The Virginity Issue by BELLYFLOP Magazine

BELLYFLOP VOL 1 N째2

A dive into Contemporar y Dance & Performance

The VirginITY ISSUE

BELLYFLOP 06 THE VIRGIN’S RELEASE 10 MEANS TEST THE WEDDING DRESS 12 FIELDS OF IMMORALITY 20 ROBERTO FODDAI: MEN WEARING DRESSES 26 EMMA GLADSTONE 30 VIRTUE OF THE NOVICE 34 SOPHIE LEE: PLAIN JANE 38 BIOGRAPHY MEETS THE TABOO 40 LUKE PELL 43 A prenuptial William Arthur Philip Louis reckons with Downtown New York 44 First Timers watch First Timers

About BELLYFLOP Magazine BELLY FLOP Magazine is here to make a splash into the ocean of per for mance (for now, the bit that r uns through the canals of London). S tar ted up as a lone enter pr ise by Louise Mochia, BELLY FLOP has now developed into a collaborative ar tist-led under tak ing based at Chisenhale Dance Space. As a peer group, a generation per haps, we are opinionated and this is what motivated an online plat for m for provok ing debate and embracing contr ibutors’ subjective engagement at grass-root level. We operate with a DIY ethic through voluntar y contr ibutions from var ious ar tists, creating an ar tistic for um for debate where viewpoints (from scandalous to mundane) can be shared with other ar tists/practitioners/ interested par ties. It is BELLY FLOP’s aim to br ing visibility to an ar tistic community wor k ing outside of the mainstream, br inging ex posure to the ideas and ef for ts of discer ning individuals, as an active at tempt to stimulate new perspectives and cr itical thought. Essentially BELLY FLOP revolves around the ar t of contemporar y dance, however, we tr y not to get too pedantic about these things and focus on all areas of per for mance as and when we feel like it - you get ever y thing from musings on the ever yday life of the ar tist to musings on popular culture. On the BELLY BLOG you can locate random ramblings from the BELLY FLOP team and get the latest word on events, happenings and oppor tunities in and around London.

EDITOR

Louise Mochia

A S ST EDITORS

Eleanor Sikorsk i, Flora Wellesley Wesley, Jamila Johnson - Small & Gillie K leiman

L AYOU T DESIGN

Junn Tseng Yean

A RT WORK ‘ T he Egg’ ( pg 9) POST ER

d e s i g n i s w h a t i d o . t u m b l r. c o m

Dar ian Par ker

d a r i a n p . t u m b l r. c o m

Joelle Green & Char lie A shwell

ON FRONT COV ER

B r yony K immings

FRON T COV ER PHOTOGR A PH Y SPECI A L T H A NKS TO

Chr is ta Holka

chr istaholka.com

Chisenhale Dance Space

CREDITS A my Ferguson Alice Malseed AM Charlie Ashwell Christa Holka Darian Parker Eleanor Sikorski Flora Wellesley Wesley Gillie Kleiman Jack Davies Jamila Johnson-Small Joelle Naomi Green Louise Mochia Oliver Lyons Phoebe Collings-James Rasmus Hagen Rober to Foddai Sarah Blanc Sophie Cameron Sophie Lee Vanessa B ar t le t t V i c t o r i a To m a s c h k o

The Virgin’s Release W omen , S ex and L ive A rt.

TEXT Vanessa Bartlett IMAGE Christa Holka (featuring Bryony Kimmings) campaigning of previous feminist generations, I am at liberty, as a woman, to experiment freely with my sexuality and also to admit to seeking pleasure in the pursuit of casual sex. After all, it's part of our zeitgeist isn’t it? If you have ever watched Sex and the City (I watched it once or twice and then had to rinse my eyes out with acid), you will know that women just love talking about shagging. Add to this, the meteoric rise of sex confessionals such as Belle de Jour’s The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl and you might even conclude that it's pretty of cool for women to make a point of publicising their sex antics. In the press, on the television and in bars and clubs all over the UK, women are talking about sex in a far more direct way than any previous generation. And this is even reflected in art too. Yes we all know that feminism is a dirty word among artists and critics, laden with connotations of neurosis and unshaven legs. In fact, if you want to be totally ostracised from any of your arty friendship groups, you could try throwing the phrase ‘feminist performance’ into a few conversations and see how long it takes before people stop calling you. Young women of the present generation are no longer making work that deals directly with gender inequality and the body. What they are making, is savvy, powerful work that contextualises the politics of women’s sexual self-expression in contemporary culture.

It's fair to say that I have wasted quite a lot of my life on nonsensical daydreams. In some of my most lengthy and enjoyable reveries, I play a stupid game where I replace members of my family with celebrities and imagine how they might have made me into a different person. I always make Stephen Fry my fantasy uncle, chosen for his gentle intelligence, poetic command of language and his admirable advocacy on important issues such as gay rights and mental health. So imagine my horror when my benevolent Stephen made a statement in the press that seemed to contravene everything he has previously represented. He remarked to a journalist working for Attitude Magazine, that heterosexual women do not enjoy sex with the same ferocity as gay men. Straight women, said Stephen, see sex only as a bargaining tool with which they may enter into a long-term monogamous relationship. In a sweeping generalisation that homogenised the experiences of all straight women, Stephen Fry was suddenly framed as a conservative, out-of-date sexist.

Inevitably this calamity reverberated noisily in the media. Rosie Boycott, journalist and feminist, declared in The Guardian that instead of imitating the gay man’s practice of cottaging as access to casual sex; 'women have other ways to get our thrills, and we can go and get them in bars or clubs. Having said which, we probably also do it in parks sometimes too. We just don’t call it cottaging. I'm Take Bryony Kimmings as an obvious example. Her incredibly successful Live Art show Sex Idiot deals with an sure I've done it in parks in my time.' autobiographical attempt to identify which of her former Now I’ve done it in parks too. Come to think of it, I once had sexual partners gifted her with a common STI. Bryony sex in the middle of a field under an outdoor cattle feeder, cuts a powerful and glamorous figure in her revealing which is an experience I would never care to repeat. While costumes. But there are also moments when she is I am not especially proud of these indiscretions, I am also vulnerable and depraved as she confesses to habitual not particularly ashamed. What matters, speaking as a drinking, one-night stands and all of the seedier sides of woman who calls herself a feminist, is that I can talk openly ongoing promiscuity. Her vagina, of course, has a staring about my sexual experiments without fear of ridicule. role. In an hilarious parody of Bob Dylan’s music video Thanks to the tenacious, passionate and unrelenting Subterranean Homesick Blues she reads out a list of slang 7

