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.

Agog

I'm all aflutter at what seems to be Wendy Houstoun's response to my previous post (am I an idiot for thinking it might actually be? Could it be? Will we ever truly know?) 

Had I any inclination that she would be reading this drivel, I would:

-have written much, much better 

-have probably gotten someone else to ghost write my review

-be arrogant

I've had a couple of interesting conversations re. Beck's signage and sponsorship including one with someone who works at the Meat Market. I have every intention of following this up a little, in probably a fairly half-assed way (with delusions of 'All the President's Men' flickering away in my little brain box) when I get some more time up my sleeve. 

In the meantime though, rather than wish I had written a better review, rather than editing what I have written, in the spirit of Houstoun herself, some intentions:

1) I had intended to discuss The Fondue Set's 'No Success Like Failure' and Forced Entertainment's 'Bloody Mess' in relation to Wendy Houstoun. I just forgot and next thing you know I had kind of finished what I had written (therein is the 'craft' in what I do here - stumble about blindly until I finish). 'No Success Like Failure' has been one of my favourite theatre-going experiences this year. And I'm not just saying that. I'm not a sycophant. Promise I'm not.

2) I had intended to reflect thoroughly upon our drinking culture in this country with statistics, socio-economic break-downs and hypotheses. And to make a series of stunning insights about the manner in which our society both tacitly and not so tacitly endorses a culture determined to drink itself to death. And just how much Beck's' sponsorship of this event undercut any valid social criticism. At which point I would have tied it all up to illustrate the pervasive nature of big brewery company's advertising. 

3) I had intended to be more self-deprecating and funny. I can be. I also can, at the drop of a hat, get all high and mighty. Which is what I apparently decided to do instead.

4) I had intended to delve into the structure of both 'Desert Island Dances' and 'Happy Hour', compare, contrast and discuss. Or at the very least quantify why the structure of 'Desert Island Dances' seemed to support the performance more than the structure of 'Happy Hour' did. 

5) I had intended to be erudite.

6) I had intended for there to be more structure to what I wrote, to support the arguments that I was making.

You would have loved it.

Review: Happy Hour

Happy Hour

Created by Wendy Houstoun and Tim Etchells, Performed by Wendy Houstoun

Until 19 October

What a long way it seems Wendy Houstoun has come in the intervening years between 'Desert Island Dances' and 'Happy Hour'. Structurally, dramaturgically and stylistically, 'Desert Island Dances' is way in front. 

The subject matter of 'Happy Hour' is more profound, relevant and challenging than in 'Desert Island Dances' on the surface. What appealed, however, in 'Desert Island Dances' was its eventual universality, its transcendence of self-reflexivity and deconstructionism, to encompass something total and human.

'Happy Hour' was awkward, half-baked, somehow disingenuous and severely displaced within the Meat Market. 

It was developed as a site specific piece to be performed in bars. The Beck's Bar is a bar, no two ways about it. But it's an ad-hok kind of affair. What I really desired was for this to be performed at the Old Colonial on Brunswick Street or some such place, lurid carpet heady with the memory of indoor smoking, formica table tops, a sea of wood panelling and, perhaps most importantly, people actually going there to drink.

The Beck's Bar was full of us. Expectation writ large across our faces, positioning ourselves, craning our necks, full of anticipation and knock-about adoration for Wendy Houstoun.

It just didn't do it for me. It was such an artifice, really such a long way from being site specific. It wound up feeling totally nonspecific, could have happened anywhere. Why on earth would a 'site specific' performance be programmed within such a performance venue for three days? How is that site specific? It site specificity is not more than any live performance anywhere.

There was a part of the performance that occurred on a small rostra. This section was mostly dance and she is an incredible mover. Behind the rostra, however, were a couple of huge Beck's banners, which took my thoughts into a feedback loop of sponsorship, signage and double selling. I got really confused. 

Obviously the Beck's Bar is sponsored by Beck's. The MIAF website cites Beck's as a supporter of this performance. Now, what is the nature of this sponsorship? This must be the only performance that has such prominent sponsor signage. How was this deal struck? How did they score this kind of overt, totally unsubtle advertising? I sometimes resent what I call 'double-selling', where, usually in a glossy magazine, you find that you've paid for what has perhaps already been paid for by advertisers. Magazines pretty much full of advertising, advertising features, product reviews, you know... Newspapers rely on advertising, and its not so much of a concern to me in that context, newspapers are cheap, journalism is not. 

