local Government elections. John So is not running and so it is a wide open race. But I wonder if Melbournians realise what is at stake with this election? Is the culture of this great city in danger? It feels like we are at a real nexus in terms of what Melbourne is now and can be in the future. There are many creative forces in the city that will ensure the future is bright - the Artist Run Initiatives (ARI’s) that exist in or close to the CBD are strong and inventive, The thriving bar and cafe scene continue to push the boundaries of what playspace is, and the non-stop events calendar that is supported so vigorously by local and state tiers of govt.
However in the past year of so I have begun to notice a chopping at the edges of this unfettered creativity. The recent 2AM Lockout trial was supposed to be a response to inner city violence, but has had the effect of a dampening of music, cabaret and late night party venues throughout the CBD. There is no other city in Australia that uses its heart like Melbourne does. <Sydney has no centre, Brisbane parties in the valley, Perth in Northbridge and Adelaide is disjointed.> So making a blanket decision like this for what is primarily a problem that exists on the King Street/Queen Street side of the CBD is not a sensible decision. And by going on the reporting in the newspapers over the lockout trial period, there didn’t seem to be any curbing of the violence. I was generally heartened at the vigorous response by the citizens group Melbourne Locked Out which lobbied hard, and used Facebook (with 8000 members of the FB group) as a staging ground for a protest on parliament steps on Spring Street. Luckily the Lockout trial was defeated and is not going into full implementation.
In addition to this is a number of more prosaic observations from yours truly about the way culture is being squeezed from the inner city. My rent recently went up by close to $100 and by all accounts I should count myself lucky that it is the figure that it is. A friend of mine has recently had to vacate their rental property because their rent went up by 33%, and another has had to say goodbye to a warehouse that they had faithfully looked after for a long period due to it being sold out from under them. Both of these properties are in the creative hub area of High Street Northcote/Westgarth which according to the census has the highest population of singer/songwriters and also artists in the country. And indeed one of the selling points of the warehouse is that it offers those that want to redevelop it into apartments as being close to ‘arty High Street’.
Locals in Fitzroy, which has already seen a blanding down of the venues in the area due to increased complaints from residential properties has been fighting a new development on the corner of Kerr and Napier Streets which is amusingly called ‘The Artist Apartments’. With the ‘packages’ starting at $405,000 for a small two room apartment I am not sure if they are truly wanting artists to live there. I did actually go into the showroom area of ‘The Artist’ with a friend of mine and ask some questions of the real estate agents there. They were happy to show us that there was an ‘artist centre’, a ‘lap pool’ and an organic vegetable garden in the middle of the apartment complex.
This is a representation of what is will look like. Dubbed the ‘cheese grater’ by locals and The Age newspaper it is everything that once bohemian Brunswick Street is not. It doesn’t link with local architecture and is a good one storey taller than surrounding buildings.
Just going back to the rental market going up - this is no-ones fault, it has been on the rise for a while now - I guess I am interested in who is tracking this data? This very untraceable idea of where creatives are in a city and where they will go next…if we start to see the inner city unlivable for young people and culture shifters then what happens to the fabric of the place? Will satellite hubs begin to be set up in outlying areas? This seems the norm in Sydney, but for such a centralised city like Melbourne, how will this manifest?
So after a quick stopoff in Melbourne I returned to Perth to continue my residency. When I arrived, I was told of a laneway party (which I was sad to miss) that had local DJ’s and a Glaswegian DJ playing. The party was shut down at 12.10am because someone complained about the noise and after midnight they were no longer protected by their licence. The local Perthites seemed nonplussed about it - somehow they have become accustomed to this sort of end to a night out. I see this as a complete lack of vision on behalf of the authorities (and it must be Perth City Council who have the jurisdiction here).
Think for a second about the broader implications of this - here are some young promoters putting on a night in a laneway in Perth CBD, and there are 400+ punters who bought pre-purchased tix for the event (it sold out). They get an International to play and it is going to be a great night. Then it gets shut down (just as the International drops Prince in the middle of his set).
Why should people pay money for half a gig? Why should the promoters bother with the organising of an event like this that will hurt their reputation or just not be satisfying? And why as an artist would you play at a gig that is going to be shut down? Why as a promoter would you consider creative use of space when thinking about where to stage your event, when you know it will be shut down? Going one step further than this, when people decide where they want to live and the type of lifestyle they want to lead they will want to feel like they are part of a thriving community that is evolving and bubbling.
