Wednesday, January 14, 2009
[12:47 AM]
Again, a classical dance scholar would probably say the same looking at the way we practise contemporary dance with our contorted body movement, flexed feet and hunched backs. So that makes me a hypocrite once again. But I see contemporary dance as a way of breaking free from the rigidity of classical dance, where First position can take on many different forms and a chanet can be done in various body shapes that defy the physics of movement. With such new vocabulary, dance becomes a language that transcends even greater boundaries and since its discovery, has been churning so much creativity that some feared the possibility of it spinning out of control. I'm one of those who believe so.
Attending these installments put up for the season's Fringe festival, I noticed an unbecoming trend among the contemporary dances. They have the grace, talent, skill, attitude, but they have also managed to turn contemporary dance into an unknown piece of art as I've lamented about earlier. The focus is largely on the idea of abstract. It's too abstract that I get so frustrated trying to comprehend and figure out what the whole point of the dance is. While some dance to entertain and others to convey a message, a contemporary dance staged in a little black box like the ones for the festival I believe wishes to portray the latter due to its lack of commercial value as compared to its more favourite counterpart Hiphop. Nobody attends a studio performance to be entertained, we can watch Pussycat Dolls and Beyonce on youtube if that's what we want!
The theme was Art and Family and I was curious what these dancers thought were pressing issues when discussing Family and how they would convey their ideas and concerns. But what I got was abstract abstract abstract. It got even more frustrating when they gave me answers such as "open to interpretations" when asked what their dance was all about. Deductions are made from proper analysis of the holistic overview and supporting evidences from the details. But when there aren't strong enough evidences to support your point, it's hard to come to a conclusion. It's like driving into a wall each time you thought you found something worth noting. It became truly annoying after a while. I wasn't particularly interested in finding the actual theme(s) or idea(s) the choreographers intended to put across (if there was any to begin with) but a good piece would have allowed us to study better into it so we could be allowed to make our respective deductions and interpretations based on our own knowledge and experiences. This is what in my opinion made Fallout by RAWDance a better piece as compared to within.without, and in case you're wondering, no it has nothing to do with the fact that the latter is locally produced. I'm not biased in that sort of way.
within.without managed to capture our attention with its unique approach to the theme. At certain parts, the family unit was portrayed literally, like when they were eating together at the dinner table, and vaguely, like when their dependency on one another was made apparent when any two dancers would seemingly portray their inability to be alone and always had to have contact with each other in order to keep going. The idea of frustration was also well presented, it was pretty obvious that each character tried to show their frustration of being part of that family, possibly caused by each others idiosyncrasies. Some tried to escape but pulled back in by the other members because a family is a family and it will always remain a part of them no matter where they are. Most of the movements however seem to deviate from the issue and became rather unclear why they had been there in the first place. It felt like they were filling in the blank spaces without trying to show any progress in the dance or the theme. The connections between the different blocks weren't strong enough so it became movement after movement after movement and it wasn't even highly entertaining. Tension seemed like the running element throughout the dance and this could be seen in all their choreography and the clever use of humour at appropriate juncture worked rather well. Plot was almost non-existent, probably choreographers preference. At the end of it their frequent use of vagueness left me feeling lost and confused.
Fallout is similar in bringing forth the issue of dependency in a family unit. They did through the idea of freedom vs confinement. The dancers portrayed their desire to be independent of their family members through their vain attempt at escaping. There was a desire to be different and individualistic and that spurred the idea of breaking free, fighting hard for freedom. Unfortunately, no matter how much they tried to they seemed to be troubled by their own desire to be free, guilty of leaving this wonderful thing they understood to be a family. To portray the concept of freedom vs confinement, they made use of picket fence. As one of the choreographers said, "when you have a house with a couch, a tv and surrounded by picket fences, you have yourself a perfect family." Dancers showed their wish to be free by dancing over and around the picket fence, jumping in and out of the family unit, possibly because they were not able to decide which option was better. Along the way the picket fences were moved around. I took this to mean that they realised perhaps the only way around it was trying to adapt themselves to it, where the picket fences represented individuals and the bigger house represented the family unit. The plot was fairly simple and not overzealous and it was portrayed in a way that could be understood if enough attention to details were given. Everything seemed to fall into place each time an assumption was made at any point of time and did not kill it by being overly abstractive. Yet it was intellectual enough to make the audience think and wonder, right to the ending, which in any case came rather unexpectedly to me. The deliberate choice of repeating certain choreography a few times made me picture the dance as a family circle. When we are in a family we tend to do the same things together over and over again possibly out of habit and practice without getting bored and that is one interesting family trait made to surface in the dance. Despite that there will be times when we wish we could do something different for a change and that's when we see one or two dancers dancing a different choreography while the others did the same routine, both of which happened simultaneously to the same music. The humour used seemed rather sinister, like it was scary that it was funny. The only complain I have would be the use of the multimedia background. The dance was good enough without it because I was paying more attention to the dancers than the background but each time I looked at it it took me away from what was going on on the dance floor as I found myself trying to interpret the meaning behind it. Such things I believe should aid and enhance the dance further, not take attention away from the actual dancing and confuse the audience more.
I guess I should warn that this is not a review or commentary of any sort, nor is it an analysis or a practical appreciation and comprehension. This has merely been my thoughts and views of which had been based purely on my limited understanding of the particular art and industry (we're learning as we go and grow..) I shall not be held liable for any unauthorised use of any part of this entry especially so if it causes any harm or damage of any sort to anyone or anything. You know the internet..