Review: Mortal Engine

Mortal Engine

By Chunky Move

Choreographed by Gideon Obarzanek

The Malthouse as a part of Dance Massive

I didn't receive Mortal Engine as a piece of dance theatre, or even as choreography. It therefore felt a little strange to be applauding the dancers at the conclusion of the piece. I would never deny a performer their applause, I think I wanted to applaud Frieder Weiss, the program author whose genius generated the stunning real-time projections.

Mortal Engine seemed to me to put humans in the roles usually served by machines. The dancers were input devices, the choreography not the end result but one of many contributing brushstrokes creating this masterwork.

I have an interest in this kind of technology, often discussing with a friend the various possibilities of real-time digital projection and generation and often swapping links to projects that realise one permutation or another to varying degrees of success.

Shadow Monsters by Philip Worthington, an interactive installation created by reading visual locational data (the shadow of one's hand in front of a screen) running it through a program which adds sounds and digital visual manipulation of the image and projecting it back, onto another screen.

Or LASER tag, developed by the Graffiti Research Lab. I'm not at all sure how this works, but its a similar result. That is: real time projection of a manipulated image.

Mortal Engine achieved this with stunning virtuosity. I wish now I had seen Glow, yet it sounds as if I wouldn't have enjoyed it as much as ME. I left the theatre extremely excited.

I do, however, have some (what I think may be) interesting notes, notes which may lead me down the digital garden path into a deep dark binary forest, where I will get lost, eaten, spewed up and then will commit (justified) murder.

The production didn't solely use projection. It also used good ole incandescent lighting. This added an interesting tension that I don't feel was fully explored. The tension being, the difference between projecting an image which is being refreshed 25 or 50 times a second (depending upon how you look at it, or indeed if I am even right) onto a body moving fluidly and continuously, and lighting aforementioned body with continuous light. There is a perceptible difference and I think more could have been made of that. When watching someone lit by incandescent light there is an inevitable warmth and fluidity. We see it and we think 'human', 'natural'. When lit by a digital projector we think 'cold', 'digital' 'unnatural'.

As virtuosic as Frieder Weiss' projections were, the use of them fell into a trap common for new media use in performance, that is to say, they were used in one way only. As mentioned by Alison Croggon, your mind does play tricks on you in such an experience. The negative image left in your field of vision after looking at a bright, still image is one these optical illusions. These things were occurring but not used at all. The aesthetic of the projections sometimes mimicked the organic visual world of shadows, negative images, interplay between light and dark, I think the digital illusions needn't have been all that was going on. For instance, there is this:

Stare at the black dot. The grey haze will eventually seem to disappear.

It was a part of the exercise that all of the projection be real-time. I understand that as an exercise. As an viewer, however, once I come to understand the rules I want them broken. I think it would have added to the pieces complexity if some of the sections were not being driven by the dancer's bodies, but rather they were following prerecorded projections. This kind of subtle shape-shifting within a format is thrilling as a viewer. Is that a physical image, or is it my eyes? It would have been wonderful.

Early on the projections mimicked an oscilloscope in what I believe to be an attempt at integrating Robin Foxes LASERs later in the piece. It didn't work. As much as I admire Robin Fox and his LASER shows, and acknowledge the desired effect, it just felt like too much of a gear change.

I'll finish with what I think is a fantastic example of technology integration and playfulness. I'm a little sheepish about it being a Kanye West clip. Its awesome.

KANYE WEST "Welcome To Heartbreak" Directed by Nabil from nabil elderkin on Vimeo.

Review: Melbourne Spawned a Monster

Melbourne Spawned a Monster

Dancehouse as a part of Dance Massive

Choreographed and Directed by Jo Lloyd

Performed by Luke George

Music by Duane Morrison

Set by Rob McCredie

It’s an alarming space you enter at Danceworks for Melbourne Spawned a Monster. Hazard tape slung about, a huge plywood monolith in front of you. Turns out it’s the back of the steeply raked seating bank – seats pushed right up against the stage. The lighting is dim. Dimmer than dim, the kind of dim that pixelates your vision, as your brain fruitlessly attempts to compensate for the lack of visual information it has to process and makes stuff up instead.

And then it is dark as dark can be, the kind of dark in which you can trick yourself into not being sure if your eyes are open or not.

