tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19627184070539889912024-03-13T23:14:52.341-07:00After WordsReviews and reflections Humphrey Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03841050029169012878noreply@blogger.comBlogger149125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962718407053988991.post-41388219490843930092024-03-10T06:44:00.000-07:002024-03-10T06:53:51.299-07:00<h2 style="text-align: left;"><i>Qui a tué mon père</i> <i>(Who Killed My Father)<br /><o:p></o:p></i>Édouard Louis and Thomas Ostermeier<br />Schaubühne Berlin and Théâtre de la Ville Paris<br />Dunstan Theatre<br />Adelaide Festival</h2><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">Reviewed by Wolfgang von Flügelhorn</span></h2><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><div><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhSOi2EziypGSezGc_yuuJ3zcBLALN6jPKoEN7crAj0O1xbgCehvG6AXFU1CXagT_Gz_Pk9bbV8h1DvDTSE-MJ3SYs96gZ6zXfwDhiPZ9fejlLQu0CZb_3WYFeDVJaQiZSW2KF06Mj6BtYVRwbDUKv05dZlOTTq4XkyaT3t1eas3owvw50OsGAe7zDqnUg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1330" data-original-width="2611" height="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhSOi2EziypGSezGc_yuuJ3zcBLALN6jPKoEN7crAj0O1xbgCehvG6AXFU1CXagT_Gz_Pk9bbV8h1DvDTSE-MJ3SYs96gZ6zXfwDhiPZ9fejlLQu0CZb_3WYFeDVJaQiZSW2KF06Mj6BtYVRwbDUKv05dZlOTTq4XkyaT3t1eas3owvw50OsGAe7zDqnUg=w400-h204" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The title of Édouard Louis’s <i>Qui a tué mon père</i> <i>(Who Killed My Father)</i> – which was published as a book in 2018, adapted for the stage in 2019, and given a new adaptation by the author in collaboration with director Thomas Ostermeier in 2020 – conspicuously doesn’t end with a question mark. As Louis makes clear in the text, he knows who killed his father: the French governments of Chirac, Sarkozy, Hollande and Macron, and the ruling class interests they served and continue to serve. By cutting and restricting access to welfare and disability benefits (and humiliating people who rely on them), those governments and presidents (in Louis's words) ‘broke my father’s back all over again’ after he was crippled by an industrial accident, condemning him to work as a street-cleaner ‘bent over all day and cleaning up other people’s trash’. </span></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In fact, Louis’s father is still alive (at time of writing) but even in his late 50s his health is now so severely compromised by heart disease, diabetes and obesity that (as Louis calmly describes in the show) he can barely breathe or walk, let alone leave the house or work. However, Louis is not just talking about literal death – although as he points out at the start of the play (quoting prison abolitionist and scholar Ruth Gilmore) premature mortality is the primary indicator of oppression, whether based on race, class, gender or sexual identity. Rather, his father’s slow but predictably early demise is the symptom of a political and economic system that degrades entire groups of people, including workers, the unemployed and disabled, women, gays, immigrants and people of colour, as well as vast swathes of rural France collectively known as ‘la France profonde’. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In addition to his autobiographical novels, Louis has also edited a book on the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, whose studies on education and social mobility, social and cultural forms of capital, the embodiment and enactment of class and power, class-based dispositions and habits of thought and behaviour, and the symbolic violence imposed by one class on another, are all reflected in Louis’s own writing. The latter (as befits a novelist as well as a playwright, even an autobiographical one) is strongest when dealing with the minutiae of human interaction without undue emotionalising, intellectualizing, imagery or rhetoric. It adopts the rhythms and syntax of everyday speech, and has what Roland Barthes called a ‘colourless’ quality that relies on simple, direct and dispassionate language, and doesn’t get caught up in self-pity. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Ostermeier’s elegantly simple staging emphasizes the domestic aspect of a play that primarily consists of a son’s monologue to an absent father (Kafka is the obvious precursor here). Nina Wetzel’s set design consists of a few items of furniture scattered around the stage: Louis’s writing desk with his laptop and a few piles of books and papers is an upstage anchoring-point to which he repeatedly and compulsively returns; an empty armchair downstage facing away from the audience draws his focus whenever he silently contemplates his father or approaches and speaks to him. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">At the back of the stage, Sébastien Dupouey and Marie Sanchez’s large-scale black-and-white video projections provide social context as a kind of backdrop with images of an impoverished rural France, including largely empty highways and streets, semi-abandoned towns and villages, desolate fields and smoke-spewing industrial estates. These are interspersed with occasional family snapshots that are also referred to in the text, including an atypical but revealing photo of his father at some kind of celebration dressed in female clothes, makeup and wig; and an equally crucial photo of Louis himself as an 8-year-old dressed in a party hat, Zorro mask and cape while doing a performance of a Celine Dion song in the family living room (which his father ignored before walking out).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Louis’s performance in the show as his adult self is remarkably smooth and accomplished, whether delivering text in mostly quiet, undramatic tones, or breaking out into alternately exuberant or desperately attention-seeking lip-synched dance routines to 90s pop songs. These memorably include Britney Spears’s ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’ and Whitney Houston’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ – the latter in homage to his father, who reluctantly bought him a VHS of <i>The Bodyguard</i> as a childhood birthday present.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Ostermeier has Louis using microphones, either hand-held or on stands, which are variously positioned around the stage, including on his desk and nestled in his father’s armchair. While something of a stylistic tic in contemporary German theatre, the device here supports Louis’s intimate tone of delivery while also ironically reinforcing the sense that he’s using a public persona which is to some extent constructed, even when he is ‘playing himself’ (much like the pop stars he lip-synchs, in fact). <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The text is in French (with surtitles in English superimposed on the video). The only exception is a crucial section – which is addressed to the audience rather than to his father – involving an outbreak of family violence, betrayal and complicity on the part of Louis himself, which becomes a kind of confessional, and which he announces will be easier if he tells it to us in English.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Louis is at his strongest when writing about his relationships with his father and other members of his family. Here the text has great sociological and psychological acuity, especially when dealing with his father’s toxic masculinity and alcoholism; his mother’s passive aggressiveness and resentment; his parents’ shared homophobia; and his brother’s substance abuse and propensity for violence. There’s also a shift in his father’s attitude later in life towards his son’s sexuality and politics, which suggests some kind of partial reconciliation – although this development is cut short in the final section of the play, which reverts to an attack on individual politicians, and a closing call for ‘revolution’, followed by an abrupt blackout. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In doing so, Louis abandons the complex story of his relationship with his father and family, in favour of a simplistic, demonstrative and histrionic diatribe that sacrifices his best qualities as a writer and performer. Ostermeier’s staging of this sequence – with Louis donning the party hat, mask and cape of his childhood, pinning up images of the offending politicians on a washing line and throwing handfuls of magic dust at them – is intentionally regressive. It’s as if Louis abandons the attempt to win his father’s love only to install Chirac, Sarkozy and Co. as surrogates, so he can rebel against them in a childish act of insurrection that falls far short of revolution, despite the play’s final rallying cry.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Louis’s definition of politics in the play as ‘the government of some people by other people’ confuses the structural notion of class with the empirical existence of social groups. This has its theoretical and practical limits, as the successes and failures of populism on the Left and Right around the world have demonstrated.</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">So-called representatives of <i>la France profonde</i> (from farmers to truck drivers) have taken to the streets of Paris in recent years to contest the legitimacy of the so-called ‘urban elites’ – and have been championed not only by the populist Left but also the far Right. Such movements of protest – and even insurrection – have been co-opted by a politics of resentment and tribalism that continues to serve the interests of the ruling class. As such, it's a form of anti-politics that pits one group of people against another while ‘business as usual’ rolls on, leaving the underlying structures of class and power fundamentally intact.