THE VIRGIN’S RELEASE

names for the female genitals (ya fanny, ya growler, ya tampon socket, ya velvet sausage wallet….) with the air of a tipsy karaoke wannabe. It’s miles apart from the grizzly giant of 1970s performance Carolee Schneemann, who is famous for reading out an autobiographical text on feminist politics while she pulled it out of her vagina. But in some ways the impetus is the same: these works represent two different generations using text to liberate the cunt. Live Art duo The Two Wrongies are probably more influenced by kitsch popular entertainment, than by the history of performance art. Their most recent show World of Wrong is a collection of video and dance vignettes riddled with crudeness and surreal costume. Their penchant for dressing as giant genitalia and tendency to scratch and sniff themselves and each other in a primal way while on stage demonstrates that these are girls who are empowered by their ability to emulate male behaviours. In an arresting climax to the show, there is a short section titled Air Sex, which spoofs the typically male practice of air guitar and uses it to caricature blokes in the throes of sexual arousal. Both girls wear skimpy pink leotards and kneepads while they grope, undress and penetrate invisible female partners with their imaginary cocks. Meanwhile the audience can join in with the performers sense of superiority, as it reflects on the idiocy and animalism of male arousal and the knowingness of these two women who parody and poke fun at male behaviours so perfectly. At the close of this scene one of the performers is left alone on stage in the final throes of pre-orgasmic release and at this point the tone changes from jovial to menacing as she screams at her invisible partner, 'I’m gonna fuck you up the ass…. I’m gonna fuck you in the mouth….don’t speak…. you dirty….. little…. fucking…. whore!' Suddenly we are no longer in the territory of an empowered female sexual display but have ventured unexpectedly into the seedier side of male erotic fantasy and to something that feels more like hardcore porno than an exercise in women’s liberation. I’ve not watched many porn films in my life, as I have always felt myself to be slightly outside of the intended target audience for that kind of thing. But one thing I do know is that a female porn star can be as glamorous, empowered and liberated as you like, but somehow the inevitable finale is always that the girl always lies back and gets fucked. And this is the ever-present tension around women’s capacity for sexual self-expression in all walks of contemporary culture, from performance art to Sex in the City to shagging in parks. To be openly sexual and provocative can be deeply liberating, but it comes with the ever-present possibility of slipping backwards into sexual objectification. And this is the very contemporary problem that women must negotiate when dealing in the language of sexual display.

POEM Sophie Cameron IMAGE Victoria Tomaschko (chosen by Amy Ferguson) victoriatomaschko.com

Means Test the Wedding Dress Even the prettiest daisies, if you look close enough, Harbour streaks of pink In the midst of delicate porcelain petals. Even the blankest canvas Is riddled with creamy patches of grubbier plainness. And even the largest eyes, when kept open too long Will lay a root system of blood shots That trace a silhouette of life lived. Even the whitest of wedding dresses Becomes stained with worldly woes When taken from its tissue And worn for more than ten careful minutes. Stained with life and the dirt that hangs Around the rims of coffee cups, The chocolate that starts in the eyes Then fatally tempts the lips, The beetroot that grows for the greater good But before you know it has corrupted your fingers and the inside of your mouth. Whatever Daz or Persil insist once the white has been touched By human, living human hands Forever lives the off white. Purity ceases to exist as soon as life is lived Dirty hand marks litter the walls, left by time and toil Maybe white should never have been white Maybe white is just too eager to highlight lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mistakes

FIELDS OF IMMORALITY

TE X T AM

When I was eighteen I met a charming man, who was so incredibly worldly and international and twenty six and wise and interesting and nonchalant and, really, looking back on it an absolute asshole. We had a long ecstasy and vodka-tonic fuelled conversation, and we thought we both understood each other but in fact, we were speaking totally different languages. I was speaking plain English and him, innuendo. He was a film maker, and at the time I wanted to be an actress. Not only was I naive to even talk to this man at such length, but I was also naive enough to give him my phone number and email address. What followed this loaded late night/early morning conversation was some irregular but polite, semi-flirtatious and non-assuming correspondence, soon escalating into a barrage of emails and text messages and then demands that I meet him and a friend one evening on Brick Lane to talk business. He was sending me a series of scripts and email attachments, that I’d open but only read the first few lines of to then say I'd read them but that I was ‘too busy’ to meet up. It was only when I was explaining to a good friend in another late night/early morning conversation that this friend (cider fuelled this time), using his (--)male intuition, told me instinctively that it was porn. I was totally aghast, 'me, porn?! no! It can’t be', that kind of thing. I felt horrible, sordid, used, exploited and all those other adjectives that I should have been feeling since I’d met him a few weeks ago. I woke up at this friend’s house in Stockwell to a rather nasty message from my new film maker friend, who told me that he didn’t have time for slackers like me in his industry. I was quite relieved to be off the files. After getting home and switching on my laptop to properly read the attachments and have reality open my prudish eyes, I knew I’d landed on a goldmine in terms of anecdote. Not only was it porn, it was zombie, girl-on-girl porn! This man penned scripts involving girls turning into pig eating zombies, then fucking each other, all in the grounds of beautiful country manors. No money was ever mentioned, but the professional nature of his business was obvious. Retrospectively, his intentions were crystal clear; he was never flirtatious, just succinct, driven, focused. For me, with a greater sense of lucidity, it became obvious how such a character’s manipulation disguised in flattery could be enough to convince any young or vulnerable female to become a cog in the wheel of a sexist and manipulative industry.

TE X T Flora Wellesley Wesley

A fortnight ago, I did a TV commercial for one of the biggest online poker operators in the UK. Reading up about it now, I've realised what a big fish it is, that superlative filling me with a grim feeling like I’ve woken up hung-over. I have partaken in the endorsement of a favourite gambling casino. Foo yuk. I signed something called a ‘Talent Release Form’: an explicit enough name somehow sugarcoated at first glance. To my inexperienced eye, it was flattering. Talent. The term now occurs to me as rather unspecific and thus all encompassing; after all, my whole body and my whole being were involved. In this industry one’s appearance and one’s ability are inextricably linked, but would I feel different signing the same form if it was just my hands, just my legs? Just what bit of my talent are we talking about in particular? I am momentarily reminded of how at school there was a phase where that word got annoyingly overused as slang for 'attractive': 'She is talented' [smirk]. What talent was I going to release? The banter on set and the jokey content of the shoot (I had to switch from a nice, composed girl ready for a night out to a laddish, burger-devouring monster in seven seconds flat), distracted from the moral dubiousness of the activity, but, of course, the commercial reality that my artistic skill was being used to dubious ends was inescapable. That this whole exercise was about selling – manipulating image for the sole effect of persuading people

FIELDS OF IMMORALITY

to buy into gambling, of all things, was hard to swallow. My inordinately large pay cheque both eases and aggravates. I rationalise to myself (for comfort) that in our respective fields we all have to navigate murky territory and court commercialism. Having done that job, I don’t feel proud, I don’t even feel very responsible. And unlike the director, the cameraman, the make up artists and the runners whose work on that ad is anonymous, I stand to lose face, quite literally (I’m the one who’ll appear on telly). So taking on this (less than ethical) job was not a private matter for me. Maybe that’s why I’ve been so vocal about it to all my friends and family. Am I looking for absolution? Oh Flora, what melodrama! Regardless questions about credibility have preoccupied me since doing it: What if I teach one day and my pupils recognise me from that? Or my old teachers recognise me? Yes, I really have pondered how disapproving or disappointed they might be. The immortal words of Jane Austen loom: ‘my good opinion once lost is lost forever’. My precious self-image aside, the issue of those I will be exploiting as a result of my skill and my body – anyone on the receiving end of second or even third-rate TV channels – is irksome. The term ‘buy-out’ featured in the wording of the form literally referred to the fee I will receive for their usage of my performance for the next six months. I signed it and, in so doing, pretty much sealed a ‘sell-out’. Or did I? Should this kind of work be dismissed as such out of hand? History, geography, English, mathematics – everyone who topples out of education with a bent towards one subject or another has to find their way of earning or ‘paying their rent to society’, as my old housemate puts it. If it’s by applying their specialist knowledge and what they enjoy, then so much the better. Everyone who works works for somebody else, even those people who boast they work for themselves. It strikes me the luckiest are those who are able to make a living from doing work closest to what they really want to do. For now, without a canny little sideline money-spinner of nobler ethical orientation (massage teaching nursing?), time – my time – would be the price of taking the moral high ground, not taking the part, not passing the buck. Having dabbled in this world, I am now fully aware of the allure of a work situation where one does very little for a lot of money. What do you need to be able to do that little for a lot? Time short, cash long. My dad pointed out that this is what people say about prostitution. It does make me wonder at the correlation between the moral reprehensibility of a job and its a-little-for-a-lot-ness. Nevertheless, it is not out of the question that I will square up to a longer term contract with myself whereby I am prepared to shake my arse on MTV (if anyone asks), in order that I may pursue artistic endeavours as fervently as possible.