Out of nowhere: the peculiarly identifiable sound of tennis balls being bounced off a wall and falling into the audience. What was going on is amazingly clear, considering that it was one of the most unlikely things to have happened. Scattered laughter rose up from the audience. It really was what was happening. It was one of the most joyously playful ways to break the fourth wall on one hand and alienate the audience on the other.

I regrettably missed the original incarnation of Melbourne Spawned a Monster which premiered at Danceworks in September 2008. (Read Chris Boyd’s lucid review here, after you’ve finished with my ramblings you will crave lucidity. Trust me, you will.)

And having only seen Luke George’s performance of the work (and this in no way denigrates his interpretation, for it was glorious. Yes, glorious) I find myself yearning to be able to compare it with that of the piece’s Choreographer and Director, Jo Lloyd, who for matters I know not of, was not performing this time around.

I suppose this desire of mine to have seen her can be broken down thus: a) I’m having a hard time imagining anyone other than Luke George performing Melbourne Spawned a Monster. (This in itself may be either because he was very, very good and inhabited the work totally, or because my imagination is woefully limited). b) I think a woman’s performance may have absolutely re-contextualised the work. Although, perhaps her performance wouldn’t have re-contextualised the work,

Perhaps George’s performance was sort of genderless (which now that I mention it I think it may have been). Not genderless so much as not really masculine. (I mean masculine in the broadest possible manner.) And perhaps Lloyd’s performance was similarly androgynous.

Hmm. I think I need to back up the truck here. In my youth I craved a certain kind of male role model, one who was comfortable with his masculinity, one who could be poetic and graceful and humble and self-deprecating and not be competitive or protean, not needing to always prove his masculinity, one in whom the presence of softness and sensitivity needn’t mean femininity – it just didn’t really mean anything. I didn’t consciously crave this. Its wasn’t as if I was knocking about as an eight year old testing the men in my life on their verse, line, and emotional maturity, I think I became aware of the limitations implicit in the notion of “The Australian Male” early. This was the eighties. One had two choices a) Warwick Capper b) Bernard King.

I think what I’m trying to say here is that Luke George displayed the kind of humanity that is all encompassing. His unchallenging, passive, yet commanding gaze was disarming and reassuring. It was another way in which the performance toyed with the audience and both alienated you and brought you closer to itself.

This was a proscenium show. From the front of which dangled strings of LED lights, illuminating both the performer and the audience and drawing our attention to the divide and when it was being crossed. He is us. He’s with us. The LED light reflected on a simple, kitsch, ingenious backdrop of the Melbourne skyline, defined only by its windows, cut out of foil.

The choreography made little sense to me intellectually (as I’ve said before, I have no dance background, apart from tap-dancing lessons in a West Brunswick church hall with three middle-aged women. Not the most thorough preparation, I’ll admit) yet as it passed I was struck by its playfulness, its humour, its familiarity and its lack of equilibrium.

Duane Morrison’s perfectly realised music leant a pulse and a twitch to Luke George’s movements, reminding me of Harryhausen’s stop-motion skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts:

Or, perhaps more to the point:

Melbourne Spawned a Monster is a wonderfully original piece of work.

Review: No Success Like Failure

No Success Like Failure

The Fondue Set

Arts House

North Melbourne Town Hall

Season ended

I saw this work in 2008 and it was one of my favourite performances of the year. When I saw it had been collected for the sublimely programmed Dance Massive I rounded up a posse to attend.

I, you see, am a fan.

The Fondue Set is somewhat unique in the Australian performance landscape, in particular, the Australian dance landscape. Akin to Wendy Houstoun (who directed No Success Like Failure), the ubiquitous Forced Entertainment, Lone Twin and even perhaps Panther’s recent work, The Fondue Set position themselves, with panache, in the realm of the amateur, that is to say they embody the joy of performance - the naff-ness of it. Their choreography sits somewhere between a jazz ballet class in 1989, a school formal and a drunken party. Yet it skilfully transcends kitsch for the sake of it.

Aesthetically, this work is very much a part of the current zeitgeist, as is, say, this:

I find its aesthetic disarmingly familiar and comforting. I know what I’m getting. And I like it.