This is absolutely where councils can really come into play as drivers of culture, and indeed this is where local councils have a lot of power. They can’t create cultural, that comes from the community but with use of zoning laws, cultural precinct laws and use of new spaces they can give some air for the culture to grow and multiply. When looking for a cafe with good coffee here in Perth I came across Tiger Tiger, which has great food, coffee and utilises space in an interesting way. On their outdoor brick walls was a bill poster <unusual due to the hardcore legislation against graffiti and postering> for an organisation called Form.
Do you want our city to be enlivened by a rich cultural and creative mix?
Have you been involved in the debates around the Waterfront, the built environment, the Northbridge link?
Do you want talented people to stayin Western Australia? Would you like to be associated with an organisation which is working to bring about positive change?
If the answer is ‘Yes’ to any of these questions, then here’s another one:
Have you considered becoming a member of FORM?
Above is from the FORM website, and it is great to see there are people who are around who are seeing the boom in this state and are concerned about the continuing brain drain from a place that has so much money.
I noticed that in a report that they created called Creative Capital - Perth: Town or City? there was this quote gathered during the research;
‘Melbourne made the best of a bad situation and Perth the worst of a good situation’
which has a lot of truth to it, Perth’s natural beauty is unsurpassed (with the exception of Sydney’s harbour) in capital cities in Australia, but seems to have dropped its bundle in terms of cultural possibility.
This naturally brings me to Newcastle.
Marcus Westbury (This Is Not Art Festival Director, Next Wave Festival Director, 2020 summiteer, Not Quite Art ABC TV show creator and policy wonk) has established the movement ‘Renew Newcastle‘. Again the portal for this has been Facebook (2000 members), which along with the Obama victory sets up a nice arguement for social networking sites living up to their name.
‘This group is set up to promote a strategy to activate the empty spaces by creating incentives to make them available for community, cultural and creative uses.’ Renew Newcastle Facebook site.
Here is a strategy for use of abandoned urban shopfronts by artists. This has taken some wrangling and continuing discussions with the owners of the buildings (they are all privately owned). But as pointed out in Marcus’ tv show, it has multiple effects;
- creating new space for art,
- something is happening in the spaces that wouldn’t be otherwise,
- the artists invigorate the space for no cost to the owner
- public are brought into the street to see the artworks, thus making it a more attractive place to be
SO WHAT THE HELL AM I BANGING ON ABOUT????
I talked to a child in Albury about what I do this opportunity is provided by a theatre company,I see a community bread oven set up by a local councils CCD officer, I listen to two artist friends who are being pushed out of their homes in Northcote so people can move into the area to get a ‘piece of the artist lifestyle’, A Perth laneway party is shutdown ten minutes after their licence runs out and local movements are springing up to be inventive in response to a lack of cultural leadership.
I guess I am talking about how and where we come together as a community, and how one person with vision inside an organisation can make a difference that will have an effect across a wide range of people.
Culture can’t be controlled from a top down structure, it bubbles from the mass underneath, but with enough space and air and clear boundaries it will evolve into something amazing.
Performance and Research workshops at CIA Studios with Martyn Coutts
Image from Wayfarer by Martyn Coutts and Kate Richards,
Performance Space, Carriageworks, Sydney 2007
Maker and Performer Martyn Coutts will be taking workshops at CIA Studios over November and December. They begin with an introduction to the Viewpoints, a practice begun by Mary Overlie and made popular by Anne Bogart and the SITI company in New York. This practice and training methodology has a focus on the body and its presence in space and in relation to architecture and to others. This is where this process will cross over with my own research into games and game structures inside performance. The body is alive in the game, so how can games be used to bring alive performance? And also can new narratives emerge from within an open structure like a game?
Each workshop will be open and accessible for both performers and makers. Please bring water, comfortable clothes to move in and something to snack on in the break. It is free!
Dates
Saturday 15th Nov 10am – 2pm
Tue 25th Nov 7pm – 9.30pm/Sat 29th Nov 11am-3pm
Tue 2nd Dec 7pm – 9.30pm/Sat 6th Dec 11am – 3pm
Tue 9th Dec 7pm – 9.30pm/Sat 13th Dec 11am – 3pm
Tue 16th Dec 7pm – 9.30pm/Sat 20th Dec 11am – 3pm
Tue 23rd Dec 7pm - 9.30pm
For more information go to www.martyncoutts.com or call CIA Studios (480 Newcastle Street, West Perth) on 92284440.