FIELDS OF IMMORALITY

TE X T Jamila Johnson-Small Five years of professional training, tours, all kinds of performances, various collaborations, far too many ballet classes and hours spent attempting to stare beatifically into my palm (sheltered by relaxed fingers), numerous freak-outs, break-downs, crises in confidence, crises in company and drunken benders leading to the pungent stench of alcoholic sweat and utter incompetence in class: In short, a lot of fucking hard work, that would lead anyone to logically conclude that I have the aspiration to become a pretty damn fine dancer. And get paid for it, thank you very much. Yet at this point I find myself telling people that I have retired. I have retired from aspiring to perform anywhere other than alone in dark studios, in a club or in my house (or maybe even in yours). I don’t go to auditions or to class and I wonder why I am not pursuing the career I am qualified to pursue, the one that I have spent years pursuing already, the pursuit of which that has taken over my life. I think it’s because dancing for some body else feels HUGE. Even the phrasing 'dancing for somebody else' is weird – my dance is for you, I dance when you say and as you want. For money. Maybe I am just full of romantic illusions about dancing for love of the thing, but the financial exchange that marks the dancing as a Profession complicates the deal: Does the choreographer then have ownership over my body? What is ownership of my body? Do I own my own(?) body? Can bodies be owned? Is my body ‘Me’? If someone pays for my body then do they then have power over my entire self? What is my ‘self’? Where is my self when my body is busy being owned and earning money doing some other person’s dance? Is this ‘selling your soul’? Is my body then my soul? Once sold can I get it back? Is it possible to rent your body (and soul along with it) without them being changed by the transaction once the loan period is over? Is it okay to be changed? If I (body and soul) am continually being rented, am I continually being changed through use? I would be changed through use anyway so does it matter that I rent my self out? Do the choreographer care about my self? Does this make a difference? Does any owner care about their goods in any way other than their ownership (dominion, status) of them? Am I a ‘good’? EXISTENTIAL CRISIS! Well, dance is the existential art form after all and the thing I love about dancing is the awareness and power of engagement I have with my body whilst dancing. The dancing body is participant in and subject to various dialogues and discourses as well as experiencing uniquely physical phenomena. Dancing for me is a way of Being, an active dialogue with a lot of stuff. The performing body is like politics in action. Can I still say all the things I’d like to add to that dialogue, if my dance has been bought by someone else? Does that mean my dance belongs to someone else? Can my dance belong to someone else or does it still belong to me? If someone else has bought my dancing body and controls my dance, does this change me? What then is my ethical standpoint? Bring on the crisis and the questioning, I have decided! A crisis is only a crisis if it leads to stasis and according to Elizabeth Grosz endless negotiation is the way to revolution. So I’ll keep asking questions and waiting for my revolution – one can always come out of retirement or maybe I’ll call myself an occupational dancer rather than a professional one. Or something.

ROBERTO

FODDAI Men WEARING DRESSES

MEN WE ARING DRESSES

rober to foddai.com

Emma Gladstone Interview Flora Wellesley Wesley So what is BELLYFLOP? Well, essentially BELLYFLOP is a magazine about performance. A lot of magazines either function on quite a promotional and mainstream basis or has an academic angle, whereas BELLYFLOP embraces its contributors’ subjective engagement with activity on the fringe and at grass-root level. As a peer group, a generation perhaps, we are opinionated and I think this is what motivated a platform for voicing those opinions and provoking debate.

Emma Gladstone is head of programming at the Lilian Baylis Studio in Sadler’s Wells and strikes me as a linchpin in the building. She has behind the scenes know-how, front of house presence and all the artistic zeal, personable charm and availability one could wish of someone in her dynamic position. I became acquainted with Emma last December during the Jer wood Studio Big Intensive, a weeklong course on the art and craft of choreography where ‘muscular ideas get physical’.

No it’s good, nice, very good. It’s true actually, there’s not… someone rang me about underground stuff and I was thinking how dance doesn’t do that much anymore. Or I don’t know whether it’s because of where I’m working now that I’m not aware of it so much, but it is definitely something that is important. Yeah, and actually it is quite unifying. Yeah, yeah! It’s nice not to feel like it’s you against the machine somehow. And I think sort of natural things come out. We can pursue our interests – like, I can inter view you. The reason I wanted to inter view you is that I liked hearing your opinions during the Big Intensive and also your choice of the people you asked to come along… I was wondering if you could talk a bit about those people? Yeah, I suppose part of the aim of the week was to show you different facets of how people think and sometimes how people work. So Martin [Creed] was partly because he was really interesting for me as someone who is from a different art form, but whose structure and approach was completely transferable into dance. I found that fascinating because he created something very personal, true to his style. Quite brave, I thought, just to step into another world. He’d managed to do that without any choreographic training just from his approach to making. So I thought he was really interesting. Liz [Lerman] is someone who I find I just never want to stop talking to whenever I meet her. She’s someone 26

whose brain is sort of working at a level that I think’s fascinating. Her whole approach about how you watch and give feedback has been so useful to me over the years and I think as makers it’s like ammunition. Ruth [Little] is another big brain thinker that I suppose in a funny way ties in with Sheela [Raj]. Although Ruth's work and interest is more of the science connection it’s still quite cosmic. I didn’t ask them specifically together, but I just think Ruth looks at a really big picture, which is interesting for us on the ground trying to make and produce and programme work and also, I suppose, because dramaturgy is still quite new in dance in this country, to hear someone speaking like that, with that kind of rigour. So the goal was really to just try and give you all an injection of brain thought [laughs].

with Adventures, and then I did some freelance things when I was still dancing with Lea [Anderson]. Then I got the job at The Place and I enjoyed not just programming company by company but putting together seasons. A big freelance job I did was with the Middlesex University and the Southbank, a huge international platform about process. It had 23 events over 11 sites in 3 days, it was just a massive, massive thing. But I love that kind of complexity of journey of where you might take the audience. As a programmer, I always think our link is between the audience and the artist. So, you don’t fret too much about where you’re taking things. What, fret about who I’m putting on or who I’m not responding to?

