EMOTIONAL FOOTPRINTS |
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) Dark Tourists A new work by Malia Johnston & Emma Willis at Te Whaea, Wellington From 20 Feb 2008 to 24 Feb 2008 [1 hr 10 mins, no interval] Reviewed by Jennifer Shennan, 24 Feb 2008 |
Dark Tourists is painfully well-named. Bleak and dislocated and caustic and critical and sharp and sinewy and voyeuristic and nihilistic and darkly comic and absolutely stunning. Its territory is a mix of Hieronymus Bosch, Bill Hammond and Samuel Beckett, in a post-modern, post-Al Gore era.
There is a white crane for peace but somebody eats it. Be warned, and be there.
Malia Johnston and Emma Willis have co-directed the work which proceeds in episodes of dance, text, music, song and sound effects (composition, Eden Mulholland). There is atmospheric design with sets that are rarely still (lighting, Paula van Beeck).
The cast have command of many episodes of troubled nerves, surreal violence and pockets of graceful redemption. Oh how grateful one is for the lissome beauty of dancers Paul Young, Claire Lissaman and Julia Milsom, who are allowed to dance like terns and gannets from time to time, which counteracts the acting out of mugging and murder and mindless whatever.
Peter Daube and Sean MacDonald time their every move as though animated. MacDonald's epilogue "chaconne", follows the time-honoured theatrical convention of that form but with a contemporary vocabulary of disjointed rhythm. It alone is worth seeing the show for - a post-Petrouchka rap by a dislocated hoodie who can't see any way out.
We are instructed to leave nothing but our emotional footprints. We do as we are told.
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Lyne Pringle