Martyn Coutts is a resident artist at CIA Studios on behalf of pvi collective and the Inter-Arts office of the Australia Council.
Home Alone
Company Upstairs
Rechabites Hall
William Street, Perth
Part of the Artrage Festival 2008
This was another in a number of works I have seen this year that deal with Australian suburbia and especially in the celebration of it as a burgeoning part of our cultural landscape. We have sprawling flat suburbs that go on forever in our biggest cities (Perth being no exception), and the Australian dream of owning your own home there is part of our ethos. And up until a few months ago this was fine, but now the home has become a chain around our neck and the suburban sprawl has only heartbreak in it.
The focus of Home Alone was not so much about the Home itself (although the set was quite an achievement) but about the people within it. Set in three main rooms (two downstairs and one large one above) and a little bit outside the house we are let into (due to a cross section cut away) the lives of three individuals. It took me a while to understand what these people were to each other - flatmates, siblings, family? I think in the end that they were supposed to be mother, father and child, but due to the fairly even age of the dancers I am not sure if this worked.
I was drawn to this work by the poster, an evocative shot of a dancer (Keira Mason-Hill) jammed in a corner with her leg in contact with the roof looking down at a drummer with full drum kit. I am not sure what I expected from the show but the poster was intriguing enough that I thought it might be something that pushed the boundaries of dance by using live instrumentation on stage in an interesting way. The drummer was onstage the whole time, but didn’t seem to be a part of the show, which made me wonder why he as needed. I enjoyed his presence, but if you can’t interact with him then why was he there?
The three dancers (Mason-Hill, Kathryn Puie and Joe Jurd) were very skilled and this was apparent all the way through and they worked hard to make the piece work in what was a demanding non-stop physical show dealing with each other, objects and the set. I feel they were let down by the material and possibly the direction (although this is hard to tell as I am not sure how this work was devised). At times the narrative in the work created quite simplistic scenes that didn’t engender any extra feeling in the characters. The ‘I am drinking’ dance and the ‘domestic violence’ dance had no mystery about them and therefore fell down. This is a difficult thing to do and much like Falling for Frank at Next Wave earlier this year (which I thought was much more successful) trying to find a way that physicality can tell the story without mime is the challenge. I like the territory that this work was trying to get to and I feel like Bianca Martin has all the right elements, but maybe needs more time to put it together.
An extremely full two days of forums and performances last weekend has left me quite tired but full of new questions and with some new colleagues and friends.
This great brown land of ours is a beautiful place to be, but for the tiny community of artists living in the cities that grip the coast it can be an isolating experience. So it was to Perth
that some of us came to take part in pvi collective’s symposium this is the time…this is the record of the time (amusingly, and with almost irreverential glee acronymed to titt…titrott by pvi)The artists attending were;
Madeleine Hodge and Sarah Rodigari (Panther) David Williams (Version 1.0) Julie Vulcan and Jason Sweeney (Unreasonable Adults)
Cat Jones (CatgURL)
Molly Tipping and Jen Jamieson (sic)
Sam Fox (Hydrapoesis)
Michelle Outram Kat Barron and Lara Thoms (Spat and Loogie)
WIlloh S.Weiland and me (Deadpan)
Rebecca Conroy and Bec Dean (Performance Space)
Jeff Khan (Next Wave Festival)
It was pvi’s 10th birthday and this celebration was a marker point where we came together to discuss what hybrid performance artwork or ‘live art’ is today in Australia. The panels discussed what it was to make work in public contexts and with challenging form or content. There are very few times when I feel like I am part of a community, one of those times was at Time_Place_Space in 2004, where I felt a strong sense of lineage and peership
. This gathering had this sort of feeling too. There were a lot of things discussed, too many for me to record here, but i think there were some general overarching things that i noticed;
* That this community is resourceful and mobile, their reach extends a long way due to use of online delivery methods and clever use of opportunities like residencies and personal connections
* The work is light, tourable and is based around ideas, concepts and an ability to be adaptable
* There are a lot of duos (Spat and Loogie, (sic), Panther, Deadpan)
* Everyone is multiskilled - sound, video, graphics, performance, writing, producing, curating etc…
* There is a kindness and heart in the work, that somehow the artists want to make a personal connection with their audiences, whether that is General Public or theatre/dance goers.