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">*<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Wolfgang von Flügelhorn is a writer and critic based in Perth, Western Australia. He was born in Flügelhorn, a small town in Upper Austria, in 1963. After finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of Lower Flügelhorn he completed his doctoral thesis at Cambridge on the later Wittgenstein and the phenomenology of language games (<i>Der später Wittgenstein und die Phänomenologie den Sprachspielen, </i>unpublished) under the supervision of Wittgenstein’s literary executor Elizabeth Anscombe, whose famous paper ‘The First Person’ argues that the pronoun ‘I’ does not refer to anything. On returning to Austria he was the lead vocalist and flugelhorn player in Viennese prog-rock/jazz-fusion band The Flaming Squirrels <i>(Die Flammende Eichhörnchen). </i>He left Austria and went into voluntary exile in 2000 after the formation of the far-right coalition federal government, vowing never to return. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Professor von Flügelhorn is currently editor of the <i>Zeitschrift für Unsozialforschung</i> (Journal of Anti-Social Research) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Lower Flügelhorn where he holds a chair (remotely) in Paranormal Phenomenology while engaging his core muscles for two minutes every day. He is also the author of several monographs including <i>Unlogische Untersuchungen</i> (<i>Illogical Investigations</i>),<i>Unzeitlich</i> <i>Sein </i>(<i>Not Being On Time</i>) and <i>Wahnsinn und Methode</i> (<i>Madness and Method</i>), all of which have been translated into English by his friend and colleague Humphrey Bower but none of which has yet been published in any language. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Humphrey Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03841050029169012878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962718407053988991.post-4116774934579456902024-03-06T16:37:00.000-08:002024-03-06T16:37:26.308-08:00<h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Private View</span></h2><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Restless Dance Theatre<br />Odeon Theatre<br />Adelaide Festival</h3><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;">Reviewed by Wolfgang von Flügelhorn</h4><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgl8oAamUAOOJfmwqTSbzs2gOu62Bs1U33Mq32HSgntT5LxQlRZTJ5ep0zEP9PhoUK61WfATYorLPYtbottYb8UDI09iT7wy7x-vK4_GkL35mqJ_fY8LhiOBQaL4Hymc9A7tTOYNe8a5HLUx4zESgoN5agp5lh96MD_ic5EaEUZu1mX-z4KEtGngZmq4Js" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="3993" data-original-width="6872" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgl8oAamUAOOJfmwqTSbzs2gOu62Bs1U33Mq32HSgntT5LxQlRZTJ5ep0zEP9PhoUK61WfATYorLPYtbottYb8UDI09iT7wy7x-vK4_GkL35mqJ_fY8LhiOBQaL4Hymc9A7tTOYNe8a5HLUx4zESgoN5agp5lh96MD_ic5EaEUZu1mX-z4KEtGngZmq4Js=w400-h233" width="400" /></a></h2><br /><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The question of voyeurism is unavoidable for any work that features performers with disabilities. The content of <i>Private View </i>renders the issue even more visible because it deals with the performance of sexuality, desire and fantasy, as well as broader notions of longing for intimacy and love. Dramaturg and creative producer Roz Hervey states in a program note that ‘a range of techniques’ – such as basing the work on research interviews and using character-names – were employed so that ‘the dancers’ lives are not on show’ (in other words, they’re not playing themselves), but this is a slippery distinction in practice, especially for an audience.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The issue is openly dealt with by director Michelle Ryan and designer Renate Henschke in terms of how the work is staged. The audience is free to choose either to sit on chairs to one side of the space, or on stools in the centre (I chose a stool). Around us, the action takes place on four raised stages – one ‘act’ at a time, in clockwise rotation – and occasionally spills out amongst us into the centre of the space. Our view of the four stages (artfully lit by Matthew Adey) is initially obscured, either by a projection scrim, venetian blinds, a Perspex wall or translucent curtains, behind which the performers can be dimly seen; but this changes as each ‘act’ begins.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">All of this effectively sets the scene for a kind of peepshow, while also rendering the audience (at least, those of us seated on stools in the centre) strangely vulnerable. This sense of audience vulnerability is heightened when things are reversed and the performer’s gaze is trained on us – and even more so, when ‘our’ space is invaded, either physically or when we’re directly addressed and asked to respond (all of which is handled with great care, gentle humour and audience-friendliness). <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">To be sure, none of this ‘absolves’ us of voyeurism, but it foregrounds the issue, and to a certain extent turns the tables. It also raises the question of whether and to what extent vulnerability and even a kind of objectification are inherent in all forms of sexuality, voyeuristic or otherwise. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The theme of the gaze is initially established by the pre-set video projection of a pair of eyes –with blinking, peacock-blue-sequined lids – on the scrim in front of one of the raised stages. This image is replaced once the show begins by a pair of lips (painted with heavy red lipstick) singing the first of a series of entrancing songs by chanteuse-composer Carla Lippis – who emerges live during the song in a black velvet catsuit with a Liza Minelli/Sally Bowles bob and makeup. She proceeds to guide us musically as well as visually through the rest of the show, while also serving as a kind of cat-like familiar spirit or shadow for the other performers, most of whom have unspecified disabilities.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">On the first stage (revealed once the scrim is raised), Michael Hodyl plays a character on an imaginary dinner date, in a sequence which includes some deft dance moves and sly audience interaction. Madalene Macera and Jianna Georgiu provide one of the most arresting images in the show at the start of the second sequence when their hands and pink-painted fingernails frenziedly penetrate the closed venetian blinds that surround the second stage. The blinds open to reveal them cavorting on a bed, flicking through magazines and making calls on pink old-fashioned cradle telephones. Lippis then directs their calls to randomly chosen audience members, who are invited to use her microphone to answer Georgiu’s teasing questions (mine was ‘What does a testicle look like?’). <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The third sequence is the most physically, emotionally and visually complex, and involves dancer Bonnie Williams emerging from behind the Perspex wall at the back of the third stage into a kind of open booth to perform an expressive and intimate solo (sensitively choreographed by Larissa McGowan), while Lippis accompanies and shadows her outside the booth. Another of the show’s most striking images involves the singer’s face peering in through a Perspex side wall while a reflection of the dancer’s body extends below her on the inner surface of the wall, in a haunting visual effect made possible by Henschke’s design and Adey’s lighting.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />In the fourth and final sequence, Darcy Carpenter, Charlie Wilkins and guest dancer Rowan Rossi (who’s also a dance teacher with the company) perform a comic trio on and around a modular sofa, with Carpenter and Wilkins flirting – initially via text messages (which appear on a screen overhead) and then more physically – while Rossi tries to police their activities but ultimately fails to keep them apart. A closing song from Lippis brings the audience to their feet as lighting transformed the entire space into a communal dance floor, and all distinctions based on ability or disability – or who's watching and who's being watched – finally seem to melt away. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">*<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Wolfgang von Flügelhorn is a writer and critic based in Perth, Western Australia. He was born in Flügelhorn, a small town in Upper Austria, in 1963. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">After finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of Lower Flügelhorn he completed his doctoral thesis at Cambridge on the later Wittgenstein and the phenomenology of language games (</span><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Der später Wittgenstein und die Phänomenologie den Sprachspielen, </i><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">unpublished) under the supervision of Wittgenstein’s literary executor Elizabeth Anscombe, whose famous paper ‘The First Person’ argues that the pronoun ‘I’ does not refer to anything. On returning to Austria he was the lead vocalist and flugelhorn player in Viennese prog-rock/jazz-fusion band The Flaming Squirrels </span><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">(Die Flammende Eichhörnchen). </i><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">He left Austria and went into voluntary exile in 2000 after the formation of the far-right coalition federal government, vowing never to return. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Professor von Flügelhorn is currently editor of the <i>Zeitschrift für Unsozialforschung</i> (Journal of Anti-Social Research) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Lower Flügelhorn where he holds a chair (remotely) in Paranormal Phenomenology while engaging his core muscles for two minutes every day. He is also the author of several monographs including <i>Unlogische Untersuchungen</i> (<i>Illogical Investigations</i>),<i> Unzeitlich</i> <i>Sein </i>(<i>Not Being On Time</i>) and <i>Wahnsinn und Methode</i> (<i>Madness and Method</i>), all of which have been translated into English by his friend and colleague Humphrey Bower but none of which has yet been published in any language.