(Interestingly, isn’t the zeitgeist as a concept itself becoming a part of the zeitgeist? What happens then? How can it objectively select movements, works and things to become a part of it, if it, itself, is a part of it. Perhaps it operates like the Freemasons, or Rotary: entry by invitation of another member.)

Positioning itself loosely as a dance company and No Success Like Failure as a dance work, in Dance Massive, certain fundamental elements of their work come as a surprise. For me, a pleasant surprise, for others, perhaps disconcerting, or even tiresome. There is an overwhelming amount of text, and much of it is situated within the oeuvre of post-modern performance. For myself, with little to no dance background, this works.

Their comedy, arising from the tension between the performance act and the performers’ inherent self-awareness, is masterful and wonderfully executed.

The position that they inhabit, somewhere between dance and comedy is unique, and I must say it’s refreshing to see women embodying both dance and comedy without any particular nod to femininity. The role of women in comedy is dubious at best and The Fondue Set has carved their own niche, outside of the norm. They have a supreme self-awareness that never results in self-consciousness. There is an absolute humanity to their self-revelatory routines, the comedy arises not only out of awkwardness and irony, but recognition. There certainly would have been more room for abstracted movement, without irony.

Bear in mind that I have seen this show twice. Upon a second viewing there are certain fundamental issues at play. What I had taken to be an extremely live event (by which I mean: fallible, susceptible to change, dangerous) now seemed much less so. In fact, I saw a lot more polish. Which isn’t a good thing where No Success Like Failure is concerned. There was a live-ness that was faithfully mimicked but somewhat disingenuous. The event that the audience is attending is always going to be roughly the same. Which is a shame. I can see how this work could genuinely fail, how many or even most of its sequences are journeys into endurance for both the performers and the witnesses, how many of its parts are journeys into failure, or at the very least uncertainty. But the thing is, they no longer are. They are very rehearsed. Some sections of direct address were hurried through without any real sense of the audience being read and responded to legitimately. This is the adversary of a live event. The creators must design mechanisms open to pure chaos. To achieve the desired spontaneity they must include the purely random and expose themselves to its inherent danger.

This is all upon a second viewing, remember. After seeing it the first time, I exited the theatre on a kind of taffeta and spandex induced sugar high. This time, I just had a bit of a come-down.

What resonated most was its genuine emotion: the ability to stimulate pure, atavistic emotional reactions from uncontrollable laughter (quite close to the beginning of the piece I heard one of my companions whimpering, not wanting to be the one audience member with the weirdly overzealous laughter) to extreme pity and grief. Even at its most self-reflexive it is offset by the inclusion of some movement, or some external stimulus that runs in counterpoint to the potential intellectual feedback loop and at one point leaves you in tears as your mirror neurons are working full time mimicking the performers’ induced emotional states.

And this is their genius: embodied by the truly confronting and hilarious nature of staring into their faces, contorted with grief and sadness, as they dance their way through an instrumental version of Everybody Hurts. It is something that begins purely as a mechanism (and is hilariously antithetical to jazz ballet) and is completely disingenuous tapping into our emotional cortex whilst we are forced to be absolutely aware of the intellectual conceits being utilized.

Dance Massive

The extraordinary but somewhat dubiously named Dance Massive has sidled its way into my life, devouring (in the most consensual way possible) my weekend.

Please stay tuned for reviews of No Success Like Failure, Mortal Engine, Roadkill, Limina and Melbourne Spawned a Monster.

In the meantime, my attention has rightly been directed to this wondrous thing, a mindblowing amalgamation of various youtube performances :

And go here, to the genius' site. Now. Don't dilly-dally. Or delay.

Review: Woyzeck

Woyzeck

by Georg Büchner

Adapted by Gisli Örn Gardarsson

January 31st to February 28th

Merlyn Theatre

The Malthouse

Seems as if I'm the first cab off the rank here. I am not, I confess, an institution enough to warrant a ticket to the season proper and it was a preview that I attended. 

Humbled and overawed.  

So let's get Nick Cave and Warren Ellis out of the way: the music is great. I would've liked to have heard it as a set. In relation to Woyzeck itself, as an extension and addition to the material, I prefer Mr. Waits' Blood Money. But maybe that's just me. And I didn't see the Wilson and, I admit, things can oftentimes take on mythic proportions in my imagination, oftentimes I tell you.