I’m curious about how you got to where you are and how much you feel like… Well, I suppose everything you’ve done I mean, do you think about how you fit in with other has contributed to your taste, your outlook, your attitudes contemporary dance programmers in London or whether towards programming and your role and I’m just wondering… you actually just think, 'no, stick to my own guns, I’ve got my opinions and that’s why I’ve got this job'? How I got here? No, I think it’s interesting each venue and each place and each situation is so different. We are now talking, the London Yeah, how you got here – and whether you saw it coming? programmers, because of the British Dance Edition that’s No, I suppose none of it’s really planned. You find out as you coming up in February next year, which is the first time I’ve go along, you find out what you’re good at. When we started regularly sat round a table with other people. I mean, that’s Adventures, I was kind of programming a bit because it was for a specific event to try and make sure we can represent a repertory company then. I knew when I went to Laban I as well and as broadly as we can what’s going on. But, didn’t have a choreographic brain. It’s not how I think. So you know, we do talk. We try not to tread on each other’s one of the good things there was finding out what I wasn’t toes. And because the studio that I programme is only eight meters deep, there’s lots of shows that I might want to put good at as much as what I did enjoy and was good at. on that I can’t, but that’s quite good because the Southbank might want to or The Place has got a much deeper stage I suppose the sooner you can figure that out… there or Dance Umbrella might find somewhere else to put Well, I think you’re probably already doing it. If you’re lucky it on. So there’s not much argy-bargy that goes on. I think, enough to have the – or make – the time and space to do because all of us have our different tastes and different things that you’re passionate about, you’re probably doing priorities and so I don’t worry about that, but I don’t know if the things that you’re good at as well. You know, they usually they do, ha! I don’t know if they curse me behind my back. go hand in hand. And I suppose the longer you do that, you I doubt it, I hope not. get more skilled and then you work in a different way or with different people or in another country or whatever it might I was wondering if I could ask you this as a question that you be, and so all of those steps lead for wards. And as long as asked us on the Big Intensive: Can you think of a decisive you’re moving for wards then that’s a good thing. Matthew moment, a change, a choice that you made that stands out Dunster who didn’t come in this year but has come in before- for you? -Matthew? Matthew, Matthew Dunster. He’s a director and a writer and he’s working with me on the big Pet Shop Boys/Javier project. He has a thing at the top of his notebook everyday that sort of says: 'It’s a hard journey, but every step you take leads towards the mountain.' So if you have a goal, which might be to make that play, you first of all have to recognise that it’s hard and second of all that any tiny step you make, as long as it’s in the direction towards finishing that goal, then you’re heading somewhere. And then you learn how to step more surely or with bigger strides.

Strangely they’ve been about leaving things. So leaving Adventures when I’d set up and run the company for three years and done nothing else, nothing else at all, and felt deeply passionate and linked to it, but realising choreographically and as a dancer it wasn’t particularly where I wanted to be anymore. Leaving the Cholmondeleys, that was the same thing. That was quite a big decision that came after eight years of touring, feeling like I really didn’t want to do that anymore. Leaving The Place after five years and realising I wanted to work differently. So they’ve all strangely come from dissatisfaction. I see.

I was about to ask about goal-setting or striving. I suppose I got to realise how much I liked programming a bit

Which I do think is a very motivating force, actually. Something’s always come up which I couldn’t have done, 27

EMM A GL A DSTONE

if I had stayed where I was. So that’s the great optimistic thing to hang on to, but I do think courage to follow your convictions usually is a good thing. I sound like Pollyanna.

So the scale can change, but you don’t have to shift how you think.

No. But you’re right, you can dig it out the other way and widen if you’re talking ecologically or politically. It can all travel. I suppose we’re lucky enough in the sense that we’re Everything’s going to be alright in the end! working in a world that’s centred by the people who do the making and maybe by us that do the programming, so we are It’s heartening. You’ve spoken about it before: Listening, reasonably autonomous in that situation. In Egypt someone listening to your own voice and your intuition and listen as I know went to a festival and basically the promoters of the well to the niggly things… festival were the army, essentially. They were running the cultural institutions there, because they run everything else. That’s right, yeah. You know, I think it’s hard to realise that in India, for example, I think the most fearful thing is people not talking or people there isn’t any state funding, so anything you want to put not knowing, so usually when you address something it’s on you have to raise the money for yourself. Well, that’s better. You know, if you can talk directly with someone some kind of freedom also, but it’s just a different weight of it’s usually the best way to move for wards, because then responsibility and a different setup, because then you have everybody knows where they stand more. major budget issues; you have to hire the theatre and see how it all stacks up, you know. Yeah, we’re lucky here. We’re And that’s in every aspect of your life. lucky. But I think that autonomy is a big thing for satisfaction, of how we can feel we’re trying to make our difference within It think it is actually, I think it really is. And it needs a certain our own local rules, rather than other peoples' I suppose. courage, but I do think usually people know, you know. It’s like a relationship, if it’s bad on one side it’s usually bad on It’s important that whatever situation you find yourself in, another. depending on the country, the government, to try to make the best of it. Or someone’s deluded and that’s bad too. Yeah, and to understand and obser ve other peoples' local Yeah, yeah, absolutely [laughs]. And it usually engenders rules when you’re travelling, how those might work. Alain deeper, better, richer conversations as a result. So that can Patel came to talk with us and he was talking about these only be a good thing, whatever you’re working on. people in Lebanon who went to rehearsal under threat of injury and fire. Yep. Yes, I was there at the talk. That was quite arresting. And actually, if it doesn’t move for ward in that way, then that’s not the right person to be working with you or you with You know, it just really made me think how we don’t have them. Like those things where you might start up a group that here. We have an extraordinary amount of freedom to with a bunch of friends and one of them doesn’t pull their consider those ‘local rules’ and actually act on them. weight or is always moaning or wants to do things in such a different way. I think the sooner you can resolve those I think it’s easy now that we are witnessing all these cuts things, then everybody can move for ward. It gets back to us and entering an era of reduced funding-ism to be a bit talking about keeping moving for wards. down in the mouth, but actually there are good things, lots of good things, that can come out of it. I think we also have Liz Lerman talks about creating local rules. a romantic notion that when the going gets tough, people turn to art for nourishment. I mean, historically, in times of I’d forgotten that. Yeah, that’s a good phrase isn’t it? hardship things go underground, there are new beginnings and patterns change. It is because it reminds us of the importance of where you are and of appreciating those circumstances. Or to change Yeah. It’s going to be a really interesting time I think – for them, if you don’t like them. It’s quite empowering. good or for bad. I certainly feel, in terms of producing and programming, it’s caused the setup of numerous networks Yeah, because wherever you are is your local. across the UK to share resources and to share commissions and coordinate touring for artists. As a building I think we are Yeah. And again that ripples out in so many senses in terms trying to see more how we can use our resources as best we of ecology andcan to help people, as a kind of solid building who is not as vulnerable as you freelancers out in the cold. How to try and -yes, well it’s interesting for me working on this big project share what we’ve got to maximise those facilities. with Javier and The Pet Shop Boys. It’s a lot, it’s a big project with a big cast and a big set and a big score, but actually I have pondered and had conversations about the extent a lot of how I’m working is how I normally work on other to which it would be possible for you to open your facilities projects – just with more people. without endangering or putting the name of Sadler’s Wells Pollyanna? Ha ha.

