A NEW VITALITY AND YOUTHFUL EXUBERANCE BUT LACKS COHESION |
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) Tent Choreographer: Michael Parmenter at Te Whaea, Wellington From 1 Oct 2008 to 5 Oct 2008 Reviewed by Ann Hunt, 2 Oct 2008 |
This eagerly awaited work by Michael Parmenter is a collaborative choreographic effort by himself and the eight dancers that comprise Commotion's current line-up. As such it is a mixed bag.
As an ensemble, the company dances supremely well. It takes a great deal of effort to make dance like this look as effortless as it does. There is also outstanding work by Craig Bary, Sarah Foster and Christopher Tandy.
Parmenter has stated that Tent is "all about reaching and stretching and being pulled outside yourself ... it's also about the aspect of (being) temporary and fleeting." This is all well and good.
It also seems to be about the collective recollections of those New Zealand summers we have all known: the beautiful, the ugly, the funny, the flirtatious. Sexual experimentations, tender and disastrous couplings, playing ad hoc games on the beach and sitting around campfires telling stories and watching shadows come and go.
The trouble seems to arise out of the word "collective". There is simply too much collectivity here and not enough of a single firm choreographic thread. The work lacks cohesion. On one hand there are simply too many ideas and on the other not enough - certainly not enough to warrant its excessive hour and a half length. Judicious pruning would help immeasurably.
It begins on a stage devoid of set, save for a small white tent, with rows of lights grouped on either side. The dancers emerge from inside the tent and proceed to dismantle it, leaving Craig Bary curled up foetus-like, alone centre stage. He begins to dance blindfold, a sinuous unfolding solo. This is the first of many brilliant Bary moments. He is an outstanding dancer and is the lynchpin of the production.
This expressive and focussed solo segues into a fairly prolonged group sequence of walking by the company. They appear to be 'shadowing' each other, until the walking becomes dancing and a quite thrilling group passage follows, full of thrusting vertical leaps and quirky twists and turns. As an audience, we do not know which passages are improvised or set. This sequence would appear to be improvised. But it is of little matter. It works.
The same simply cannot be said for all that follows. There is a brilliantly danced and disturbing section by Foster and three men; a wonderful solo by Tandy who is a fantastic dancer. His extremely flexible body is capable of spaghetti-like back bends and high extensions, unusual in a male dancer. But equally there are some unnecessary and far too long passages such as the interminable ball game and the duet for two guys whom we can only just see anyway.
Choreographically it is definitely different from previous Parmenter works. The elegance we have come to associate with his work is less visible here, although given the theme that is appropriate. Instead there is a new vitality and youthful exuberance apparent. Martial arts which have always informed aspects of his work, are still in evidence, and even jazz dance.
So much New Zealand choreography is preoccupied with floor work, close body coupling and little actual dance. After a while it becomes a trifle grim and repetitious. This is no exception.
So, a mixed bag and one that definitely appealed to the opened night audience. It would be most interesting to see it more than once, to see what changes do occur.
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For more production details, click on the title above. Go to Home page to see other Reviews, recent Comments and Forum postings (under Chat Back), and News.
See also reviews by:
Jennifer Shennan (The Dominion Post);
Deirdre Tarrant (Capital Times);
Jack Gray
Raewyn Whyte (New Zealand Herald);
Comments
| michael parmenter | posted 2 Oct 2008, 03:15 PM / edited 3 Oct 2008, 12:00 AM |
Dear Ann, |
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| michael parmenter | posted 2 Oct 2008, 03:41 PM / edited 3 Oct 2008, 12:00 AM |
sorry about that interruption... |
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| Janis Claxton | posted 3 Oct 2008, 09:31 AM / edited 3 Oct 2008, 12:00 AM |
Hello to this reviewer.. |
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| Kieran | posted 4 Oct 2008, 11:57 AM |
| Hi Ann, I thoroughly agree with you on most points there. The dancing was wonderful, and I really enjoyed the charged energy and vitality of the piece. The choreography, individual dancers and especially the music were to die for. I loved the edginess of the improvisation, and the blurred lines between preset and improvised dance. The ensemble worked fantastically together in the space: no dancer let the side down, in skill or in energy. The one thing I would fault, being a theatre person at heart, is the piece's general direction and cohesion. Viewed as a collection of disparate memories, I can see the production's ideas working: however for me, TENT set itself up to have some sort of plot or narrative, which was fascinating to me at first, but became frustratingly unintelligible. Dancers seemed to couple up at random, without any particular justification: the complex relationships formed during one section were meaningless when overwritten by different energies in another. When dancers changed costumes, were they supposed to be different people, or the same people at different times? How much time had elapsed between these junctures? It may be that these questions were not meant to be answered, but merely pondered over by the audience. Be that as it may, I think the nature of this piece demands a clearer story. There were so many ideas, which, rather than coming across as a collection of discrete memories, rather passed me by in a blur of "... what's going on now?". TENT is a brilliant display of youthful modern dance: graceful, intense and truly alive. However, from my perspective it set itself up as a piece of theatre as well, which was not so successful. I'm still very glad I went, though – definitely worth seeing! | |