So, yeah, the music's good and the cast perform it well.

One more admission is that apart from Herzog's film, I have never previously seen Woyzeck. 

Me and my friend almost didn't make it, too. We both had arrived at Melbourne Airport at 6pm, after a day in Tasmania (another story)  and the show started at 6:30 so we were weaving through the traffic to get there. And after a brief, inadvertent detour across the Westgate Bridge toward Geelong (I've told you about my sense of direction), I was in disbelief when it looked like we were going to make it. "We're going to make it!" "Don't say that" "But we are. We've got like 15 minutes and we're just around the corner!" "Anything could happen. We could break down." "I'd just put my hazard lights on and leave the car."

Then I went through a red light and almost killed us.

This goddamned show. What, I ask you, has happened to Michael Kantor? In my formative years I saw Kantor's Caucasian Chalk Circle, Ubu and The Ham Funeral at Belvoir and they excited me like a kid high on Whizz Fizz and skittles. 

Woyzeck, in comparison, was staged so unimaginatively and the production as a whole suffered from the Bell Shakespeares and was filled with "cultural references" so that we could understand who everyone was. But the thing with these references, be they military uniforms or plastic outdoor chairs, they're so shallow. By which I mean, they are visual references only. 

So, hands up who's sick of seeing puncy, floppy, insipid actors dressed as soldiers and carrying on like a bunch of emos? (Let's have a little competition for the best collective noun for emos. A gaunt? A slash?)

You'd think that Soundtrack to a War had never been made. Their collective idea of soldiers is exactly what I would have come up with whilst waiting for my coffee to brew. And that's not why I go to the theatre. 

These visual references give us nothing experiential. They don't challenge our perceptions, they don't add to our empathy, they aren't artistically imaginative or extending in any way. We see them in the manner in which we've always seen them. That's it. See. We don't learn anything. We don't empathise. These kind of shallow cultural references are lazy. The only purpose they serve is to compound stereotypes.

I'm also really sick of watching actors getting so into themselves, into their hair, or their amazing guitar skills that they forget to experience anything, to connect, to react to anyone.

Bojana Novokovic was fantastic. Watching her, I believed (unlike most of the actors) that she has actually been through stuff in her life. Tim Rogers has that too, in spades. 

But where on earth did the idea to add an intervening narrator of sorts to this play come from? What the heck? This conceit is bizarre. I can't imagine the reasoning behind it. Dramaturgically, I found it very discombobulating. To have an sort of emcee, a puppeteer, a trickster just adds to the general miasma that this production became. I guess it also didn't help that Rogers seems to have been directed as has every high school Puck of the last decade or so: lurking mischievously and somewhat sinisterly upstage throughout most of the action. I guess it also didn't help that his role seems to have diminished throughout the production.   

And the production's representation of the aspirational was just condescending. There was no mirror to society, which I imagine there can be in Woyzeck, just a lot of self-satisfied condescending representations of people who we are supposed to believe we are better than, because they think they are better than Woyzeck. I mean what in the hell is the point if Büchner doesn't mean for us to examine our own desire to victimize and be on the top of the heap? Is Woyzeck not an allegory about chaos and social Darwinism and class and being driven into reprehensible actions? Am I an idiot? Tell me, I may learn.

And while you're at it, tell me how is this different from the MTC staging a play with Guy Pearce and the music of Tim Finn? The target audience is just a little younger here, that's all. It's the same godforsaken thing.  

Musicvideodrome

I feel a little sheepish about not writing  an end of year list of my favourite performances. What I am doing instead is producing a list of my five favourite music videos of 2008. Some you probably will have seen, some not. 

In no particular order:

Francis and the Lights "The Top"

This is amazingly simple and captures a great performance from the front man (I'm assuming Francis). The song doesn't do it for me, but to be able to enjoy the performance in a single shot is a rarity.

Omaha Bitch "Orgasmic Troopers"

At last. Ballet and metal. A match made in heaven. The concept doesn't really sustain itself. But its a great concept.