EMM A GL A DSTONE

on the line. Is it right that basically on anything that gets programmed in the Lilian Baylis, you’re not making a profit?

trying to expand, calling for contributors who are interested in performance. We have writers, people into theatre as well, photographers…

Yeah, you make a loss there. Yeah, that’s great though. I suppose that would be one message: look wide. You know, look wide at what’s out there and who’s out there, because I think dance is such a collaborative art form and there’s such benefits to be It’s not like there’s lots of baggy space there, there’s not had from engaging with people outside. And as with any empty studios. Everything does get rented out or given to vocational training, the intensity of being a student is so associate artists or used for our own productions or used by great it’s very hard to have the energy, let alone the time, let Connect, who is our Education and Outreach department. alone the money, to go out and about and see things. But I You know, it’s not like endless weekends of endless studios think where all the interesting stuff is happening is where you that could be used. It’s not, it’s really not like that. It's can engage both with different art forms and with the world important that we look at how to help the art form as well as out there in a way that can resonate with an audience. As I our associates and our programme, and I suppose partly say, that’s what I say: get out there. things like the Summer University and things like the Blueprint Fund that connect to Stratford Circus are specifically aimed Great. And finally, another question that you asked us at Big at that. They are aimed at interesting young artists making Intensive. work now. They’re not people that will be programming in the main house yet, but they will be people that may be Ha ha. You’re bringing it all back to me, bouncing it back! there in, I don’t know, five or ten years time. But that’s not really why we’re doing it. It’s really more about trying to up I am, I am. We were able to write it down, but I’m afraid the ante in how choreography is looked at and using the you’re not going to have that opportunity. What do you want resources that we have working with professionals on lots people to say about you– of different scales in a way. Like with Big Intensive, I hope it was something that you hadn’t had at college. I hope it was –at my funeral! something different just because, of course, my network will –at your funeral? be different from an educational one. Okay, so that’s one reason why you wouldn’t run shows there every night of the week!

It really was. I think that is what’s interesting about it – sort of sharing the knowledge and the research that we’ve done over the years to help put something together that’s informative and inspirational in a different way from what people might be getting in any educational institution. And I think that’s because it’s linked into professionals working now in different forms and different ways, and that’s what I hope is what’s different about it.

Ah ha ha ha! Oh wow. That shows how I haven’t done my own homework from what I asked you to do. It’s a little unkind of me to spring this on you. Ha. [Long pause] I would hope they would say I was brave and honest and loyal – that’s what. That would be nice.

So, your message to-The World. Ah ha ha! Your message to the world. Do you have one? I suppose I want to know what your local rules are. Who’s your world? Who would your world be? People making? I mean, who’s your… Is that a question? …your readership? Yeah, that’s a question for you. At the moment it’s mostly artists within performance, but because the blog incorporates all sorts, the website attracts people searching for anything from Zaha Hadid to William Forsythe to Tina Turner. We aim to engage with contemporary culture at large. So people stumble across us and we also have a more dedicated readership. We are 29

Virtue of the Novice

TE X T Louise Mochia IM AGE Rasmus Hagen

‘Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity. Schopenhauer’s saying, that “a man can do as he will, but not will as he will,” has been an inspiration to me since my youth up, and a continual consolation and unfailing well-spring of patience in the face of the hardships of life, my own and others’. This feeling mercifully mitigates the sense of responsibility which so easily becomes paralyzing, and it prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it conduces to a view of life in which humor, above all, has its due place.’

Lately, I have been getting up at 5am to pen down my thoughts. Or I have stayed in bed, still awake but too lazy to get up, trying to memorise the thoughts in order not to forget them. At times I get so paranoid of losing them that I semisurrendering switch on my phone to use the built-in torch, grab pen and paper, scribble a few lines and tuck back into the covers. Despite my eyes literally being glued together by crusties, light at this hour hurts. It makes me feel like a newborn kitten. We all want to direct our energy at something, don’t we. There are different takes on this, of course, but we all have the need and we follow it blinded by its force driven by its force. In school it makes us compete and fight for recognition. In ‘the real world’ we must always try and get the best, send off applications in as many directions as possible. All in complete desperation to satisfy that need.

- Albert Einstein, Mein Weltbild (1931)

‘At least it’s a dance job’, I hear colleagues say. And I wonder why any job isn’t a good enough job. I don’t believe it’s purely a matter of doing what you like, well it is, but you like what you like only because of one thing. And that thing is the fear of not being acknowledged or successful enough (or for the shy, as spiritual teacher Eckart Tolle calls it, ‘a hidden desire’), coming from the ego. 30

has to be innocent itself. The performers of Forced Entertainment are not inexperienced - we know they are skilled performers - in fact, I wonder, possibly alongside a good deal of performance commentators, whether they are too skilled. Perhaps in order to perfect what they do, genuine inexperience is key. Choreographer Twyla Tharp puts it this I start by reading 1948 classic Zen in the Art of Archery. way: ‘inexperience is innocence, naïveté, and humility. It is Eugen Herrigel, the author of the book, goes to Tokyo to a powerful ignorance...’. experience the ‘living tradition of Zen’ under the teachings of Master Kenzo Awa. Suffice to say, Herrigel is in for a Imagine this: challenge. As well as being a great read, in just 107 pages the book pretty much sums up the essence of spiritual ‘Seeking male and female dancers weak in ballet and living - that is, egoless living. Having said that, if spirituality contemporary technique and with little experience of use can’t be rendered into words but is understood through the of text. Further performance skills unnecessary, but a low practice of being only, any words are an awful lot. As Master level of partnering skills is essential. Applicants are required Kenzo Awa says, ‘why try to anticipate in thought what to have neither a Degree nor a form of Higher Education only experience can teach?’. This is the advice he gives a Certificate in Dance. To apply for the audition please send a DVD of yourself dancing.’ struggling Herrigel, when his mind becomes too stubborn. So how do we get anywhere if we are driving with the brakes on, it seems? I mean, all this effort and striving can be immensely limiting and draining rather than helpful. No fruits. If we wish to be free and do our art, what’s the way? I shall try to find out.

But, how do you reach that state of egoless being, completely fearless, when your job of being a performer, or any ‘artiste’, means placing yourself and your feet in the centre of everyone’s attention? (Let alone the pressure of auditioning.) If you can’t be your ego, you can’t be boosting it either. A bit of a conundrum arises here. Perhaps if we return to the kitten, or any new member of the world, beaming with innocence, totally egoless, we might find something useful: ‘Completely unselfconsciously, without purpose, [the child] turns from one to the other, and we would say that it was playing with the things, were it not equally true that the things are playing with the child.’ Another wisdom cookie straight from the oven of the wise Master. Is the key then to become a child again, to go back, to start over, discover everything anew? Unless you suffer severe amnesia this is impossible of course. You can’t return to that same level of ignorance and innocence. You can’t erase your memory, but I believe in that you can detach yourself from it. By doing so, by letting go of what your mind knows (and wants), it might become possible to begin somewhere free from expectation, a chance to remove yourself from the hopes of achievements and the fears of failures, thereby obtaining less of the obsessive, often troubling thoughts and dreams of the big success. Hopefully then, things will flow a little better, but it will be without that same purpose of... fame. This is Zen and a lot of other things that share the same ethos.

But then, before we know it, we’re talking X-Factor, Britain’s Got Talent, Strictly Come Dancing, the Mockery Worship of Amateurs Age. Although you’re poor at something, you can still have a massive ego all up for fame. Therefore, we can’t count on inadequacy entirely. (Also, ‘just be terrible’ maybe isn’t exactly the answer we were looking for.) The problem is still in wanting to be something, and often as fast as possible, as opposed to not seeking it but letting it happen naturally and with ease, through experience and practice, maintaining untouched by it. We need not to be an amateur and remain an amateur but approach our creative endeavours, and everything else, with the mentality of the ingenuous beginner. And here we might find room to breathe.