<span style="font-size: medium;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Humphrey Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03841050029169012878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962718407053988991.post-80730285863902672612024-03-05T18:48:00.000-08:002024-03-06T16:52:44.449-08:00<h2 style="text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Grand Theft Theatre</span></h2><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Pony Cam and David Williams<br />Latvian Hall ‘Tālava’, Wayville<br />Adelaide Festival</h2><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Reviewed by Wolfgang von Flügelhorn</h3><div><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEigzGTphpG0N5PDvxQXKd5SaC6Wx12ybaZuM5VjkOmjqKLcM0f76l3AexBhsH2LNYyq4MPiFE3C5PSmQHSsI-8WsSChcbE3fmy6Wg3otEeL_bQEGPHhvG495_3jgLgEa0YQ4noJPFbDDrbQxvZd2GvhC0ftHWjit0WSNH6QT0M7KYTcw0HdpKaAGCnmEqE" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="3647" data-original-width="5470" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEigzGTphpG0N5PDvxQXKd5SaC6Wx12ybaZuM5VjkOmjqKLcM0f76l3AexBhsH2LNYyq4MPiFE3C5PSmQHSsI-8WsSChcbE3fmy6Wg3otEeL_bQEGPHhvG495_3jgLgEa0YQ4noJPFbDDrbQxvZd2GvhC0ftHWjit0WSNH6QT0M7KYTcw0HdpKaAGCnmEqE=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Theatre and live performance have a dual ontology. They exist in the medium of presence – here and now, in this venue, for this duration of time; yet they have an afterlife in memory. They also have a certain duality insofar as they’re both collective and individual forms of experience. I see a show as a member of an audience who shares this experience; yet I also see it from my own perspective, with my own subjective baggage. Finally, I remember it from yet another vantage-point – perhaps differently each time I do so.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Most performances are also a representation of something absent: a plot with an imaginary setting, characters and events; or more broadly some kind of performance-text, in the form of a script or score. One might even argue that every performance is shadowed by a kind of Platonic ideal of the work itself: Stravinsky’s <i>Rite of Spring</i> or Pina Bausch’s choreography exist in a kind of eternal presence (or perhaps eternal absence) beyond any individual performance. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Grand Theft Theatre</i> (which was originally commissioned and performed for Melbourne Fringe in 2022) is both a homage to and playful deconstruction of these various dualities. Over the space of an hour and 55 minutes (broken up by three 6-minute intervals), the five members of Melbourne-based collective Pony Cam and collaborator David Williams (former founder of version 1.0 and now artistic director of Alternative Facts) remember and re-enact moments from performances they’ve seen that have had a formative impact on them as audience-members and artists. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Their memories are necessarily partial and unreliable; the re-enactments even more so. There’s much clowning and lo-fi staging, as well as impressive displays of physical skill, moments of pathos and images of beauty (and occasional horror). The show is as much about the failure of representation as it is about the works themselves.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">On arrival, audience-members are asked to write their own favourite shows on sticky labels; these become talking-points with fellow audience-members during each of the intervals. This generates a sense of appropriately ephemeral community not only amongst the audience but between the audience and the performers. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The community hall setting adds to this non-hierarchical ambience, as does the minimalism and deliberate messiness of the staging. We’re asked to position our own individual plastic chairs (each of which has the name of a well-known or lesser-known theatre-maker attached to it, also written on a sticky label) wherever we choose in the space; these are then moved into new configurations by the performers during each of the intervals. Props, lighting and sound cues are minimal and functional. The performers wear rehearsal clothes (which get progressively more stained during the show); the set is the space itself. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The aesthetics and underlying politics of the work and its makers are influenced by similarly collaborative experimental ‘post-dramatic’ theatre groups like the UK’s Forced Entertainment (whose work is ‘remembered’ by Williams during the performance) or the British-German collective Gob Squad (whose influence is acknowledged in the program). However, you don’t need to be ‘in the know’ about these (or other) theatrical or artistic references to enjoy the show. The overall approach is light-hearted and (in every sense) accessible; as such it also belongs to a more specifically Australian ‘larrikin’ tradition of comedy, circus and physical theatre.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Like the material that’s being remembered and re-enacted (which ranges from high-art to popular, mainstage to fringe, international to local) there are high-points and longueurs; no doubt everyone in the audience responded to different sections in different ways (as my conversations with strangers about their own favourite shows during the intervals would seem to suggest).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The concept is so rich I found myself wishing for more diversity in the age of the performers (who are mostly in their twenties, except for Williams, who I would guess is in his forties) and the era in which they had most of their formative theatrical experiences (the early 2000s). I also couldn’t help wondering if some of the audience’s favourite theatre memories couldn’t have been communally shared and then spontaneously re-enacted by the performers as well, to broaden the range and break down the hierarchy between performers and audience even further.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />In the end, there’s something beautiful about the evanescence of theatre and performance, as well as the unrepeatability of all experience, and even the unreliability of language and memory. This sense of beauty lingers after the show is over, in all its imperfections – like life itself. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In the words of the Elvis song that ends the show and aptly describes all our favourite theatre memories: ‘Love me tender, love me sweet, never let me go. / You have made my life complete, and I love you so.’</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">*<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Wolfgang von Flügelhorn is a writer and critic based in Perth, Western Australia. He was born in Flügelhorn, a small town in Upper Austria, in 1963. After finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of Lower Flügelhorn he completed his doctoral thesis at Cambridge on the later Wittgenstein and the phenomenology of language games (<i>Der später Wittgenstein und die Phänomenologie den Sprachspielen, </i>unpublished) under the supervision of Wittgenstein’s literary executor Elizabeth Anscombe, whose famous paper ‘The First Person’ argues that the pronoun ‘I’ does not refer to anything. On returning to Austria he was the lead vocalist and flugelhorn player in Viennese prog-rock/jazz-fusion band The Flaming Squirrels <i>(Die Flammende Eichhörnchen). </i>He left Austria and went into voluntary exile in 2000 after the formation of the far-right coalition federal government, vowing never to return. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Professor von Flügelhorn is currently editor of the <i>Zeitschrift für Unsozialforschung</i> (Journal of Anti-Social Research) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Lower Flügelhorn where he holds a chair (remotely) in Paranormal Phenomenology while engaging his core muscles for two minutes every day. He is also the author of several monographs including <i>Unlogische Untersuchungen</i> (<i>Illogical Investigations</i>),<i> Unzeitlich</i> <i>Sein </i>(<i>Not Being On Time</i>) and <i>Wahnsinn und Methode</i> (<i>Madness and Method</i>), all of which have been translated into English by his friend and colleague Humphrey Bower but none of which has yet been published in any language. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"> <o:p></o:p></p>Humphrey Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03841050029169012878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962718407053988991.post-91023263864995306272024-03-03T21:21:00.000-08:002024-03-04T04:55:36.480-08:00<h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>The 4 Elements<br /></i>Brooklyn Rider<br />Perth Concert Hall<br />Perth Festival</span></h4><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Angelique Kidjo<br />Perth Concert Hall<br />Perth Festival</span></h4><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Reviewed by Wolfgang von Flügelhorn<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">*<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEinX7HfVttv4LzXNjSMInEADQ1VvKEvN8uuY5ITABhHLXbgFNHAznbz99xL917f5qn7kYNA0qv4og8bLW2gluEmQpWv78051IMywF_qChq6z7R_91O5xgRv6h9g4hid2t34pAlZHhTwiyNmJCOHRFUDhODdip34_Ra_gc6Oub-ybgMBJoyq6O1PGrOH4aI" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="3877" data-original-width="5827" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEinX7HfVttv4LzXNjSMInEADQ1VvKEvN8uuY5ITABhHLXbgFNHAznbz99xL917f5qn7kYNA0qv4og8bLW2gluEmQpWv78051IMywF_qChq6z7R_91O5xgRv6h9g4hid2t34pAlZHhTwiyNmJCOHRFUDhODdip34_Ra_gc6Oub-ybgMBJoyq6O1PGrOH4aI=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">New-York-based string quartet Brooklyn Rider was founded in the early 2000s and loosely named themselves after the Munich-based Blue Rider group of early modernist painters. Comparisons with the Kronos Quartet inevitably suggest themselves: both ensembles practice cross-genre programming, focussing on contemporary and commissioned compositions from around the world in a variety of musical traditions, and juxtaposing these with more established works (mostly but not exclusively from the 20<sup>th</sup> Century). Kronos however are arguably cooler and more cerebral in terms of playing style; Brooklyn Rider have a warmer, more emotional approach. Unlike Kronos and most other string quartets, they also play standing up (apart from the cellist), which gives their performances an added sense of energy and embodiment.