| Ann Hunt | posted 4 Oct 2008, 03:13 PM |
| Dear Michael, Thanks for your comments. In reply, I would like to point out that I actually did not say I thought ‘Tent’ was incoherent. I said it was “not cohesive.” By that I meant that it did not hang together fully as a whole. I presumed that this was because it was a group creation and that perhaps a firmer hand by you was needed as to which sequences were left in and which were removed. Also, I do not define dance as being “devoid of floor work and close body coupling.” Absolutely not. I totally agree with your comments about human beings and human bodies being inextricably intertwined and never completely free autonomous entities. However, I do not think these ideas were particularly clear on first viewing, which is what the majority of the audience who see the show has. I think one of the very fine things about contemporary dance is that it can and does convey those ideas. By saying that I would like to see more ‘dance,’ I did not mean that therefore I thought floor work etc. was not dance. Of course it is! I’m sorry if that was what it sounded like. It was a kind of shorthand way of saying that I would prefer to see more variety of choreographic sequences used in this work and in NZ choreography in general. I am tired of seeing so much contemporary NZ dance that seems to be overly preoccupied with ground based and close body work. Much of your previous work has included these elements, as have many other NZ choreographers - D. Wright for example - and I have greatly admired that work. I would simply like to have seen more variety in the movement used in ‘Tent.’ I also did not mean to imply and do not think I did, that I considered the dancers who perhaps as you say, do not prioritise those features that I would like to have seen more of in Tent, (ie less body contact, less floor work,) are therefore of lesser value. I thought the entire Commotion Company dancers were terrific and said as much in the second paragraph. (“As an ensemble, the company dances supremely well.”) If I get the opportunity to see ‘Tent’ again, I will certainly take it. It would be interesting to see if your comments made me revise my initial opinion. Regards, Ann Hunt |
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| Juliet Shelley | posted 6 Oct 2008, 12:46 AM |
| Hi Mr Parmenter. I just returned from seeing Tent at Te Whaea. I went to see it as a gift to myself on my sons seventh birthday. I left in tears and spent most of the performance feeling nauseous. I dont exactly know why. I felt confused about my role as a witness to this event, why I was there, and why you would want me to come and see your dance creation. My first impression on entering the theatre, taking my seat and seeing the space before me, was of somehow trespassing on what seemed to be an intimate kind of event, or little party, between a happy group of people in a tent. I felt uncomfortable, voyeuristic and curious, as if I was involuntarily gatecrashing, yet I hadnt gatecrashed because I had just paid $35 to enter the theatre. When the dancers came out of the tent they looked slightly confused and a little bit unhappy about the audience being there. They looked disoriented, and there was a look of being intimidated on their faces. And yet their physical stance was defiant, as if to say, ' what the hell are you doing here? ' This apparent dichotomy may have set the tone of my experience as an audience member for most of the piece. How did the dancers feel when they left the tent and came out into the space and saw us there watching them? I felt like I had disturbed them. Why did they leave their party in the tent? Because of me? The silence during the opening minutes of the show was enjoyable. For the most part, the sound tracks that followed were extraordinary. They felt like they were sledgehammers to my senses. It felt to me as an audience member as if the sound/music was being laid on like a spatula. Like I was being hit over the head with the music just about every time it came on. Why, I do not know exactly. I cannot fathom why you would have wanted me to experience this in the context of the opening scene with the tent, or any of the dance scenes that followed for that matter. I can remember one place where this did not happen and it was the piano music for the solo with Craig Barry towards the end of the piece and the music from thereon was fine. Some memories of the piece are of watching a beautiful solo by Christopher Tandy happen in the delineated rectangle in front of me and my eye being drawn towards Sarah Foster doing her hair at the side of the space, standing, moving her elbows up, to the side and around her head. She is lit up, doing her hair, while Christopher Tandy rolls and flips like a superflexible dolphin before me. Am I meant to be watching Sarah doing her hair? Why is she doing this within view of the audience? Are the dancers at the side watching the dancers in the middle of the space or the audience? I am beginning to feel a bit like the tent or at least, wondering where everyone has gone, even though they are in front of me. Is the audience meant to be the tent? Then theres the three men that Sarah Foster dances with. She seems to enjoy it at first, then for some unknown reason, she decides she doesnt like it, and slowly starts flipping between being a graceful dancer in the lifts and pushing the men away in between lifts once shes on her own feet, and then seemingly happily and gracefully succumbing to the lifts again. The men finally push her away and walk off in disgust apparently. Again, confusion. Why did they walk off and why did Sarah decide she'd had enough of the men and why did she seem happy to be lifted by them when she wasnt really? Did they walk off