Now, I might be jumping to conclusions, but to me all this means: be like the amateur. Or as one of the most popular of affirmative life quotes goes: dance like no one is watching. (The dullest of statements suddenly came in handy.) However, this has to be done with complete honesty – even in theatre. There is the deliberately badly organised and executed dance and choreography, like that of physical theatre company Forced Entertainment in The Thrill of It All that fails to produce anything in the spectator, if not performed with 100% innocence – and 100% conviction. If utilised as a tool to create comedy in performance, for the amateurish act to hold water, the act of imitating innocence 31

BELLYFLOP

SOPHIE LEE Plain Jane

PL AIN JANE

so p hiem e g anl e e.co m

BIOGRAPHY

MEETS THE TABOO TE X T Alice Malseed

Sex on stage. I’ve never actually seen it despite it being, next to pissing on stage, probably the biggest joke bandied around Goldsmiths’ drama department. Perhaps this commentary on the students’ lives was itself necessary; if all theatre and art derives from the self and the biography, then surely in this case those chewing over these potential acts were merely responding to their own everyday? It is this biographical aspect of theatre making which I find most interesting, and now as I both critique and create theatre and live art, I cannot help but draw my own personal history and experience into my theory and practice. As a Northern Irish female, I notice that what is obvious in the Goldsmiths drama department reigns ubiquitous throughout Irish playwriting; drawing from specific aspects of culture and society to inform the audience about the psyche of the time, portraying the zeitgeist with regard to specific views. Perhaps it is not that practitioners want to comply with the political or societal habits, but that they mirror it consciously or subconsciously, and portray an image which their audiences can relate to and follow. Due to the strict religious and moral values which pave the foundations for archetypal Irish society, one taboo there is plain; that of women’s sexuality and virginity. It has been traditional for Irish playwrights to follow the aforementioned traditions of portraying the social and cultural trend of the time, and thus these writers often employ narratives which give as an audience an in-depth view of this societal institution. Even Ireland’s most canonical playwrights of the 21st century, for example Brian Friel and the AngloIrish Martin McDonagh, are unable to step away from

these semiotic devices, and it is through portrayals by these writers and others that audiences can gain a comprehensible view of this topic in Irish culture and society. Like any small society with a strong sense of community, family in Ireland is incredibly important and again and again, Irish writers will paint a picture of family with relationships created that are often so close to reality that they provoke and evoke something in us, reminding us universally of our own families and the complex way in which they operate. In Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel, the story of the Mundy sisters set in a village in Donegal in 1936, we see an almost entirely female cast. The only mention of sexuality in this entire portrait comes through the narrator; a child of one of the sisters. This son, who was born out of wedlock, brings with him a rather tragic view of sexuality and all its misfortunate implications. This son is, however, not the only hint at a sexual encounter. A strong but subtle intimation comes from Maggie, in her sorrow-filled but beautiful tale of her time at a cèilidh aged sixteen. Maggie’s reminiscence is heartwarming and while it portrays the youth of these girls, it serves to open up a chapter of fruitful possibility and joy which was once so promising but has now become rooted in the past. It is through Maggie’s anecdote of her youthful encounter with this young suitor, that as a contemporary audience we are intrigued and cannot help but think of the physical interaction which their bodies enjoyed. Of course this was 1930s Ireland, and they were strict Catholics with good morals. These good traditional Irish upbringings cannot 38

always override primitive desires, and Friel reminds us only of the possibility, of ‘what could have been’. The skirting around of this issue is perhaps a choice made by Friel, or indeed it perhaps leads to a more imbedded issue of the position of sexuality and virginity; with Irelands strict Presbyterian and Catholic governments suffocating the overt narrative possibilities and instead creating a rather subverted and unspoken subtext, forcing us to invent a way out of this taboo.

A few months ago, I had a chat with a friend-of-afriend, a Northern Irish drama student from Queens University, Belfast. This friend-of-a-friend was shocked about something; ‘there’s a play on in the Brian Friel [the university theatre] and the cast get naked!’ I didn’t know how to respond, so instead I decided to remember a time when this shock may have resonated in me as well.

In The Beauty Queen Of Leenane, which will be returning to the Young Vic this summer, Martin McDonagh’s fortysomething female character, Maureen Folan, experiences her first sexual encounter in a rather crass and explicit way which later turns into a tragedy of mental illness and loneliness. McDonagh’s explicit portrayal of the loss of virginity and female sexuality tackles the taboo, but does not solve it, as the twist at the end leaves us questioning whether Maureen’s perception was reality or fantasy. McDonagh’s narrative could be imagined as a sort of illustration of how Irish writers imagine female sexuality; that it would be good to write about it in reality, but we can’t, so we have to create what could be a realistic tale, and then had to sort of rewrite it into a tragic fantasy for the protection of this thing unmentionable. Other Irish writers explore the issue too, including notably Belfast’s Brendan Behan. An English adaption of his Brechtian play The Hostage was staged at Southwark Playhouse last season. In this absurdist tragicomedy, Behan takes his audience to a Dublin brothel, littered with prostitutes young and old, whose sexuality is explicit and definitely not taboo. This too, is interesting; Behan does mention sexuality, but he does not mention it in relation to the everyday, his portrayal of sexuality is altogether explicit and crass. It is a stereotypically unfriendly view of exploitation through sexuality and this view is the most part, abnormal. What is most interesting about these alternative portrayals is that none of them are ‘normal’. All four writers chose not to familiarise us with a comfortable and healthy level of female sexuality or to introduce us to females in healthy relationships. The writers all skim over the surface of the subject, either hinting at it, disregarding it, explicitly throwing it at us, or marring it in misfortune? Like Ireland, where abortion is still illegal and sex-education remains mostly out of schools, sexuality in the theatre is a taboo, and indeed even today, healthy portrayals of female sexual relationships and sexuality on stage are rarely presented or achieved. As an audience and as critics, we must consider why these plays have been written; is it to represent reality, to comment on reality, or is it to create another world entirely which only exists on the stage. 39

Luke Pell

[ I was way too scared to go to scouts. I was a big queer even at the age of six.]

Interview Sarah Blanc It was a particularly cold February evening, when I arrived at Forest Hill station for the first time. I of course pulled out my iphone as a way of navigation, to find I only had 10% battery left. Quickly checking and memorising my route, I headed towards Luke Pell’s house. His cosy warm abode seemed like it had been built just for him. It was decorated with old pictures and handmade cushions and stunk of ‘I’m an artist’. Trying to keep my own ner ves at bay (this was to be my first inter view), Luke admitted he was apprehensive, as he poured himself a ginger beer. He put on ‘This is Kit’ for a bit of background noise and then we began. Let's talk straight away about your upcoming workshops with Rachel Gomme at Chisenhale Dance Space. Why the title Listening Space, A Resource for Makers? I think we are both aware that there's often a feeling that we have to keep on making. We are always creating work to make a product and particularly as an independent artist, you're looking for funding pots and platforms and not necessarily having the space to think about just exploring for the sake of exploring. Checking where you're at. It's kind of a hand to mouth business or a hand to mouth process, when you're trying to establish yourself as a practitioner. How did you and Rachel get together? We both did our MA in Performance at Queen Mary. I think quite early on, Rachel and I both saw things that we found interesting in each other’s practice. We shared similar feelings about where we were in our careers and the rationale behind why we were doing an MA at that time in our lives. It was really great to collaborate with each other. My work is very often, nearly always, about collaboration rather than working independently. 41

LUKE PELL

What made you go back to studying at this point of your career?