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Perhaps most significantly, however, their programming is based on extra-musical ‘themes’. The title of their current touring program refers to the ancient doctrine of the four elements that compose the natural world: earth, water, air and fire. A more specific contemporary reference (at least in the program notes) is to the theme of climate change, insofar as this has an impact on all four elements: parched earth, rising seas, storms and wildfires.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">The concert began with a work in the category of ‘earth’: </span><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">A Short While To Be Here</i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">, an arrangement by one of the quartet’s violinists, Colin Jacobsen, of a suite of North American folksongs collected by the pioneering American modernist composer Ruth Crawford Seeger. The title refers to the plaintive words of one of the folksongs: ‘Little Birdie, little birdie, come and sing me your song; / I’ve short time to be here, and a long time to be gone.’ The work was an exquisite reframing of the songs, their simplicity and innocence preserved notwithstanding the addition of more contemporary harmonies and textures, and the fact that they were linked together by more improvisatory-sounding musical connective tissue.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The next two short works in the program were new commissions – respectively in the categories of ‘fire’ and ‘air’ – and both were more clearly ‘programmatic’ in terms of their musical language. Massachusetts-born composer Akshaya Avril Tucker’s <i>Hollow Flame</i> is a response to the Californian wildfires of recent years, using sustained and hushed harmonics to suggest the inhalation of oxygen and exhalation of carbon that successively precedes and follows a massive conflagration; Portuguese composer Andreia Pinto Correa’s <i>Aere senza stelle </i>(‘Air Without Stars’) depicted the phenomenon of dust-storms using shimmering clouds of musical particles. Though short in duration and slight in terms of musical form, both works showcased the technical brilliance and flair of the players, as well as their capacity to listen closely to each other, and in turn inspire close listening from the audience.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This was followed by another (and more substantial) work of ‘air’ from the 1970s, French composer Henri Dutilleux’s <i>Ainsi la nuit </i>(‘Thus The Night’), a demanding work in seven movements (played without a break). Each movement plays with different sound qualities (harmonics, pizzicatos, extreme contrasts in dynamics or pitch) and uses atonality as well as unfamiliar scales or modes and recurring themes in various stages of development to compel the listener’s attention and play with their sense of memory and anticipation. This for me was musically speaking the most rewarding work in the first half of the concert (if not the entire evening) and took the quartet to another level in terms of precision and acuity. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">After interval came another more substantial 20<sup>th</sup> Century work of 'fire', Shostakovich’s 8<sup>th</sup> String Quartet. Written in the space of three days while the composer was visiting the fire-bombed city of Dresden in 1960, and dedicated ‘to the victims of fascism and war’, the work (like much of Shostakovich’s output) also has deeply personal resonances; legend has it that he was contemplating suicide at the time, and that when the Borodin Quartet first played it to him in private, he buried his face in his hands and wept. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Musically this sense of personal significance is conveyed by the use of the composer’s signature four-note motif – which in its German notation (DSCH) corresponds to the first four letters of Shostakovich’s name in its German transliteration – as the opening theme as well as in every subsequent movement. Other quotations from his oeuvre (including the 1<sup>st</sup> Cello Concerto) are scattered throughout the work – all of which might seem to suggest that it was intended to be a kind of musical summation or epitaph.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It was given an appropriately fiery performance by the quartet, who rose to a new level of physical and emotional commitment. This was especially true of violinist Johnny Gandelsman (here playing 1st Violin, a role in which he and Jacobsen took turns during the concert); his heartfelt approach to the score (which often pits him as a lone voice against the combined forces of the other three) conveyed a sense of the individual crushed by totalitarianism.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">The final work on the program – ostensibly in the element of 'water' – was Argentinian-born, US-based Romanian Jewish composer Osvaldo Golijov’s </span><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Tenebrae</i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">. As the liturgical title suggests, it’s a spiritual work of lamentation that recalls the neo-modal ‘holy minimalism’ of Gorecki’s ‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’ (the main theme is almost directly lifted from the second movement of that work). Golijov claims that he was inspired by two contrasting experiences in the year 2000: witnessing the violence in Israel-Palestine at the start of the Second Intifada; and seeing the Earth as if viewed from space at a planetarium in New York. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The work opens and closes peacefully with the main theme repeated and developed over an oscillating drone (suggestive of the view of the Earth from space); the central section however is more fraught with pain, as if conflict becomes more evident as one approaches the Earth more closely. Musically if not thematically the work verges on sentimentality, but in the sensitive hands of the quartet – accentuating the flowing, undulating qualities of the main theme and the ostinato drone – it was a beautifully effective way to close the program. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">*<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgWWaJ7EPE47uEWkPs1k6ZIHVTNBb_9rQvYFQtfryRmvi8DeNNVfsu4_ZBaXs8B2vXN_XLQQB66_YhKqCJEMI7o61zc0Su5Bi3F3LfPQRzHuewJX2Rijt0gN848xcgDoeVz_mZ47-zf9mNQdJCM6Am8FAcd6OfVPqNj3_uwnab88L693DC3F0GpCcY26_E" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="3651" data-original-width="5477" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgWWaJ7EPE47uEWkPs1k6ZIHVTNBb_9rQvYFQtfryRmvi8DeNNVfsu4_ZBaXs8B2vXN_XLQQB66_YhKqCJEMI7o61zc0Su5Bi3F3LfPQRzHuewJX2Rijt0gN848xcgDoeVz_mZ47-zf9mNQdJCM6Am8FAcd6OfVPqNj3_uwnab88L693DC3F0GpCcY26_E=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Beninese-French singer-songwriter Angelique Kidjo is a true force of nature. Now in her early 60s, her voice is as thrilling and percussive as ever, her dancing as energetic and playful, her enthusiasm as infectious, and her message of empowerment as resounding.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In her concert at Perth Concert Hall last Thursday night, she was the embodiment of this year’s Festival theme of Ngaangk (the sun), a female deity in Noongar cosmology who is equally a source of warmth, light, nourishment and protection. Despite the somewhat formal ambience of the venue, by midway through the concert she had us all on our feet dancing and singing along, sometimes in Fon or Yoruba (Kidjo sings in multiple West African and other languages, including French and English).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Local Noongar singer-songwriter Maatakitj (alias Clint Bracknell) kicked off the evening with a half-hour set featuring his own brand of desert blues in a series of songs in Noongar language about country, animals, spirits and waterways. He was backed by fellow Noongar artists Della Rae Morrison and Kylie Bracknell (who also provided intros to the songs and encouraged the audience to clap along or click our fingers to mimic the sound of rain). Perth-based percussionist Arunachala played an impressively huge pumpkin drum and provided drive and texture to the sound.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">After interval, Kidjo erupted onstage, accompanied by a lean but seasoned four-piece band featuring Thierry Vaton on keys, David Donatien on percussion, Gregory Louis on drums and Gregory Louis (outstanding) on bass (the latter featuring plenty of slapping and sliding as well as some chunky melody-lines). Personally, I found the overall mix a bit bland, and would have welcomed a guitar or even a flugelhorn to give things more colour, but this was more than compensated for by Kidjo’s voice, dancing and irresistible charisma.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">They opened with a hard-driven version of the Talking Heads classic ‘Cross-Eyed And Painless’ from that band’s seminal Afro-beat-based album <i>Remain In Light </i>(which Kidjo recently returned to its African roots in a reimagined track-by-track cover-album of her own). Another song from that album later in the set was ‘Letting The Days Go By’, which in keeping with Kidjo’s predominantly up-beat style felt a lot more light-hearted than the darker, more neurotic and surreal David Byrne original.