* That these people are funny and have a healthy sense of the ridiculous
And a few things that stuck with me over the past week;
* Rebecca Conroy saying that this type of work was small and feels like things are not really happening here, which i think is a great comment and really made me rethink the context I am making work in, and although this was a celebration, it was still a reminder that we are all making work in a very specific and small context.
* Kelli from pvi recounted a quote by Tim Etchells that went something like : “You work in the places that are the most difficult for you”, this resonated for me after a week of soul searching whilst being ‘missing’ for the Deadpan project “I Lost You In The Suburbs”
* Bec Dean acknowledged the traditional owners of the land, the Noongar people. And she said “this is the place…” I felt really strongly that this should have been done at the beginning of the symposium, as here we were marking time. And I was glad that one of the last words was indeed to recognise place as all of the work being discussed has such a strong connection to people and place.
If you have any knowledge, ideas, comments, rumours or heresay as to why, call toll free (in Australia) 1800 984 880. If in Western Australia call (08) 61 020 733 Thankyou.
Red Shoes
Thin Ice
PICA, Artrage Festival 2008
Perth, Western Australia
It was with great interest that I stepped into PICA’s performance space for the first time and also to see the ‘wonderboy’ of Australian theatre at the moment, Matthew Lutton. His new company Thin Ice presented an adaptation of the classic Hans Christian Anderson’s Red Shoes. In actuality it was an interweaving of three tales - one which was an HCA tale The Shadow and the other I didn’t recognise but had the hallmarks of that classic dark European fairytaleness about it. These stories are timeless, they are still around today because there is deep resonance in our culture for them - especially our white European culture, where we are still afraid of the dark, of the forest and of our shadow.
What immediately struck me was the visually striking set and the use of lighting and composition of the bodies in the space. And it is here that Matthew Lutton, Director, has the most talent. Time and again, with no hiding of the transitions between characters and location (all of it was done openly in front of the audience) we were allowed to see new stage pictures unfold and collapse.
This is as far as I got with the piece, for after 15 minutes I began to really struggle. And what seemed like such bold theatrical choices at the start, ran out of steam. The brash nature of the performance, which seemed edgy, became swamped by style over substance. And I began to question the very nature of what was being done. Why tell these stories now? What resonance do they have for a contemporary audience in Perth in 2008?
Matthew has spent some time in Melbourne working under Michael Kantor, and if I am led to believe he actually ended up directing Tartuffe due to Michael falling ill. By all accounts this was a great achievement. And there are definitely similiarities between Michael and what Matthew was trying to do here. Very stark European style contemporary set, pantomime or fairy tale as a backbone and larger than life performance style. So what was the difference? Did Matthew not have the budget? or the time?
I also believe (and this is absolutely my own personal taste) that if you are going to sing in a show, and use it as a narrative driver then you need to be absolutely sure of its context otherwise it is just singing and we don’t know why the person just didn’t speak it normally into the space. And the breaking of the tension built in the piece was jarred by these shifts, you could feel the audience shifting as if they to were marking the change in form.
Finally, I was dismayed at the blatent and completely uneccessary homoerotic scenes near the end. They were so unsexy and added nothing to the piece. I didn’t feel enagaged, aroused or moved by it at all. This was a great tragedy, as these final scenes where the protagonist gets his feet cut off should have been the climax of the piece and all I felt was uncomfortable for the performer whose balls were left out in the open for about fifteen minutes for the world to see.
Perhaps I saw an off night? It was second night after all and by all accounts the opening was a great success.
Artrage opened their 25 year anniversary festival tonight at PICA.
Here was a bicycle powered Silent Disco happening outside. The bikes powered the two DJ’s who piped the music into the headphones the people were wearing.
I have been trying to clear a backlog of work that is not allowing me to get to the residency i am here to do. But hopefully today I broke the back of it and I can have the weekend to myself to settle in to being here.
The main thing I am trying to finish is LIFE SIZE video content which is being bounced around between sound designer Luke Smiles who is in Europe (thank the lord for the interweb), myself here in Perth and choreographer Luke George in Melbourne. We are trying to get the work ready for a tour to Perth (it seems to be the centre of the Earth at the moment) which is part of the Artrage Festival.
LIFE SIZE filming in August I think…
This is my favourite tree in Perth (in Hyde park which so far is my favourite park)
My very large and very empty room on the first day…
The view from my room - nighttime Perth CBD and caryard.