because they didnt know what the hell she was doing? For me, watching this, I felt the quartet was unresolved on a gut level. I know that Sarah and her character is made of better stuff than this, and I know that the other dancers are too. Why was the ending or resolution of this quartet so contrived and half hearted? Why should the dancing make excuses or be used as a substitute for another reality which is unrevealed and unresolved? As if people need an excuse to dance whilst actually feeling something else entirely. This apparent chasm or dichotomy between the use of the dancing and the feeling tone beneath by the dancers, or the choreographer, I dont know which, was unresolved and blatant throughout the show. I was left as an audience member to deal with and experience this. Hence, I suspect, partly the reason for the nausea. Next first one, then two, then three women dancers come on and eventually Sarah joins them and we see four perfectly matched heights. How delightful! They dance together and its strong and physical and they are going for it together. What a wonderful moment in the show it is to see all the women dance together. Then the men enter and stand behind the dancers and put their arms around them from behind and for no apparent reason whatsoever, the four women, with their physicality and gutsy, glorious dancing, struggle vainly for a couple of seconds and then go limp, as if they are patients in a psychiatric unit and the doctors have arrived with their straitjackets. WOW! Like, who are you kidding Michael? Try reversing that scenario!! Would you have the guys going quietly limp just because the women quietly walk up to them from behind and put their arms around them? You've got to be joking! My sense of disbelief of that scene, and the injury to my integtrity marred my desire and ability to witness and be present to the following quartet of the blokes throwing themselves around so athletically. Which was a shame. The unspoken drama of the previous scene, and the unspoken, unresolved feeling communicated within all of that was HUGE!!! And quietly ignored. The music was subsequently again applied with a trowel as if that would somehow make it all palatable and OK. And then the women slowly walk around the edge of the space as the guys dance, looking extraneous and basically, distracting. Why? You choreograph glorious work. Its so beautiful to watch. There are no reasons for this dancing other than for itself and it is so strong and so generous and so beautifully crafted and executed. Same with a lot of the other dancing. These guys are happy doing this. I am happy watching it. When there are emotional or relational dynamics going on inside of the dancing, the physicality and truth of those dynamics needs to be honoured, revealed, developed, exposed, communicated in the movement. Even if its messy, raw, shocking or unsophisticated. To see the dancers' truth as people emerge in those moments. What is real for them? THAT is the choreography! I suspect the truth or hidden truth is left for the audience, or me in this case, to somehow feel and make sense of. However, in my opinion, dancing and movement cannot be used in this way any longer. Transparent truth is what makes me feel as if my presence is wanted there. Physical and emotional truth. This is what I take away with me into my life, to my seven year old son, to my world. To pare things away and reveal what lies beneath the complexity that obscures my ability to witness what is before me. To see honest, open, vulnerable and truthful humans dancing from a place within themselves that is real. And if they dont know what that is, let that be seen too and let us feel as if we have a relationship to that person on the stage. Which means the dancers themselves need to be honest about what is happening for them on a moment by moment basis. If they are to be part of the composition of this piece, which they clearly are, they need to be honest about their feelings about their dancing, why they are dancing, with whom, the piece itself, the work, what they are doing and why they are doing it. Not just because they are told to do it by the choreographer, or because they are participating physically in a score created by someone else, or being paid to perform. The dancers' feelings needs to be accessed and voiced and made as clear and transparent as the choreography because they communicate them every moment anyway, silently and the audience picks them up, equally silently, in their guts. The secret world of the dancers feelings about everything was like an unspoken, invisible world. They sometimes spoke quietly and sometimes spoke loudly but they were not incorporated, which meant, for me, the dancing was not always easily digestable. Id like you to make another version of Tent where the dancers get to follow through with their real responses and their real feelings to each other in their dancing, and to the audience, from the moment they leave the tent. And see what happens. Thank you. |
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| Welly Watch | posted 6 Oct 2008, 11:49 AM |
| Gosh Juliet, you certainly got exercised at that show, confronting, questioning, wondering, disputing, running the full gamut of emotions – all through your engagement with a created work of make believe. What more can we ask of a show? And how very different to the non-experience I and others endured at yours, In Living Memory. As the critic said, tedious. The question I want to ask about TENT, since no-one else has, is how come all the publicity imagery involving dancers stretching fabric in intriguing way turns out to be totally absent from the show? How many people’s enjoyment was marred when their sense of anticipation turned to disappointment? |
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| Raewyn Hill | posted 7 Oct 2008, 05:42 PM |