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Songs from her recent album <i>Mother Nature </i>included the title-track, a reggae-based call to action in response to climate change; the joyous ode to the mother continent, ‘Africa, One Of A Kind’; the stirring summons to gender-based solidarity, ‘Choose Love’ (‘Brothers, why are we fighting each other? Sisters, why do we let the men take our power? Let’s be stronger than our fathers!’); the lilting song of encouragement to African self-reliance ‘Do Yourself’; the tighter, bouncier ‘Free and Equal’, juxtaposing words from the US Declaration of Independence and the UN Declaration of Human Rights with the realities of racial injustice highlighted by Black Lives Matter; the seductive dance number ‘Take It Or Leave It’; and the universalist love song ‘Meant for Me’ (‘I don’t care if you’re rich or poor, I don’t know what’s your DNA, I don’t care if your beauty fades, all I know is you’re meant for me’), which had the audience loudly echoing the refrain.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Kidjo also paid tribute to the Cuban ‘Queen of Salsa’ Celia Cruz with a sizzling rendition of ‘Bemba Colora’, followed by the slower, more sultry ‘Sahara’ (both sung in Spanish), after sharing a story about being inspired when she was a schoolgirl by seeing Cruz – the first woman she had ever witnessed singing salsa – on tour in Zaire in the 1970s. Later, she delivered a high-energy version of Afro-pop classic ‘Pata Pata’ by another of her role models, the pioneering South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba. Other songs from her own back-catalogue included the rousing hymn to Mother Earth ‘Agolo’ (which brought any remaining stragglers to their feet); and the Afro-Brazilian anthem ‘Afirika’ (which once again had us singing along to the refrain: ‘Ashé é Maman, ashè é Maman Afirika!’). <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Encores included a further medley of earlier career hits ‘We We’, ‘Batonga’ and ‘Adouma’, followed by a final speech decrying hatred and racism, before closing with another Afro-pop anthem to solidarity ‘Flying High’ (‘One love, one world, we have to live together’). All in all, it was a night of joy and hope, pride and defiance, and perhaps even a little anger and impatience with the world.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">*<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Wolfgang von Flügelhorn is a writer and critic based in Perth, Western Australia. He was born in Flügelhorn, a small town in Upper Austria, in 1963. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">After finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of Lower Flügelhorn he completed his doctoral thesis at Cambridge on the later Wittgenstein and the phenomenology of language games (<i>Der später Wittgenstein und die Phänomenologie den Sprachspielen, </i>unpublished) under the supervision of Wittgenstein’s literary executor Elizabeth Anscombe, whose famous paper ‘The First Person’ argues that the pronoun ‘I’ does not refer to anything. On returning to Austria he was the lead vocalist and flugelhorn player in Viennese prog-rock/jazz-fusion band The Flaming Squirrels <i>(Die Flammende Eichhörnchen). </i>He left Austria and went into voluntary exile in 2000 after the formation of the far-right coalition federal government, vowing never to return. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Professor von Flügelhorn is currently editor of the <i>Zeitschrift für Unsozialforschung</i> (Journal of Anti-Social Research) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Lower Flügelhorn where he holds a chair (remotely) in Paranormal Phenomenology while engaging his core muscles for two minutes every day. He is also the author of several monographs including <i>Unlogische Untersuchungen</i> (<i>Illogical Investigations</i>),<i>Unzeitlich</i> <i>Sein </i>(<i>Not Being On Time</i>) and <i>Wahnsinn und Methode</i> (<i>Madness and Method</i>), all of which have been translated into English by his friend and colleague Humphrey Bower but none of which has yet been published in any language. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>Humphrey Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03841050029169012878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962718407053988991.post-17626535497997280062024-02-26T00:51:00.000-08:002024-03-08T14:59:03.616-08:00<h2 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></h2><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: left;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: left;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: left;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: left;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: left;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: left;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: left;"><o:p></o:p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Are we not drawn onward to new erA</span><br />Ontroerend Goed<br />Perth Festival<br />Heath Ledger Theatre<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p><span style="font-size: large;">Logue Lake</span><br />Written by Geordie Crawley and directed by Elise Wilson<br />Perth Festival<br />Studio Underground</h3><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;">Reviewed by Wolfgang von Flügelhorn</h4><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiM4iQWa_3RRbyoifIg8-svfI6X9jZEeLqiJ-jn1hrA66JUqnFFT76p47mhzrx4J2941zAm-DwUD0fqYirgQxe3Hh1oQnPbo-hzSBHBriYZxvfH-D67Brbu5sjMSYTTdPGakCYC-y3G6BMBMETHvNjgdRAHQ82y3uFgJzaaZIpaibQP8pzBa6VgFHcdVTs" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2832" data-original-width="4256" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiM4iQWa_3RRbyoifIg8-svfI6X9jZEeLqiJ-jn1hrA66JUqnFFT76p47mhzrx4J2941zAm-DwUD0fqYirgQxe3Hh1oQnPbo-hzSBHBriYZxvfH-D67Brbu5sjMSYTTdPGakCYC-y3G6BMBMETHvNjgdRAHQ82y3uFgJzaaZIpaibQP8pzBa6VgFHcdVTs=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Hegel wrote that ‘the owl of Minerva spreads her wings at dusk’ – meaning that historical understanding only takes place when a particular era or ‘shape of life’ has ‘grown old’. Kierkegaard gave this an existential twist when he wrote that ‘life must be lived forwards, but it can only be understood backwards’. For Marx, more pithily, ‘history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce’. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">All three sayings apply to Belgian contemporary performance group Ontroerend Goed’s concept-driven and image-based work <i>Are we not drawn onward to new erA</i>, which challenged and divided audiences at Perth Festival last week.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In fact, it’s difficult to write about the work in other than abstract terms without spoiling it for those who might one day see it. This is because it depends on what’s called in theatre parlance a ‘reveal’, which occurs at a turning-point (or more precisely, given the content of the work, a tipping-point) halfway through. However, prior to that (depending on the perspicacity of the viewer) there’s a sudden (or dawning) realisation about the apparent senselessness of what’s being said and done onstage (as well as the apparent senselessness of what we as a species are doing to the planet).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The opening image (no spoiler here) is of a bare stage apart from a single tree standing in a mound of earth and a woman lying on the floor with her back to us. She’s in contemporary clothes, but the image is already mythical, even Biblical (the tree bears a single apple). Soon she wakes up, heads downstage, and speaks in a mysterious language. Shortly afterwards she’s joined by others – and by an increasingly mysterious accumulation of other objects, to which increasingly mysterious things are done.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Perhaps paradoxically (given its palindromic title) <i>Are we not drawn onward to new erA</i> is fundamentally about irreversibility. As Lady Macbeth says: ‘What’s done cannot be undone.’ In this show, the reverse turns out to be true – at least with the help of a certain technological trickery (which I won’t reveal here). However, despite its cleverness (which at times makes us want to laugh or clap), this trickery only underscores its own deceptiveness. Any elation we feel is followed by sadness, because of the fundamental impossibility of what we are witnessing; we might laugh and clap, but (inwardly at least) we also weep.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What German aesthetics refers to as the ‘beautiful appearance’ or ‘beautiful illusion’ (<i>schöne Schein</i>) of art is, precisely, an appearance or illusion only – one that, according to Schiller, acknowledges its own unreality. For Adorno, writing at the tail-end of this tradition, all art is sad – not only because of the transitory nature of its illusions, but because it shows us (and here Adorno quotes Beckett) both ‘how it is’ and ‘how things are’ <i>(‘comment c’est’</i>).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In showing us ‘how it is’ as well as ‘how things are’ in its form and content – which are perfectly matched and rigorously followed-through – <i>Are we not drawn </i>is a more sophisticated work than the two other shows I’ve seen in this Festival that deal with ecological crisis. The sentimentality and anthropocentrism of <i>The Jungle Book Reimagined </i>(‘man-cub saves the world’) or the fatalism and misanthropy of <i>Food </i>(‘man eats the world’) are here surpassed by a meta-theatrical reflection on the use of technology in live performance. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">To be sure, as in <i>Food</i>, there’s an acknowledgement that (as a species and as individuals) ‘we need to leave’ (this planet, this life). However, this recognition is humbler (and more modestly executed) than the former show’s final act of self-burial<i>. </i>Instead, there’s a sense in <i>Are we not drawn</i> that we must do what we can to ‘reverse’ things; but also that, from a cosmic perspective, ‘all things must pass’, including ourselves.