EAST COAST EXCHANGE LAUNCH
WEDNESDAY 23 JULY FROM 6.30PM @ THE DRILL – performance showings supported by Sydney’s Critical Path & Dance House in Melbourne by Kimberley McIntyre, Only Leone and Phoebe Robinson.
Kimberley McIntyre’s dance was the result of research undertaken at the Sydney Zoo, and supported by Sydney’s Critical Path. Within her dance I discerned three distinct parts: pedestrian, narrative, abstract. Firstly she described conversationally, her experience working in the zoo. Then changing to a different voice, she told the story of the Bunyip. The Bunyip is an imagined creature seeking its identity. When the dancer, as Bunyip, held a mirror up to see her own reflection, it seemed like the mirror reflected on me. Finally, through pure abstract movement, she became the snake, the bird and Great Ape. It was as if I was watching the evolution of our all our human selves. She ended crouched like an Ape in a cage, and I felt my gaze was intruding. Through a language of gesture beyond logic of words, this dance brought me close to my landscape within.
The second performer was Only Leone from Melbourne. Her dance was inspired by a blue summer frock, and was composed in two-parts with opposing rhythms. I saw it as a dance about being off balance. She began relentlessly beating a small bell, smiling as she beat in time to the rhythm of the song, Only You. Then placing the bell before the audience, she moved out into the stage space energetically. Moving to an odd off-beat rhythm, she never quite found her feet. Her dress, red lipstick and tireless smile seemed to counter a restless distress. The tension in the movement and sound contradictions drew me into her world. She later revealed her score: to never find balance, to be pushed and pulled, and place feet heel first on the floor. I read into this dance that human actions are tipping the natural balance.
Phoebe Robinson, also from Melbourne, had developed a pure abstract dance. She developed gestures moving to words from a Talking Book: James Joyce’s Ulysses. Yet what I saw was performed in silence, with occasional abstract sounds. Her body sculpted through space and time to the cadence of human speech, yet these were the traces of human presence in a cool elemental space. The linear, angular shapes and gestures were like landscapes of Antarctica.
All dances evolved from responding to things: a book, a frock and some fellow creatures.