This is a context, however, where the lines are blurred, are they not? Festivals need sponsorship to subsidise the works they are presenting, particularly in Australia, where the costs of travel could otherwise be prohibitive to an arts festival. I'm not anti sponsorship, just one for disclosure. I am becoming increasingly perturbed at the blurring of the line and I really have not encountered it in live performance before. And it scares the whatsit out of me.

Is it not enough that the performance occurred in The Beck's Bar? That the Beck's logo appears on the web page and the program? And that Beck's was the only beer available?

I mean come on. We're not idiots. They had a captive group of people waiting eagerly for a performance, with not much else to do besides buy a beer. They didn't need to erect banners reminding us of their branding.

And this seemed a strange kind of union, between a piece that is sort of critical of drinking culture - certainly doesn't romanticise it - and a big ole liquor company, in fact, the largest brewery company in the world.

I'm really interested to hear what others make of this. It was a kind of controlling, under-handed, yet unsubtle kind of sponsorship. I imagine that anything programmed for this venue throughout the festival ends up doing some nice business for Beck's.

After I'd stewed on this I found that I'd missed a good five minutes of the performance. Oh well. 

And I have never seen a performance whose backdrop is a couple of Australia Council banners.

Review: Desert Island Dances

Desert Island Dances

Devised by Wendy Houstoun and John Avery

Performed by Wendy Houstoun

Season Ended

As I was seeping in the miasma that was fringe and stewing in my disappointment of 'An Oak Tree', 'Desert Island Dances' caressed my young, follicly blessed cheek like a cool, tropical breeze (to mix metaphors). 

Houstoun is incredible. Her presence is so disarmingly reachable and unassuming that she manages to bring so much in, without you necessarily even being conscious of it. And, bejesus, is she funny. 

In one of my favourite novels, Ondaatje's 'In the Skin of a Lion', there is a line which seared into my brain the first time I read it. I quote it often, so apologies to anyone I know who may be reading this, but its the first time in memory I have quoted it in relation to theatre.

It appears at about the midway point in the narrative, from memory, and it reaches out to you, it pulls itself through the (at that point) sticky layers of narrative and speaks clearly, honestly and humbly. It made me love Ondaatje.

Trust me. There is order here, very faint, very human. Meander if you want to get to town.  

I've never forgotten it. Its like some of those great fourth wall breaking moments in Spike Lee's movies, or Haneke's. It has a definite point and utility, yet is done with such grace and intelligence. Startling and exhilarating in its honesty.

Houstoun's 'Desert Island Dances' is beyond what I was expecting which essentially is artful artlessness, de-constructing our notions of performance and the interface between us. The piece does somehow transcend its postmodern self-reflexive origins to encompass a whole lot. Her images are delivered. The movements are surprisingly often poignant and allowed to settle. 

And it is incredibly funny. 

The only moment that didn't do it for me was when she turned a video camera, that had been recording the audience around and watched it and charted our enjoyment. I liked the charting, I liked what she was doing - I just got hung up on the fact that she wasn't watching the video, or at least I didn't think she was. And what she was saying wasn't necessarily in regards to our image on the little screen she was looking at. I would have preferred it if it were. Or obviously not - a superfluous theatrical mechanism that fails. Like the hilarious moment of black-light with nothing glowing on stage at all (there was, however, a woman in the first row dressed entirely in white. I am strangely and prejudicially mistrusting of people who dress all in white, it doesn't seem natural) and Houstoun describing what she intended to do.

I'm going to throw in another quote here, its relevance compounded by the fact that its Tim Etchells, a frequent collaborator of Houstoun's.

Inside the theatre there are only the performers and the audience. Onstage the performers have some material items - flimsy or not so flimsy scenery, various props and costume stuff. The audience, for their part, have their coats and their handbags and the contents of their pockets. But that's all. The whole of the rest of the world - its physical locations and landscapes, its entire population, its complete set of objects and its unfolding events - is invariably outside, emphatically absent.  

Theatre then must always (?) be: the summoning of presence in the context of absence. A bringing in of the world. 

Tim Etchells - Step Off the Stage, opening polemic of the SPILL Symposium 

This is exactly what Houstoun has achieved with 'Desert Island Dances'. Something all about bringing the world in, giving context. Performing an annotated thank-you list. Its all so incredibly human.