| I wonder when it will be celebrated that we have a distinct dance vocabulary in New Zealand? Why is that when you put New Zealand dancers or choreographic work on the international stage people admire the depth of movement and the 'grounded' physicality so present in our work? I think too easily 'seasoned' choreographers are criticized for not presenting 'new' dance when instead they are remaining committed to their practice and consolidation or development of their aesthetic and movement vocabulary. That process and that commitment is what makes definitive voices in any artistic form. On a personal note I would like to celebrate the fact that Michael has committed himself to the New Zealand dance scene in so many different ways for so many years when a teacher and a choreographer of his calibre could so easily have left our shores. | |
| Cils | posted 9 Oct 2008, 12:02 AM |
| Why are some of you so obsessed that dance must be deep and meaningful. I'm not sure whether "Tent" was supposed to have any deep meaning as Juliet and others seem to require. I absolutely loved the fact that I took nothing more from this show than a pure sense of pleasure in the enjoyment of wonderfully clever movement, physicality and music with a smattering of humour thrown in. I simply enjoyed the entertanment. Thank whatever good entity any of you believe in that some of us can feel uplifted by being entertained by wonderfully talented people for no better reason than the entertainment itself. | |
| Celine Sumic | posted 9 Oct 2008, 11:22 AM |
| Hmm.. what an interesting range of comments resulting from Tent, which I have not yet seen. I am thinking however, that the comprehensive response from Juliet is rather marvelous in its detail ... and that perhaps, considering Michael is undertaking a PhD in Dance and Philosophy, that this work is without a doubt, intentionally complex and layered in a tensile net of ideas. I shall have to wait and see (and hear, and feel, and smell... | |
| Joshua Rutter | posted 15 Oct 2008, 12:32 PM |
| I think Juliet raised an interesting area of discussion - the often visible dichotomy between a dancers actions and feelings. In Modern/Contemporary dance expressivity is often sought through codified, technicalised body movements - a vocabulary is created from bodily configurations that are deemed aesthetically interesting for whatever reason, they are then chained in sequences and manipulated endlessly to create a language, or maybe statements/questions in a language. These linguistic/somatic artefacts are then considered in space, time and in relation to other bodies etc to create dance. In this kind of process I think the body of the dancer is seen as a tool, a technical resource that is exploited by the choreographer in aid of their current fascination with some aspect of the abstract set of rules/possibilities mentioned above. But on stage we don't just see a tool, we see a person and a body too. And, regardless of the actions it performs, the body will speak its own meaning. I think the individual body's own meaning is often overlooked in contemporary dance, but it sings on regardless of whether it is considered or not. You can see how a body feels about what it is doing. Sometimes these feelings are at odds with the intended effect of the movement. Is it this kind of situation which contributed to Juliets sensations of confusion and nausea? |
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| Kristian Larsen | posted 2 Nov 2008, 11:25 AM / edited 3 Nov 2008, 12:44 PM |
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Oh Juliet…when you watch a show wherefore art thou actually? You took no responsibility in your relationship to the event that took place in front of you, nor any responsibility for even being there. The only thing you were present to were your own conflated feeling responses. Go work on those issues you exhaustively advocate in your own choreographic practice and then make work that transcends them.
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| Celine Sumic | posted 2 Nov 2008, 09:16 PM / edited 10 Nov 2008, 12:00 AM |
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Hey Romeo – Your critique of Juliet’s apparent absence of responsibility within her state(ment) of presence when witnessing Michael’s work Tent would seem to beg the question as to where any of us actually are when we watch a performance. Beyond the parameters of one’s present moment, which are inevitably coloured by one’s personal, past experience and brought to bear on the performative exchange, what is there? |
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| Kristian Larsen | posted 3 Nov 2008, 01:09 PM / edited 3 Nov 2008, 07:12 PM |
| huh? | |
| Celine Sumic | posted 3 Nov 2008, 08:00 PM |
| For further clarification, see my comment under Jack Gray's review of the Auckland showing of Tent. | |
| Juliet Shelley | posted 21 Nov 2008, 10:36 PM |
| Hey Josh I just wanted to say many thanks for the above comment. You were pretty much spot on in terms of describing what I was experiencing when I saw this show and the reasons why. Im so glad that you wrote the above and that you were able to articulate it in the way that you did. It was exactly because of my perceived discrepancy between the dancers' feelings and their actions that led to my responses as an audience member. And behind that is the pedagogical dance story you described so well. We perceive and engage with all life from within the place of our own unique experience and history. It is now known that the perceiver and the perceived engage and affect each other. Hence, in this context, the unique relationship between witness/audience member and performer/performance. As individuals, we are responsible for our own experience and nothing and no one exists in isolation. There is no wrong and no right way to view or experience anything. We can be inclusive to both our own experience and perceptions and to others', and accept that we are all different and unique. That to me, is something to be celebrated. Many thanks Josh. � |