I HEART 5, 6, 7, 8
08/03/2011 - 09/03/2011
Globe Theatre, 104 London St, Dunedin
18/03/2011 - 20/03/2011
Production Details
I HEART 5, 6, 7, 8
FRINGE AUCKLAND at GALATOS presents
SWEATY HEART PRODUCTIONS’
I HEART
Choreographed by Emily Campbell, Jessie McCall,
Lydia Zanetti & dancers in collaboration with First Flight
SWEATY HEART PRODUCTIONS’
I HEART
Choreographed by Emily Campbell, Jessie McCall,
Lydia Zanetti & dancers in collaboration with First Flight
The premier of Sweaty Heart Productions‘ new work I HEART strikes Galatos’ stage as part of the Auckland Fringe 2011. Fresh and sweaty nosed, this clan of dancers are ready to set your heart on 5, 6, 7, 8.
‘Avoid habits’ slash ‘indulge idiosyncrasies.’ ‘Alienation is overdone.’ ‘I heart forced arch choreography.’ ‘This is getting a little bit StageChallenge.’ ‘Walk for 8, stand for 8, twitch 2, 3, turn on the spot, exit stage left.’ ‘Do not act.’ ‘To end, heavy breathing.’ ‘Move toward comfort.’ ‘Um…snap to black.’
And now, Sweaty Heart Productions is proud to collaborate with Emily Campbell who will perform an exciting new solo and Jessie McCall who is sending over a video dance work from North Carolina.
First Flight produced Campbell’s work paper women as a requested part of the 2009 MAUforum in which “Campbell and her dancers manage to charge the space with compelling energy and pathos in elegant fashion” – Natalie Dowd
Campbell’s work Heel Ruby with Zahra Killeen-Chance was premiered at Dunedin Fringe in early 2010 and since then has been performed in and around Auckland city in theatres, window displays and on street corners. It was praised as a “very fascinating work” by Felicity Molloy.
Lydia Zanetti recently choreographed for the show Pointy Dog and Friends in which her work ‘iDancah’ was said tofeature a “longing, leaping ambience … drawing on and reflecting the individual dancer” – Celine Sumac
Sweaty Heart Productions is ready to fire up their well-honed contemporary dance walking capabilities as well as a bit of dancing on the side. Lets see what you/I HEART.
Light, sound and AV operation: Patrick Loughran
1hr 20 mins
Very Fringe!
Review by Lyne Pringle 22nd Mar 2011
This band of emerging Auckland based choreographers and dancers bring their own brand of dance to the Globe Theatre – a dusty and distinguished repository of Dunedin theatre history.
The first body appears on stage; Emily Campbell, back bare in a backwards cardigan with frilly black knickers peeking from underneath. She undulates faceless inviting the eye to discern the movement of the spine on top of strong legs; creases of flesh along the side of the torso provoke our perception of this dancer’s body. As with each section of this self choreographed Instruction for Flesh my attention falters before the performer has finished with her intention. When her face finally appears blank above a horizontal body full of stiffness I wish for something more from this orb of potential expressiveness, some deeper insight into the creative intentions and latent passions of this performer/choreographer.
There is a compelling and measured delivery of movement throughout the work but my attention falters long before the end. Is there another chapter in this story that is missing; a change of dynamic that would surprise and sustain the intrigue; another layer of meaning?
The persistent droning music by Bell Orchestre also puts forward a challenge. It has a solid spatial structure but in the end, despite the sense that this is a deeply felt/thought solo, not enough happens.
Sandwiched between two live works is a video from Jessie McCall, i heart Alphabits with important post- commentary. Danced with verve by a very photogenic Marialena Maggi this is an overly long expose on oral fixation, fully clothed bathing, floating alphabet bits, distorted body perception, dog licking and, strange domestic habits under the guise of ‘lets have a party where we all play art until we throw up”.
Distinguished by percussive wry editing, compelling music by El Perro Del Mar and some beautiful imagery, the interminable ‘experimental’ – I guess that’s what we can call something this meandering with no clear purpose or intention – film finishes finally and an assortment of people comment on what we have just seen, bandying about ‘isms’ in an off hand way to let us know that ‘only joking’, ‘the creator’ knew it was all a bit of a wank really!
Very fringe.
Lydia Zanetti is continues to cut her teeth in an edgy choreographic manner. Her themes include queer sexuality and power dynamics in relationships. She uses absurdist humour and often nonsensical text to conjure powerful images that disturb and provoke. There is a memorable moment where Emily Campbell tap dances in thick boots and a gas mask under a ballerina umbrella whilst ballet terminology is spat at her from a cracked and butchered recording.
Some of the movement vocabulary is taken from an earlier work Grimm with new layers added for this particular rendition. The dancers Shani Dickins, Sarah Elsworth , Sofia Mcintyre and Emily Campbell inhabit the choreography which includes shaking, gentle touch, off hand partnering and precisely sliced gesture with power and commitment.
Lydia Zanetti has a good sense of sceneographic rhythm and dynamics and is able to compile a soundtrack that enhances the particular mood she is striving for onstage. I enjoy her experimentations with text and sound, all of the performers deliver well on this front – finding meaning in the words they are asked to deliver.
At times however the overall arc of the work gets lost and I am left questioning the ‘meaning’ I am supposed to read into the performance. As the choreographer continues to chew over particular modes of delivery, images and a unique movement vocabulary there must be a rigorous questioning of the choices she is making with regard to her relationship with her audience.