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Finally, the themes of irreversibility, illusions, transience, and the melancholy sense of ‘how things are’ also appear in what might be called the ‘relationship plot’ of the work. This concerns our relationships with each other – including love, as well as an acknowledgement of love’s inevitable failure. In this regard, it’s surely no accident that (to my ears at least) the first (comprehensible) word spoken in the show is ‘eros’ – and the last, ‘sorry’.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">*<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjFqCOPeiTIbLZ5U_3zWeCfwoZZrUyeFgpyXJ6lkzC8GW7Tw5Bv3_6Eu5ZRhtCgHOuAu2WQM_RwgmYg7KWhWhCBmg59Tdx0ciLKRpIO0BtfV_NRNoXbNaI8Cc3QsEIigt9qiNHzHO0P1mazbCn5sNe_C5l1EgkRr88O-I4AvWl3rLMa6_7BptcwGdxR07E" style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 24px; font-weight: 700; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1331" data-original-width="2000" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjFqCOPeiTIbLZ5U_3zWeCfwoZZrUyeFgpyXJ6lkzC8GW7Tw5Bv3_6Eu5ZRhtCgHOuAu2WQM_RwgmYg7KWhWhCBmg59Tdx0ciLKRpIO0BtfV_NRNoXbNaI8Cc3QsEIigt9qiNHzHO0P1mazbCn5sNe_C5l1EgkRr88O-I4AvWl3rLMa6_7BptcwGdxR07E=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">There’s something of a craze at the moment for ‘immersive’ theatre that plays with the audience’s relationship with the actors and the physical space. Perhaps this has something to do with the impact of film, TV and more recently streaming (accelerated by the pandemic) on our capacity to focus on and contemplate action collectively or from a fixed point of view; instead, we’ve become accustomed to the intervention of cameras and editing techniques that zoom in and out, pan, cut, dissolve and reframe what we’re watching; not to mention changing channels, getting up and moving around, or interrupting at will our increasingly personalised and even privatised ‘viewing-experience’. There are arguably sociological as well as technological reasons for this development; one might even posit that contemporary capitalism and neoliberalism have led to increasingly individualised and atomised forms of cultural production and consumption. Alternatively, one might simply argue that there’s more than one way to watch a show.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In many ways the experience of seeing <i>Logue Lake</i> resembles both watching a film (or even being on a film set) and viewing a visual art installation. We’re free to wander around the set and action (as long as we don’t interact with the actors – ‘no touching or talking’ is the general rule – or enter the house without walls or roof that sits in the centre of the space) and can also head upstairs for an overview from the gallery seats. Crucially, we’re equipped with headphones (a device which is also used in two other Festival show this year, <i>The Pool</i> and <i>The Invisible Opera</i>) and handheld radios, and are free to switch between five audio channels, each of which represents one of the characters’ subjective points of view (including dialogue, music and internal monologue), regardless of where we are in the space or what we happen to be watching. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It’s impossible to take in the entire show, as scenes are occurring simultaneously in different parts of the set. I spent the first ten to fifteen minutes upstairs in the gallery, which gave me a ‘wide-shot’ (so to speak) of the whole space (including most of the audience who were moving around the set at floor-level); but found myself occasionally changing audio channels so as to pick out different scenes. Then I moved downstairs and spent the rest of the play circling the action and sitting at various points along the way, while changing channels in order to hear whatever scene I was watching. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Sometimes I chose a particular character and followed them; at other times something in my peripheral vision attracted my attention and I allowed it to lead me. At times I felt like a camera or boom operator choosing my own ‘angle’ on things; at other times I felt more like an editor, assembling my own ‘cut’. In general, I noticed that the dialogue scenes drew my attention more strongly; I found myself less intrigued by the interior monologues, perhaps because I felt that I didn’t really need to hear the character’s thoughts or see the characters having them (possibly this wouldn’t have been the case had I been watching a film). <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Unlike the immersive dance theatre show <i>Sleep No More</i>, <i>Logue Lake</i> is narrative-driven, and the action takes place in a single location and unfolds in real time. Essentially, it’s an outback Australian Gothic horror movie (interestingly, Malthouse Theatre’s immersive, headphone-based, narrative-driven <i>Hour of the Wolf</i>last year was in a similar vein). <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Four friends in their twenties or thirties spend the night in a cabin by a lake that has a demonic legend attached to it; a mysterious fifth character shows up, who seems to have a connection with the legend; mayhem ensues. Other familiar horror tropes include the figure of the double (echoing another Festival show inspired by genre-movies, <i>Stunt Double</i>, but in this case harking back to films like <i>The Invasion of the Body Snatchers</i> or John Carpenter’s <i>The Thing</i>); one scene involving a knife-wielding cross-dresser recalls <i>Psycho</i> or <i>Dressed To Kill. </i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I wasn’t entirely clear as to whether these and other motifs – or the intermittently ‘spooky’ soundtrack – were meant to scare us (an effect which is notoriously difficult to achieve in theatre as opposed to film) or invite us not to take things too seriously (or perhaps both). I felt something similar about the occasionally clunky dialogue, which would have been unexceptionable in a horror movie, but sometimes sounded a little awkward onstage (I felt a similar tonal ambiguity and occasional awkwardness in <i>The Hour of the Wolf</i> at Malthouse).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In fact, a certain ‘queering’ of the narrative and (at least potentially) the overall form of the work is potentially one of the script’s more original strengths and could have been pushed further; but I sensed a certain ambivalence about pursuing this stylistically. Perhaps this was connected to the use of headphones and body-mics, and the related attempt to achieve the effect of naturalistic ‘film-acting’ onstage (again, I sensed a similar ambivalence and tendency towards naturalism in <i>The Hour of the Wolf</i>).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Notwithstanding these reservations, <i>Logue Lake </i>is an enjoyable evening of fun and games, with some more thoughtful provocations about the effects of internalised homophobia and denial on the Australian psyche. The sound design by Ben Collins and Chloe McCormack is a technical tour de force; Samuel Diamond’s production design and Peter Young’s lighting are beautifully judged and evocative, especially given the challenges of the immersive staging. Performers <span lang="EN-GB">Isaac Diamond, Timothy Green, Lila McGuire, Will O’Mahony and Alicia Osyka navigate the (sometimes conflicting) demands of the script and staging with admirable skill and integrity, especially given the consummate timing involved in moving around the set from one overlapping scene to the next. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Abiding questions remain. What do we gain (and what do we lose) by staging this story in this particular way – as opposed to watching a horror film, or even seeing things play out onstage in sequence, one scene at a time? And conversely: why choose this particular genre in order to explore the form of immersive theatre itself? Is the latter even really suited to narrative-driven theatre at all?</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">*<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Wolfgang von Flügelhorn is a writer and critic based in Perth, Western Australia. He was born in Flügelhorn, a small town in Upper Austria, in 1963. After finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of Lower Flügelhorn he completed his doctoral thesis at Cambridge on the later Wittgenstein and the phenomenology of language games (<i>Der später Wittgenstein und die Phänomenologie den Sprachspielen, </i>unpublished) under the supervision of Wittgenstein’s literary executor Elizabeth Anscombe, whose famous paper ‘The First Person’ argues that the pronoun ‘I’ does not refer to anything. On returning to Austria he was the lead vocalist in Viennese prog-rock/jazz-fusion band The Flaming Squirrels <i>(Die Flammende= Eichhörnchen). </i>He left Austria and went into voluntary exile in 2000 after the formation of the far-right coalition federal government, vowing never to return. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Professor von Flügelhorn is currently editor of the <i>Zeitschrift für Unsozialforschung</i> (Journal of Anti-Social Research) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Lower Flügelhorn where he holds a chair (remotely) in Paranormal Phenomenology while engaging his core muscles for two minutes every day. He is also the author of several monographs including <i>Unlogische Untersuchungen</i> (<i>Illogical Investigations</i>),<i>Unzeitlich</i> <i>Sein </i>(<i>Not Being On Time</i>) and <i>Wahnsinn und Methode</i> (<i>Madness and Method</i>), all of which have been translated into English by his friend and colleague Humphrey Bower but none of which has yet been published in any language. