A group of women walk into a bar….

Bates tells us that we are sitting in approximately the right space or to change while it’s happening. Predictably the audience stay glued to their spots and it makes an interesting comment on our default couch potato mentality.

The ladies strut around; Evania Vallyon in black is vampy and like a werewolf. The music starts again, Emily Campbell in foxy fur and retro heels strides past, Jenny Nicholas saunters by in peachy top and grey trousers with her signature Princess Leia buns. Polka dot girl Zahra Killeen-Chance and Miriam Marler in a tough leather jacket also move nonchalantly through the space.

They start again, hands splayed, crouching, heads moving, bobbling. Twitches contrast with soft music. Bates goes walking past and tells a newcomer to sit on down.

Awkwardness. Repeat music and walk around again. Lip-synching: “you take me for a walk under the sycamore tree, the dark trees that blow baby”. Shoulder tension, twisted hands and jerky knees.

I start to think murderous thoughts. “Blah blah lesbian bar?” or at least I think that’s what my friend mumbles. As it is film noir-ish, I decide to survey the scene: There are a couple of park-hands and patterned lights and black and white zigzagged papery floor mats.

The performers progress to the couch in little interludes. I notice a TV with an image of a whirring fan. A slow, meaningful reprise is happening in the corner and on the chair. Lifting, breathing, inhaling. There is a deliberate pick up of the chair. “Coming in for the prowl” mutters my friend. Nodding, mouth open, face-to-face sitting opposite on chairs.

Inwardly I think this piece could play all night long in a bar inhabited by people who don’t know its happening. My last note is a scrawl saying “Twin Peaks-ish”. I am later pleased to be told by one of the dancers that the score was based on still images captured from the Twin Peaks TV show and conceptualised for a Choreographic Methods paper at Auckland University playing with “a live, shifting dialogue between collaborative and non collaborative practices”.

Fold Me Finite by Serene Lorimer

Sam Wood is sitting at a desk with a piece of paper and announces “How to fold a butterfly. “Pick it up and flip it over. Crease it, fold it in half” she chimes like a child who has rote-learnt something.  Jesse Quaid enters and throws Wood off the chair and resumes the instructions.

The lighting is from both low and angled above, creating a condensed space. The black curtains are strewn across the background showing peeps of concrete behind.  Quaid splats against the faux wooden floor: dirty and dusty from nights of seedy dance parties.

When their dance becomes a duet, they are fast, lithe with clean and crisp lines. Their movements echo the spoken text, folding, lefts and rights and spinning. Although it seems somewhat literal, the execution is springy with tidy feet, constantly manipulating each other, the flow; the stop, start, turn, lie, placed and transferring of weight.

This piece is a revision of a work made for last years Unitec 3^rd Year Graduation performance where these performers, choreographer and WIP producers all came from. Lorimer’s notes say: “It is natural to shift easily between manipulating an object to our will, manipulating a person to our desire”.

As a viewer, I wonder what it might be like if the text was dropped so that the movement could have its own abstract meaning for the audience; whether the masculine vests and trousers were purposeful as a visual statement, considering two women performed it.  And lastly if the blankness on the faces could be developed to look at other performative states maybe about objectivity and desire, that could take both the movement and audience’s imagination to other places.

Tracing Terra Firma by Jesse Quaid 

A solo by Quaid begins crouching in a silhouetted light. Chirping cicadas and a hum prompts her body to undulate with fast hand moves and a deep lunge.  Sweeping, swiping, dipping, stirring, shoulders, elbows all in continuous motion.

The light transfers from spot to spot, flickers, dim. As the motifs are explored, I consider the constant timing and wonder where the tension might/could build. Even lower lunges. Electronic buzzes and spats play. Is it a praying mantis dance?

Asking her afterwards if this was a new piece she replies it was an improvisation she has worked on for three weeks. It seems to be a personal experiment that sits in a flux of places that she seems curious about without necessarily having arrived at one particular destination.

Her notes say: “What is this? Hmmmmmmmm…… Perhaps it is a fragile construct of habitual patterns and forms, teetering on the fluid edge between past and futures, or a mental and physical house of cards in four dimensions, or just a body playing in time and space.”

Use Chopsticks Much? by Alana Yee in collaboration with Will Barling