In general I would say about this programme lending from Doris Humphrey ‘all dances are too long.’
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Funny, sexy and very interesting
I HEART is a two night run of new dance works by Emily Campbell, Jessie McCall and Lydia Zanetti.
Auckland’s 2011 Fringe Festival is well spread around the city and has a great buzz. This evening at Galatos I am immediately taken in to a darkly fringy scene with sparse and elegant lighting design by Patrick Loughran and Ruby Reihana-Wilson. While waiting for the show to start, the lights slowly and almost imperceptibly darken, settling us into our seats, set awry within the space.
The chairs’ positioning, space setup and chorus of chatter feels and sounds more like instruments warming up for an orchestra rather than a collective throng of contemporary dancers, but as I look around, the audience is surely a who’s who of the next twenty years of dance growth and innovation. Our immersion in the anticipatory sensation of what happens just before the curtain lifts leads is cued by the soundscore which replaces the chatter – first up, a solo choreographed and danced by Emily Campbell and titled “Instructions for Flesh”.
Campbell dances with her characteristic textural and sensuous grace, barely clothed in a reversed black cardigan/sweater (which reveals her back) and black knickers. Her movements are precise, enervated and carry her along an extremely delicate pathway towards the final moments when she draws on herself with red chalk.
This new dance work is a considered foray into her developing artistry. Minimal repetition throughout is highlighted by a simple side roll which eventually takes her away from us to the back of her narrow stage, bare and boxed in black. In the programme, Campbell acknowledges artist Carol Brown and I wonder if, for this work, she has been encouraged to spend time mindful of the pace of her every next move, and gently revealed as an artist, sustained by her direction.
Next in what feels to be an organic and innovative show, is the feminine self consciousness of Jessie McCall’s experimental film work “i heart Alphabits with important post commentary”. McCall posted us her work recently from North Carolina.
Set in a large old house, and with jagged music and a disjunctive editing style, the film follows dancer Marialena Maggi throughout the house, and into an array of situations, followed by a coda section with "important post-commentary" from the Coco Reed, Carly Olivieri, the dancer, and dance professor Larry Lavender. McCall’s wit and dry perspectives about feminism/postmodernism/ postcolonialism lend humour to their pronouncements, although I am not convinced by the self-deprecating comments of the dancer, Marialena Maggi – these simply don’t ring true. Instead I find her performance to be passionate, provocative, and the filming of her gorgeous. Ultimately, the film is a tad too long and slightly overcooked, and the post-commentary is distracting.
For the last performance of the evening, Lydia Zanetti’s work titled, “Do You I Heart”, the audience is asked to move their chairs around to face the length of the floor: a narrow avenue for a series of carefully constructed duet and trio sections accompanied by a mannequin-like silhouette figure (Campbell) whose presence adds spatial design elements similar to those of a Magritte painting. The dance takes us on a journey of passive acquiescence, flaunting prettiness and affectionate embraces. Both the slower dance duet and trios provide welcome moments of beautifully etched partner dance.
Zanetti has some very nice choreographic material up her sleeve and could perhaps take hold of this as a more central artistic statement rather than rely on insertions of less graphic theatrical moments. Dancers Sofia McIntyre, Sarah Elsworth and Sharni Dickins are more than capable as versatile, expressive performers and surely could be more boldly challenged in their movement vocabularies.
Sweaty Heart Productions’ show is a must-see for the 2011 Fringe and with only one night to go. Their publicity says they are “ready to fire up their well-honed contemporary dance walking capabilities as well as a bit of dancing on the side”. A perfect description for a funny, sexy and very interesting show!
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For more production details, click on the title above. Go to Home page to see other Reviews, recent Comments and Forum postings (under Chat Back), and News.
Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer
Comments
Celine Sumic March 15th, 2011
Searching, Emily Campbell is questioning; her fingers sensing, scripting her feeling-felt self... writing a possibility of being seen in-as other.
A painterly unfolding, I HEART touches me with its multi-media mark-making, sketching out a thread of illuminated leading limbs to ask, with glimpsed patches of skin and extended stretches of cinematic time, what it is we variously carry, bring our focus to, and excise from sight.
McCall's watery excesses seem to speak in meditative creation, of the components of a home made oil paint, food and art imploding in a powdery alphabetic soup. The darkness folding satin with skin echoes of a Renaissance portrait, extending in long moments of fluid playing over and dissolving-consuming the contemporary construct of artistic meaning. The humour of the post-commentary becomes wonderfully drawn out as the volume increases and repetition of ending follows ending follows ending which leads one to focus - on the ending - when will it end? Whether it will ever end? and then to consider where it does eventually end, if that is an end, or /and /if - I begin in this space of no ending to experience my self and the red lines of my mind - where we ended was it because I felt it is was over or is it still a performance and am I still an audience as the ending is yet to come? What is an ending? Is it just a fiction? Where does fiction end and reality begin? Will this film ever end now that in my mind I have left it or will it linger now forever? Did Jessie McCall just make herself famous in my mind?!! I do believe this woman may indeed be a genius.
Last but never least, Lydia Zanetti's work will be seen. Delivered with what I am coming to recognise as Zanetti's signature oscillations of scale, this emphatically delightful, disturbing and sharply delivered work marks poison at the edge of beauty's brush to dance hard at the social dissonance of our time.
(late afternoon notes on a sushi napkin)
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