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Humphrey Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03841050029169012878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962718407053988991.post-30183808867388621092024-02-23T06:49:00.000-08:002024-02-23T06:49:01.302-08:00<h1 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Food</span></h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Geoff Sobelle<br />His Majesty’s Theatre<br />Perth Festival</h2><h3 style="text-align: left;">Reviewed by Wolfgang von Flügelhorn</h3><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj5ntv9RdQo_jIcdWZ5Qg8wUg49FXov1qySpSsNeRvFyKi22DZhdQXNlqhXN7kdEHu9N3YrcO5G7S5B7kaDiUZcYKAz8zvzXfugazatnLcSy4OnNcJbHUmfSy8HbUJbXfFrOLZPpvk07Fumjr6ueVmYWtyIzBmTQIniI0yIgWMp76nbcRvQf_SVvmzJfL8" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="3652" data-original-width="5476" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj5ntv9RdQo_jIcdWZ5Qg8wUg49FXov1qySpSsNeRvFyKi22DZhdQXNlqhXN7kdEHu9N3YrcO5G7S5B7kaDiUZcYKAz8zvzXfugazatnLcSy4OnNcJbHUmfSy8HbUJbXfFrOLZPpvk07Fumjr6ueVmYWtyIzBmTQIniI0yIgWMp76nbcRvQf_SVvmzJfL8=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">New-York-based performance-maker Geoff Sobelle’s <i>Food</i> masquerades as an absurdist audience-interactive clown show but gradually reveals a more ominous (not to say omnivorous) intent – as foreshadowed by the sombre 19<sup>th</sup> century hunting painting that hangs on the upstage wall of the set.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It’s being staged for Perth Festival in the appropriately Edwardian-Baroque ambience of His Majesty’s Theatre – appropriate because the show itself becomes increasingly baroque in form and mood. The audience is seated onstage around three sides of a huge table covered with a white tablecloth. Selected audience members sit at the table and are served wine and food as well as being asked to make various other contributions during the show; the rest of us are on three banks of seating behind them and are also occasionally asked to pour wine or perform other tasks.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Sobelle plays the role of our host and head waiter, dressed in white shirtsleeves and black waistcoat, pants and shoes. His persona is initially relaxed and affable if a little aloof as he chats with the audience, gives instructions and serves his ‘guests’. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">An initial guided meditation on the evolution of life on earth from the perspective of eating and food is followed by an audience-participation sequence using wine-tasting as a jumping-off point for shared memories, which creates a sense of community and intimacy. The distribution of menus, taking of orders and delivery of food ‘from farm to table’ leads to an escalating sequence of comic routines, including the disinterring of a baked potato seeded and watered in a pile of earth, and the retrieval of a ‘live’ Arctic char from beneath the surface of the tablecloth, which has been transformed by the lighting design into a frozen sea.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">About half an hour into the show Sobelle sits down, begins eating an apple, removes his shoes and falls silent; the veneer of affability falls away, and the tone and form of the work changes radically. An extended sequence (reminiscent of Marco Ferreri’s 1973 film <i>La Grande Bouffe</i>) follows in which Sobelle devours the leftovers from the audience’s meals in an impossible feat of gluttony (involving some deftly executed sleight-of-hand) that includes smoking and eating a packet of cigarettes (which are swallowed while still alight) as well as consuming a box of matches, a mobile phone, a pile of napkins and two bottles of wine. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In short: we’re now firmly in the realm of the grotesque – as well as an increasingly (and deliberately) heavy-handed satire on consumerism. This soon gives way to an even more extended sequence on the theme of ecological destruction (placing <i>Food</i> in conversation with two other works in this year’s Perth Festival, <i>The Jungle Book Reimagined</i> and <i>Are we not drawn onward to new erA</i>). </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">A now-dishevelled, food-and-wine-stained Sobelle drags the tablecloth away to reveal a landscape of parched earth, crawls onto it and carefully manoeuvres a miniature herd of toy bison across the plain before returning them to the dust from whence they came (for me this was the most moving image of the entire show). Stalks of wheat sprout mechanically from the dirt, and a new ‘herd’ of toy agricultural and extractive machinery is unleashed across the depleted landscape, including diggers, trucks and eventually oil-cranes (after Sobell plunges his arm into the earth and pulls it out again covered with thick black liquid). Toy buildings sprout from the dirt like weeds, and the audience is encouraged to place other toy structures and dwellings around the edge of the landscape. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In the closing section of the work, an audience-member recites a litany of foodstuffs that have been hunted, gathered, farmed, engineered or manufactured throughout history, while Sobell stands behind them and touches the back of her head as if in an act of telepathic dictation (I for one couldn’t see how this particular magic act was done). Finally, he digs a pit in the centre of the table, lowers himself into it and disappears in an act of self-burial, as if on behalf of our entire species. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Sobell’s performance is exquisitely judged and impeccably skilled as he moves from clowning and magic (the show is co-created by magician Steve Cuiffo) to more ambiguous, less easily digested (if you’ll pardon the pun) forms of movement-based image-making. Co-director Lee Sunday Evans keeps things smoothly flowing and changing; Isabella Byrd and Devin Cameron’s lighting gently leads us from the simplicity of the initial conceit (an evenly lit restaurant, a fake candle) to increasingly heightened states of theatricality; Tei Blow and Tyler Kieffer’s subtle and detailed sound design almost imperceptibly transports us from the here-and-now to ever-more expansive circles of attention and concern.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">On the night I attended the audience seemed noisily determined to enjoy the show on their own terms and were perhaps less comfortable with the shift from audience participation, clowning and magic to the darker realms of misanthropic social satire and ecological critique. For my part, I felt that the work was somewhat disjointed and even unclear in terms of its overall form and intention, and that the audience's restlessness to some extent reflected this. I enjoyed the level of agency and freedom that we were given in the opening section, especially in the sharing of stories; in the central section, however, we became silent witnesses; and in the closing section, the participants were effectively puppets or automatons, mindlessly obeying instructions or repeating lists of words.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Somehow, in the face of consumer capitalism and the environmental crisis that afflicts us, we need to be given a sense of agency and empowerment. Otherwise we’re merely cogs in a machine, or worse, the mindless agents of our own destruction.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">*</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Wolfgang von Flügelhorn is a writer and critic living in Perth, Western Australia. He was born in Flügelhorn, a small town in Upper Austria, in 1963. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">After finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of Lower Flügelhorn he completed his doctoral thesis at Cambridge on the later Wittgenstein and the phenomenology of language games (</span><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Der später Wittgenstein und die Phänomenologie den Sprachspielen, </i><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">unpublished) under the supervision of Wittgenstein’s literary executor Elizabeth Anscombe, whose famous paper ‘The First Person’ argues that the pronoun ‘I’ does not refer to anything. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">He left Austria and went into voluntary exile in 2000 after the formation of the far-right coalition federal government, vowing never to return. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Professor von Flügelhorn is currently editor of the <i>Zeitschrift für Unsozialforschung</i> (Journal of Anti-Social Research) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Lower Flügelhorn where he holds a chair (remotely) in Paranormal Phenomenology while engaging his core muscles for two minutes every day. He is also the author of several monographs including <i>Unlogische Untersuchungen</i> (<i>Illogical Investigations</i>), <i>Unzeitlich</i> <i>Sein </i>(<i>Not Being On Time</i>) and <i>Wahnsinn und Methode</i> (<i>Madness and Method</i>), all of which have been translated into English by his friend and colleague Humphrey Bower but none of which has yet been published in any language. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: left;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Humphrey Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03841050029169012878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962718407053988991.post-74485414190608624842024-02-19T03:21:00.000-08:002024-02-19T06:12:04.504-08:00<h1 style="text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Stunt Double</span></h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Farm<br />Studio Underground<br />Perth Festival</h2><h3 style="text-align: left;">Reviewed by Wolfgang von Flügelhorn</h3><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgInxpY79tRzpzPRjHg-LzU56uJmYtjiyt6zTVWe4ZG30D5b9iWpuZO_Am2aDuxgtWTAVFJ7LhlIyn6lmW0u4B-4SYBRyTywVuIGuetBIsuUsZ0cIUqrB3H6bNVYKK5qNgs4Z4MiWnKmh9R3V_RRefwKetaUnaxhmsMgYmF3dhZhhXeNiP2a-TrNcQ-Ry4" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="3676" data-original-width="5507" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgInxpY79tRzpzPRjHg-LzU56uJmYtjiyt6zTVWe4ZG30D5b9iWpuZO_Am2aDuxgtWTAVFJ7LhlIyn6lmW0u4B-4SYBRyTywVuIGuetBIsuUsZ0cIUqrB3H6bNVYKK5qNgs4Z4MiWnKmh9R3V_RRefwKetaUnaxhmsMgYmF3dhZhhXeNiP2a-TrNcQ-Ry4=w400-h268" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The 1970s are often celebrated as a golden age of liberation and progress in Australia; the Whitlam era in particular is viewed as a time when the nation came of age. However, there’s also a darker side to the 70s, as the underlying power-dynamics of capitalism and sexism (not to mention racism) remained fundamentally intact, especially in the entertainment industry. Low-paid workers, women and people of colour were exploited; producers, directors and stars abused their power.