On your myspace page you talk about revealing the beautiful in the everyday and mundane?

I felt had lost touch with my artistic practice. I hadn’t taken my inner artist on many dates and I needed to be disciplined enough to create a space for my own work.

What's interesting to me is a sense of transformation, that shift from ordinary and mundane day to day things into being extraordinary and beautiful. A lot of my work starts with objects. There's something about the starting point of a tactile object, an everyday domestic object. So as well as encounters with people, I'm interested in the traces of people and objects and the traces of humanity left on the world around us.

How was it? It was tough. I found it really hard. Juggling work and having been out of education along with not thinking at that particular academic level. Having been working within the arts sector, essentially within the mainstream away from the more experimental work, I was in a really different place to a lot of people, who had either been working in experimental performance or who had just graduated. They were able to really engage with the moment and enjoy the process of making and exploring, without thinking about how that might be outside.

Growing up and dreaming of becoming something within the entertainment industry, we all live in an air of a self-created illusion. Can you remember the first time your expectation of the industry was challenged?

I think I fell into performance. I wasn’t one of those kids who always wanted to dance or act or sing. When I was six, I probably asked my mum if could I do ballet classes You've produced work with Marc Brew, Candoco and and she said 'no', but I could go to scouts. I was way too Shobana Jeyasingh, how does it feel for the first time to be scared to go to scouts, because I was a big queer even at delivering workshops and creating work with just your name the age of six, so I did things after school like textiles and on it? It must feel quite refreshing. Or is it scary? art. I can remember at eleven or thirteen, wanting a bit part in the school musical, my drama teacher decided I would Working with other people and supporting other people, to be Oliver. I was tone deaf, but I was made to sing in front of really think about where they want their work to be and how the whole school. That really knocked my confidence and to present it, has made me reflect on my own work. It has I kind of gave up on drama and performance. I went on to given me a really clear sense of where I want to place my do visual art and worked in fashion for a while. Whilst I was work and who I want to work with. I’d say that’s probably working in fashion, I used to create personas and identities the thing that’s really exciting about now, that I have met and go out like that in clubs and parties. I ended up doing artists that I really want to work with. People whose practice performances in clubs with some friends and then someone resonates with me and who I know I could collaborate with. said to me, 'you should do performing arts'. So I did. I had That excites me. But yes, it's scary. no clue of what I was getting in to. In your dream of dreams who would you like to work with?

That's probably the best way to do it, ha.

People who I think are remarkable are David Harradine from Fevered Sleep, Frank Bock and Simon Vincenzi. I think their work is extraordinary. Some people would argue that putting your own life on stage makes for uncomfortable watching. But this is how you like to create work right? Yes, autobiography has always been a starting point for me. Usually my work is about relationships, because I'm interested in people and our relationship with one another. I use autobiography for people to relate to. I try very hard for my work to cease to be about me and to be about shared experiences, or the potential of shared experiences. We've all, well most people, experienced loss or love or desperation or joy. Part of my process, and I’m not sure if I ever get it right, is about selecting what's not going to exclude or alienate an audience, finding what will resonate with people and strike a chord that might make them think about the relationships in their life. It doesn't come from me wanting to tell my story. I think it's always about the interaction of people, rather than 'this happened to me'. 42

A prenuptial William Arthur Philip Louis reckons with Downtown New York TE X T Eleanor Sikorski

Pacing back and forth, alone in a house with too many rooms, is not a good way to spend an evening. Especially when it’s the evening before your wedding day. Marriage knocks about the brain like a jack when its hour looms quite so close. Hell, I need to get myself something to do. Thank God it’s a Thursday. 'Chauffeur! Get me to a late night gallery opening.' The Barbican Art Gallery, 9pm, Thursday 28th April, 2011. Trisha Brown at Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970s Walking on the Wall (1971) is just what it claims to be, really. I could be watching the technicians at Cirque du Soleil testing out the mechanics of their aerial equipment. Cirque without the costumes. Granted, the Cirque costumes are vulgar, but they do give it all a certain sparkle. Something to look at – albeit nothing more than a kaleidoscope effect worthy of an Olympic opening ceremony. Walking on the Wall – it also reminds me of the Super Dad protester, dressed as Batman, scaling the palace walls. What is it that necessitates such a correlation between courting vertigo and donning spandex? Although these Trisha Brown dancers have managed to avoid that unfortunate combination. Not a garish colour in sight. I’ve actually forgotten what they’re wearing and I’m still looking at them. Nothing like the Olympics at all, really. I once had a bad dream that the wedding turned into a sort of Olympic dance fest. Kate and I perched like marzipan models atop our own giant wedding cake, swarms of neon dancers covering the spongy tiers; hundreds of failed athletes who had taken up costume design as a hobby. Spandex everywhere. A literal, bloody nightmare. I dreamt it just before we lost that damned World Cup bid and I was sleeping badly in between flights. Talk about a bloody charming disintegration of national pride. David and I reduced to evangelising about British fireworks and public transport. Neither of us know bugger all about public transport. Give me rugger any day. Floor of the Forest (1970), now, that is in fact a bit like rugger. A bit more contortionism on display and a few less seams being ripped, but it’s not unlike a sort of stretched out, disembodied scrum. A lazy scrum, maybe, but all of those hanging clothes must have been reinforced beforehand which is quite impressive. And clever, really. Not at all much like a scrum though, now that I think about it. It’s more like a baby sling than a battle field. It’s as if they’re all big babies, crawling around like that. It’s a jolly enough contraption for a nursery room. I’m not sure everyone would approve of such a toy for a child (all of those clothes make for quite a peculiar set up), but I’m sure Kate would be sport. If it’s large enough it could be a whole activity room, a kind of parent/ child bonding space. I think having a child will be splendid. A bloody waste of time though. Not the child, I mean the alternative climbing frame idea; climbing over it could become quite a longwinded pursuit. Then again, as a come down from mountain rescue, nothing ever seems to be much of a pursuit. It is important that a child learns pursuit. The importance of pursuit and the pursuit of importance. Although I’m not sure those two things are entirely connected. Planes (1968) is a bit like flying a plane, navigating a map and playing Connect 4 all at once. I’ll give my heirdom to whoever can find fault in that.

Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown, Gordon Matta-Clark: Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970s is at the Barbican Art Gallery 3 March 2011 - 22 May 2011 www.barbican.org.uk 43

First Timers watch First Timers Introduction Gillie Kleiman

Resolution! is The Place’s only season for which artists can apply to perform. It focuses on very new British dance, with a few works selected by the Aerowaves network in order to inject a bit of European glamour. Artists are attracted to apply, despite the potential costliness of the endeavour, because in its history it has been the booster from which choreographic careers have bounded into success.