Justice "Stress"

I have my qualms about posting this. It is very violent, it is clearly in a moral grey area, it has been controversial. It is, however, a great piece of work technically. It generates stress in the viewer very successfully and breaks the 4th wall really amazingly, in a manner I have never seen before and am unlikely to again. Its extremely compelling.

Be warned.

Beyonce "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)"

Think what you may, this is a great clip. I don't care what you think of me for posting it. Call me what you will. I don't care about my street cred. I love this clip. Great to see editing which serves the choreography. This clip has been widely abused for being a Bob Fosse rip off - I couldn't care less. I love Fosse if there's anyone to rip off its him.

Rip him off more. Come on. Do it. I dares ya.

Beyonce - Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It) [Official Video]
Uploaded by Yannicklord

Kanye West "Flashing Lights"

Again, I don't care. Sticks and stones will break my bones... I love that of all the things in this clip to pixelate, they've gone for the lighter fluid. That'll stop those damn kids.

KANYE WEST "FLASHING LIGHTS"
Uploaded by kanyewestofficial

Gnarls Barkley "Going On"

I can't imagine a clip more unexpectedly suited to the track. Fantastic performances, choreography, art direction and concept. 

I love it. 

Gnarls Barkley - Going On
Uploaded by zegonzag

Things that I would say to a five years younger version of myself

Years ago, when I was 16 I think, I wrote a letter to myself to open when I was 21. It was a horrible experience and I would recommend it to no one. I was crazily ambitious (for all the wrong reasons) and unyielding in my opinions. 

So I've inverted the paradigm and decided to write down some things that I wish I had been told when I was younger, when I probably wouldn't have listened anyway... 

You will never know how to direct.

You will never know exactly what directing is.

A by product of the work of a director is slowly making yourself redundant. Socially and theatrically, creating an atmosphere whereby you are no longer necessary. 

Directing is lonely.

Directing is intangible. 

It is important to continue learning and to continue being a student.

Never claim to know anything, but shoulder the responsibility if not knowing is problematic. 

Work with writers, as many as you can. 

Create experiences rather than direct plays. 

Collaborate as much as possible on many things, including things non-theatrical. 

Becoming known for an aesthetic, or a kind of theatre, or a certain set of themes means that you have stopped developing and you need to throw everything away.

Those who look up to you will never critique you.

Honest critique is one of the most important things you will ever receive - seek it out, encourage it and engage with it. It is more important to invite someone who will challenge your work than someone who will give you your next job.  

Humility and social laziness are different things. Try not to be socially lazy.

Because the outcome is so intangible it is easy for a director to imply ownership of the entire piece. Try not to do that. Give credit where credit is due. Try not to need any approval. Try to have self contained goals where you are the only judge and you are only measuring yourself against yourself. 

You need to see a lot of theatre, art, music, dance, live art, performance etc. You need to understand the landscape. You need to be politically and socially informed in order for your work to sit within that landscape. Never let up.

You need to direct a lot. It's very difficult to find the opportunities to direct a lot, without directing things you don't want to direct. Therefore, workshop settings are very good. 

Work hard. You know when you are, so do it. Set parameters to work within (a number of hours per day) and stick to it. Within that you can do anything pertaining to the task at hand, workshop, research, find music, research, find visual reference material, research, or rehearse. Don't worry so much about the appearance of research, or hard work, much of the work no one will ever know about.

Listen. 

Oh, and finally: probably best to avoid this kind of thing. At all costs. 

A Little Bit of a Not Properly Formulated Rant About the Arts and Mental Health

I Was a Teenage Dirty Old Man is currently on at Gasworks as a part of the Midsumma Festival. It is a cabaret piece by Eric Kuhlmann. It was brought over from Adelaide by the Feast Festival, after only six previous performances.

It is incredibly raw. Incredibly. It is unlikely that you'll ever see something this raw again. And that rawness contains the seeds of its success and its ultimate destruction.

