'Dance Edits’, Dance City, Newcastle, 28 September, 2023
The evening of ‘Dance Edits’ opened the new, 2023-24 season of Newcastle’s Dance City. In this way it provided a platform for showing work by dancers who spend from one to several weeks in residence, using the space and facilities of the splendid centre of dance education and performance for the North East. Like all artists, dancers and choreographers have the right to experiment and improve their work through trial and error. It is simply great that the dance community in the North East has a place where it is possible to meet, show and discuss work in progress. Yet, the event was presented and advertised as any other evening of performances, and Dance City invited a wider and paying audience, along with the dancers, to see it. We came with expectations not just to share with the dance community but also to see pieces created for the stage.
As expected, the programme was eclectic. The evening began with the members of the Changing Movement Collective (CMC) inviting everybody onto the dance floor (with no stage in this black-box-type theatre space). The CMC’s piece was titled ‘Many Hands’, and the collective is indeed many-handed and includes impressive drama actors working for the Theatre of the Oppressed circus actors and other people. It formed recently, like a flying circus, with the purpose to explore what can be developed together. ‘On stage’, that is, in the space destined for the performance, there were bars, mats on the floor, hanging ropes and other equipment for aerial action. Friendly people of various ages in ordinary casual clothes, yet clearly company members, welcomed the audience to join in mild acrobatic movements. A smaller part of the audience did join, but the rest stayed in their seats. We joined but held back, observing rather than acting, in part intimidated by the audience, prepared ‘to be in’ yet not ready to do a public performance. One woman led an act of ‘social choreography’, in which we discovered where different people came from today and where in the world they were born - a nice thing to do if one wants to be sociable. Then the CMC members formed a shape, and people in the audience were asked what kind of image they saw. The best answer was ‘the Eifel Tower’, perhaps because there was nothing obviously in the shape to remind one of that, and everybody laughed: humour is a general release for interactive performances. It would be even better if ‘Many Hands’ gathered in a foyer or a courtyard, where it would be easier for the audience to join in, as it would not be seated comfortably in an amphitheater.
The next piece was a traditional, and not interactive, performance by Pelican Theatre, also a local company. Ellie Throw and Pagan Hunt showed ‘Kylie Jenner’s Private Jet’ at Durham Fringe Festival in July where we had the pleasure to see it. The later version at Dance City is a mature choreography, with a definite finale and more personal and emotional monologues (yes, this is a piece of dance theatre with some beautiful movements, but also with words). About a year ago, the young socialite and businesswoman, Kylie Jenner, took her private jet on a flight that lasted just 12 minutes. It was estimated that her brief jaunt would have resulted in a ton of carbon dioxide emissions, which is about a quarter of the total annual carbon footprint of the average person globally. The practice among the rich and famous of taking brief journeys on luxury aircraft has recently faced a torrent of criticism by climate activists. The question of the Pelican Theatre’s piece is therefore what an ordinary person, as opposed to politicians and other people of power, can do about the climate crisis. The answer is - almost nothing, which Ellie’s grinning face, while she pronounced ‘Powerlessness!’, ironically confirmed. As a metaphor of powerlessness and being at a dead end, the dancers block each other’s movements of trying to break through. This simple but ingenious piece of choreography kinaesthetically conveys to the audience the feeling of frustration. For us it looked like the culmination of the piece, a convincing portrayal of powerlessness in front of the coming crisis. The whole piece carries a clear statement, it is beautifully composed and performed by professionally trained dancers-choreographers-dramaturges, all in one. It is both moving and a pleasure to watch.
‘Dead Reckoning’, by Susan Moir, was more provocative. The almost nude dancer, drawing attention to the trans-gender body, made a slow entrance in the image of a Butoh artist. One might think it is not by chance that the title of the piece echoes Kazuo Ohno’s masterpiece, ‘The Dead Sea’. Dead reckoning means navigating by calculating the current position of a moving object by using a previously determined position, or fix , and incorporating estimates of speed, heading (or direction or course), and elapsed time. It was used by sailors, and migrating birds do it automatically. There was a video projection onto the back screen, abstract at the beginning, with ink dots, as in Japanese calligraphy, and the slow motion of the tall white figure, reminiscent of Butoh, added a silhouette to the image. The discrepancy was the movement of the arms: they were reminiscent of ballet or flamenco rather than of the crooked arms and hands of the classical Butoh dance. (Kazuo Ohno claimed once that technique had no importance, and Butoh is about the spiritual domain; yet serious dancers do not have to take it this at face value.) The first part of ‘Dead Reckoning’ concludes with the dancer moving to the centre of the video projection, which by this time displays a waterfall. Then the colour of the projection changes to red, and with a change of music the dancer’s movements become more active and reminiscent of movements concerned with fitness. The last part is again different: to build up to a finale, Susan Moir reverts to a kind of flamenco, which apparently is her dance style, beating the floor with bare feet. We were puzzled about the connection between the parts and felt that the composition could be developed to give it a clearer shape.
The last piece, ‘Baggage Check’ by Emma James, of Blipcollective, left us even more perplexed. It is described in the programme as ‘an intimate portrayal of a series of human overhauls’ and it appropriately begins with a large-screen video of the artist dragging a huge trunk along the street (though we could not get rid of an impression that the trunk was empty and not as heavy as we were made to believe). The video (and music) were made for the performance. At the end of the video the artist appeared in person and performed a series of manipulations with objects placed on the floor, including an ironing board. The dance movements were close to everyday movements, minimalistic, more acting than dancing. There were several costume changes ending up with a burlesque-like partial undressing and a ‘dance karaoke’ which everyone was meant to join. The intention might be good, yet a different kind of energy should have been built to excite the audience to rise and dance with the artist. This might have happened if the audience had not been left to guess why the artist was doing what she did, in other words, if her actions had been more motivated, internally connected to each other and integrated into a plot. Then perhaps everybody in the audience would feel the impulse to stand up from their seats and dance along.
Watching the last two pieces, I wondered if, on top of its luxury space, Dance City provided choreographic and dramaturgic advice for its residents. At the end of the evening the audience was still hungry for dance. In a way, it is more interesting to watch work-in-progress rather than an accomplished choreography by a star performer: the latter one can but admire, the former one can think about and discuss. And yet Dance City has very able students and even more able teachers (some of whom we have seen perform and even had the pleasure to learn from). Please can we see them staging and dancing their own work? I believe the more dance is there, the better the world around us is.