25 January 2011

The third instalment, THR3E by Big Albert’s Gang, choreographed by Jessica Williams, was closer to any LOVE KILLS by Rhiannon Faith: Dancing Theatre, a preconceived ideas I may have had about contemporary loud, provocative display of teenage heartache was dance. The dancers, two female and one male, walked on perhaps, paradoxically, a gentle introduction to the world stage in black under wear, each heading to a rack of clothes. of contemporary dance, replete with live band (Blur, The They dressed and began swirling their racks around the Streets, Alanis Morissette etc.), a clearly defined theme, stage. The lights were dimmed and the music dubby, regular monologues and comic sensibility. The initial sexy, ethereal. So far, so abstract. Soon the three were surprise of seeing eight performers writhe, scream and enclosed in an open square of clothes, crouched, backs tumble their way through numerous love-struck scenarios to the audience. They pulsed as one, animalistic, black soon faded and I was impressed with the expressiveness hoods up. Gone was the humour and (relative) literalism of the performance, whether articulating cocky, aggressive of the previous pieces. This was a serious poem written in sexual assertion, loneliness, or ‘just dumped’ hysteria. The the rippling, tribal movements of the bodies prowling the comedy of these episodes was well-judged, sitting beside stage, playing off each other, hunting down their individual more earnest physical representations of pain. It was a personalities. The crawling, looping street-dance took on powerful piece, with an energy and passion befitting its a slow, trippy edge and a languid sensuality replaced the theme, neither neglecting the tragicomedy and absurdity of earlier brooding, darker tones. As one of the female dancers relationships nor drifting off into the pretentious. As the piece was grasped and groped by the other two from behind a hurtled towards its scissor-slicing, heart-cutting crescendo, clothes rack, I started to feel out of step; I lacked a dictionary I was left slightly over whelmed by the cumulative drama of and wondered how all this was intended to be interpreted. I this spasming, pulsating exploration of the contradictory and had only just lost my Dance V plates - perhaps this was too hi-octane emotions that whirl round the realm of young love. much. The male dancer emerged and the two melted into an elegant, erotic dance: a final display of unity, graceful yet Returning from the inter val, I was greeted with the sight of two violent. I was confused, but vaguely impressed. As the three figures clad in white, lying on the floor, feet touching, a T V disappeared into their clothes rails, I was left with the sense screen atop one of their heads, a projector upon the other. This of evolution from structure to freedom. Three on-stage forced was Projector/Conjector by Mamoru Iriguchi. Something odd a searching for individual ‘identity’, only to then give in to the was about to happen, my dance-virgin bones could sense kind of rhythms that lead people away from themselves and it. Soon the screen-beings were up on their feet, introducing into the arms of others. themselves to the audience via their headpieces. The words scrolled across Mr T V’s screen as he crept left or crouched down. ‘I want a tragic romance today’, he tells us. Already Jack Davies is freelance writer and photographer specialising in a small faction of the audience was in fits of uncontrollable travel and the arts. www.jackdaviesimages.com laughter which was somehow sustained for the duration. The absurdity of this dialogue with the audience was indeed an ice-breaker of sorts and I felt at ease with the strangeness of it all once this eccentric, playful tone had been set. It was a delicate and clever piece, suffused with visual comedy and the line between ‘on-screen’ and ‘real-life’, which was deftly toyed with, was ultimately blurred. I was struck by the alacrity with which the performance balanced humour, tragedy (Swan Lake per vades the piece), technological wizardry and raw emotion. The piece, eschewing any overall ‘meaning’, spoke to me of the relationship between pixel and human pulse, the ambiguities of male and female and the grand themes of love and death in a messed up, ultramodern display of living, breathing technology.

Plenty of people and organisations are impressed if work is included in Resolution! (this year I received congratulations from Dance UK and a former ACE officer as well as a bunch of artists from my native northeast) and, to be honest, the first time I participated in the season I was pretty impressed with myself. For many artists it’s the first time work is presented outside of a training context: it’s the professional dance cherry-popping moment. And, like the moment of defloration, it can be over-hyped, under-prepared, anti-climactic and maybe only your mate comes. Dance-makers and -doers often discuss what it is to present work in Resolution!, but what does this virginal moment do for those voyeurs who watch it? BELLYFLOP sent two contemporary dance innocents to different evenings in the season to give accounts of their experiences.

29 January 2011

the stage.

I went into this experience neither cynical nor prejudiced, but with an uninformed layman’s views on contemporary dance; I expected to see a lot of arrhythmic movement accompanied by ethereal noise, all coming together to form a display that’s neither aesthetically pleasing nor whose meaning is even remotely clear. Perhaps I was slightly cynical.

The second piece, blabla by Iml, followed the same structure of curiously inert drama followed by dance. It featured a girlgirl-boy love triangle going through the motions in front of the T V and, as well as displaying the same high standard of dancing ability as the previous work, introduced me to another feature of contemporary dance I hadn’t anticipated – humour. My presumptions of brooding, hopelessly intense dancers being snootily regarded by pretentious connoisseurs sagely stroking their goatees proved largely ill founded; parts of this piece were funny by any standards and the audience responded accordingly. The revelation that what was going on onstage didn’t need to be taken desperately seriously was a welcome one.

I arrived at The Place in North London alone, having made the rookie error of not bringing an accomplice and immediately found myself standing next to a transvestite. Already feeling self-conscious on account of being conspicuously square in comparison with the buzzing dance crowd that surrounded me, I panicked and embedded myself in a corner to bury my nose in the programme. My eyebrows were immediately raised when I read that one of three works in the evening (Sunny Side Up by La Pena Nunez) entertained this premise: ‘Can an egg find its own way to be alive after being cracked and cooked?’ I suppressed my instinctive response – ‘no, you fucking idiot’ – and reminded myself that I was intent on approaching the evening with an open mind. I latched on to the happy throng of people filing into the theatre, who all seemed to know each other, and took my seat.

After a pointless second inter val, the third piece provided a sombre foil for the relatively light first two. In all honesty, Punch to the Heart by Hurst & James did nothing for me. While its intended meaning was quite possibly more poignant than the others’ (based on the sheer volume of melancholy they crammed into it, both visually and aurally), a group of people walking around on a stage barefoot falling into each others’ arms is too much like a school drama class for my liking. It was, I’m afraid, what I’d been expecting.

Sunny Side Up by Laura Pena Nunez opened the evening. The muscle-bound male lead entering the stage with the I had been sent to The Place in order to lose my dance-going lights still up and proceeding to crack half a dozen eggs virginity and that description turned out to be remarkably into a bowl. For the next few minutes he went on to chop apt; I started off feeling awkward and was truthfully unsure of two onions and a carrot. Thankfully this indecipherable when proceedings actually commenced, then as I gradually opening soon gave way to the actual ‘dance’ part, and the started to feel more comfortable in my surroundings I began arrival onstage of the egg herself kicked off the ‘physical to get the hang of how to enjoy what I was experiencing and emotional duet’ we’d been promised. What quickly before (all too abruptly) it ended with a muted anti-climax. became apparent was that these two were clearly very able However, staying true to this tenuous analogy, I suspect dancers; the physical ability and skill were unquestionable. this will not be the last time I attend a contemporary dance I have no doubt whatsoever that 90% of the ‘meaning’ of the performance. While my first experience was mixed, I saw piece evaded me but, like it or loathe it, telling a story (or in enough to convince me that this is without question one of this particular case, ‘reflecting about the limits of destiny’) the more creative performing art forms, and as such makes by means other than words is interesting; it’s imaginative for really rather good viewing. and, if done well (as I believe was the case here), engaging. However, as a vulnerable and ner vous contemporary dance virgin it was the technical abilities of the performers that Oliver Lyons is a law student from Norfolk. He’s a Fulham FC season ticket holder. impressed me most and apart from a couple of eye-catching flourishes (most notably the egg being fried, complete with billowing skirt mimicking air bubbles) the choreography mostly went over my head and I found it hard, therefore, to gauge how accomplished it was. There followed an inter val during which the inevitable broken eggs were cleared from 45

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