It begins with Eric naked (with a figure rather like that of Buddha) curled up, sitting cross legged on a small coffee table, looking rather like those garden scultptures of bald naked men curled up in a ball that were everywhere 10 or so years ago. His electronic backing music began, and his voice - scratchy, hoarse - began almost chanting taboo breaking, stream of consciousness lyrics. The byline described him as "Ian Dury meets Billy Brag in a public toilet" which seemed a good call at the beginning. As the piece unfolded, however, I was increasingly reminded of Daniel Johnston. Eric's nerves were palpable, he was visibly shaking much of the time and rarely opened his eyes at all. The room (the larger space at Gasworks) was totally unsuitable for his material. The show itself wasn't really in tourable condition yet. It suffered a lack of structure which rendered it an onslaught and somewhat exhausting, and could have used some gentle direction and or dramaturgy. I would have preferred to see a gig, rather than the uncomfortable moments of forced interaction.

The piece raised a whole host of issues (not issues it intended to raise) as I watched a performer get totally burnt, as I'm sure he is after the experience.

I have spent some time professionally working with people who have an experience of mental illness. Arts related activities undoubtedly increase participant's mental health, yet I have always struggled with the notion of these processes being staged and ticketed - with the work of Rawcus for instance, feeling that it is morally fraught (beautiful, yes. Freakshow, a bit). I think this area of community arts practice needs some serious scrutiny, professionalisation and training. 

But those ill-formed thoughts aside, it became increasingly clear throughout I Was a Teenage Dirty Old Man that Eric has a history of mental illness, he directly alluded to treatments and medications a number of times. Whilst he remained non-specific about his diagnosis, it was, by the show's end, clear to me as an audience member.

I would suggest (and this may well be contentious) that his mental health, which became such an issue for the show as a whole, should be addressed in the publicity material. It would take the edge off this being revealed throughout the process of the show and would encourage a wholly new and perhaps more forgiving audience (not more forgiving than myself neccessarily, but more forgiving than the audience I was a part of) and Gasworks is, perhaps, the place for it. They are, after all, hosting The Art of Difference Festival in March. This show could find a home in that festival or a plethora of other events supporting mental illness. 

This is very tricky territory for me to be getting into. I'm not suggesting this because he didn't belong, I'm only suggesting it because the show was clearly underdone and he was clearly incredibly uncomfortable and needed support and encouragement in order to fully realise the magnificent material. 

It saddened me greatly to see him there, already with such revelatory material and such vulnerability, with such total lack of support. 

There is a singer-song-writer & visual artist named Heidi Everett who has flourished with the right kind of gigs, support, encouragement and venues. She plays regularly supporting the Bi-Polar Bears and at Roarhouse gigs and her material and performance skills have gained depth and confidence.

I really felt like Eric Kuhlmann will never perform a show again.  

Having said that, like Daniel Johnson, Eric Kuhlmann may not want to flag his mental health as an issue, or to perform at events tailored for performers like him. It just didn't seem like he had the support or the relationships to make it possible, like Daniel Johnston is illustrated as having in the brilliant The Devil and Daniel Johnston.

Any thoughts?

Things to do when you're thirty

Every once in a while I get obsessed. I have the make up of a zealot so let's all consider ourselves lucky that I am in no way religious, new wave, politically conservative nor radically active.

For my thirtieth birthday last November I received two gifts in particular that alluded to my obsessive nature. I was given me a turntable and a first pressing of The White Album, coincidentally released exactly 10 years before I was born. My parents gave me a mixmaster. Pastry and LPs ensued.

It seems that last year I was briefly obsessed with blogging - and now in the cold, sober light of the morning I've looked over what happened here and am in amazement and wonder. You were there, and you were there.

I am humbled by what occurred when I flippantly began to publicly rant. When I reconsider the spirit in which this venture was born and the state of mind I am now in, I think I have this little pastime to thank in no small part. I was reengaged with the performance scene in a way that hasn't been the case for years. I had a voice and an opinion that seemed to be held in some regard. And the voice, at least shall continue, comrades. 

Last year during the fringe I had a wonderful, spirited, challenging, honest and generous exchange with Marcel, the director of 'There' which I had every intention of publishing as I believe in a right of reply, but the moment seems to have passed. Marcel will be the first to be invited to review my next work, and I will invite him to published it here. 

I saw a few more things at the end of last year, things which uplifted and confounded me as much as anything else last year, but again, the moment has passed.

Oh, and there was a delightful evening of Throwies.

So, there are many things I am seeing this year. There are many things I am looking forward to seeing. My own work will, at some stage, be a part of the mix.

And if there's anyone still interested out there: ta.