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">These contradictions are explored in <i>Stunt Double</i>, the latest offering from The Farm, a collaborative dance theatre/contemporary performance company based on the Gold Coast. Core members Gavin Webber (writer, performer), Grayson Millwood (performer), Kate Harman (performer) and Chloe Ogilvy (lighting designer) developed the show in conversation with stunt performers about their experiences working in the film industry.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The loose narrative framework is set on the shoot of a 70s Ozploitation film called <i>Don’t Wake The Dark</i> (in obvious allusion to <i>Wake In Fright</i>, which arguably launched the genre). Patrick Paterson (Webber) is a safari-suited action-hero past his prime; sharing the screen with him (and barely tolerating his off-screen advances) is emerging star Maureen O’Sullivan (Harman). Meanwhile their stunt-doubles (David Carberry and Alex Kay) do most of the work in the shooting of the action sequences – although Paterson and O’Sullivan become increasingly competitive with them, insist on doing more and more of their own stunts, and eventually become locked in rivalry with their counterparts.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Other characters include the film’s manipulative director (Millwood – though on the night I saw the show his role was played by Matt Cornell); an eager-beaver cameraman who is also the show’s announcer (a role normally played by Cornell, who on this occasion was replaced by Nathan Kell); and an exasperated Assistant Director (Ngoc Phan) doing her best to keep things on-schedule. The roles of other crew members and extras are played by pre-selected audience volunteers, who are given instructions by the AD during the show, which adds an extra layer of comedy and spontaneity, as well as underlining (and to some extent subverting) the hierarchies typically operative during a film-shoot.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The ‘on-set’ scenes are wildly entertaining and have an appropriately B-movie feel. A fight-sequence in an outback pub (with the audience volunteers as extras) involves elaborate stunts and mid-shot substitutions between Paterson and his double; an attack on a group of picnickers by a pack of mutant dingoes (all played by the audience volunteers) leads to one of the dingoes (played by Paterson’s double) mauling O’Sullivan’s character before being viciously beaten to death by Paterson with a cricket bat. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Other scenes use a more abstract contemporary-dance movement vocabulary (with perhaps an over-reliance on slow motion and mirroring), and have a more surreal quality reminiscent of David Lynch (in particular <i>Twin Peaks </i>and<i> Mulholland Drive</i>) – a resemblance heightened by Ogilvie’s noirish lighting and ominous music by sound designer and composer Luke Smiles (in contrast with the bright film lights, adrenaline-fuelled Oz rock classics and exaggerated sound effects that accompany the fight-sequences). This layer of the show explores the psychological aspect of doubling and doppelgängers (most famously analysed by Freud in his essay on ‘The Uncanny’); a haunting sequence involves multiple reduplications of O’Sullivan and her double by audience volunteers wearing similar red dresses and wigs. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The two layers of the show merge in a nightmarish and thrilling climactic action-sequence (recalling Tarantino’s <i>Death Proof</i> and the road/slasher-movies that inspired it) that involves the AD and O’Sullivan (or was it her double?) in a stripped-back car driving headlong through the desert (a theatrical/cinematic illusion created by the lighting and sound design), while the rest of cast (all wearing safari suits) hurl themselves at the vehicle and attack the driver and passenger. This sequence culminates in a shocking and spectacularly staged ‘accidental’ death on-set, which is effectively ‘covered up’ by an abruptly descending red curtain; after an Awards ceremony in front of the curtain in which the movie wins Best Film (with of course no mention of the stunt performers), the death-tableau is re-revealed by a final Kabuki drop.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">With a crazed glint in his eye, Webber shines (if that’s the right word) as the grotesque Paterson, a role requiring star-charisma, clowning and dance/movement skills in equal measure. Tyler Hill’s generic costumes and minimalist interactive film-set design (based on original scenography by Zoe Atkinson) do their job effectively; sporadic video snippets from a cringingly awkward post-production interview with Paterson, O’Sullivan and the film director reveal in close-up the power dynamics and tensions we witness emerging on-set. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Stunt Double</i> isn’t simply a celebration or spoof of the Ozploitation genre (though it’s undeniably both of those things), but a Swiftian satire on the entertainment industry and the dark truths that are normally concealed behind the curtain of celebrity and glamour. It also shines a light on the (mostly uncredited) work of stunt-performers, and the level of exploitation and risk that (like most low-wage workers and women in the industry) they’re forced to endure. And finally, it points to the enduring contradictions and unfulfilled promises of the 1970s that still haunt us today.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">*<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Wolfgang von Flügelhorn is a writer and critic based in Perth, Western Australia, with a special interest in doubles and doppelgängers. He was born and raised in Flügelhorn, a small town in Upper Austria. After finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of Lower Flügelhorn he completed his doctoral thesis at Cambridge on the later Wittgenstein and the phenomenology of language games (<i>Der später Wittgenstein und die Phänomenologie den Sprachspielen, </i>unpublished) under the supervision of Wittgenstein’s literary executor Elizabeth Anscombe, whose famous paper ‘The First Person’ argues that the pronoun ‘I’ does not refer to anything. On returning to Austria he became the lead vocalist and flugelhorn player in Viennese prog-rock band The Flaming Squirrels <i>(Die Flammende Eichhörnchen). </i>He left Austria and went into voluntary exile in 2000 after the formation of the far-right coalition federal government, vowing never to return. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Humphrey Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03841050029169012878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962718407053988991.post-47970910372670108212024-02-13T06:27:00.000-08:002024-02-15T07:00:35.316-08:00<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><h1 style="text-align: left;"><i>The Jungle Book Reimagined</i></h1><h2 style="text-align: left;">Akram Khan Company <br />Perth Festival<br />Heath Ledger Theatre Theatre</h2><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><h1 style="text-align: left;"><i>Mutiara</i></h1><h2 style="text-align: left;">Marrugeku<br />Perth Festival<br />Studio Underground</h2><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiKrhemNvZLI0sJBRWfF1mp3e2L-2jsd4Rn3SWtxfYMubixOUqPV08q3ewrg0iaaX3Z9BAB1EEEGAOiUm1IHNpDg_PtG5j5qCoV5puUU9o9MOH4xZhCluOe3R5rY6UZbpG9mKjnhcsh7Qce1v0H04L--eSurXlCd4edL50PhL6PcDi85oyBecX-L6DXXkM" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiKrhemNvZLI0sJBRWfF1mp3e2L-2jsd4Rn3SWtxfYMubixOUqPV08q3ewrg0iaaX3Z9BAB1EEEGAOiUm1IHNpDg_PtG5j5qCoV5puUU9o9MOH4xZhCluOe3R5rY6UZbpG9mKjnhcsh7Qce1v0H04L--eSurXlCd4edL50PhL6PcDi85oyBecX-L6DXXkM=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Artistic Director Iain Grandage’s fourth and final Perth Festival is entitled <i>Nnaangk</i> – the Nnoongar word for ‘sun’, a female deity associated with warmth, nurturing and healing. In this context the Akram Khan<i></i>Company’s <i>Jungle Book Reimagined</i> is a surprisingly dark and dystopian work – even though it’s described by Grandage in the program as being ‘created with family audiences in mind’.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Khan ‘reimagines’ Kipling’s collection of stories about an Indian boy raised by wolves as a cautionary tale set in a future ravaged by climate change. Mowgli (in this version, a young woman, played by Jan Mikaela Villanueva) is a climate refugee separated from her family during a storm at sea. She washes up in an abandoned city reclaimed by animals who’ve escaped from captivity. Baloo (Tom Davis-Dunn) is a former circus-bear; Bagheera (Holly Valis) is a domesticated panther raised in a palace; the bandar-log monkeys are the traumatized survivors of lab experiments; Kaa is an escaped python from a glass cage in the zoo. In a more significant reversal, the tiger Shere Khan is now a gun-toting human hunter who shoots animals on sight.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">As in Kipling’s original, the animals conveniently talk to each other and Mowgli (who also understands and talks back to them) in English (a device which is somehow more jarring onstage than it was on the page). In Khan’s production, they’re played by a cast of ten dancers (Kaa is represented by a collection of cardboard boxes with glowing red eyes manipulated by a team of dancers), as well as appearing in beautiful line-drawn animations projected onto scrims across the front and back of the stage (the hunter Shere Khan is represented by an animated shadow). They’re also ‘voiced’ by a separate cast of actors in a pre-recorded soundtrack – a fatal misstep which for this reviewer kills the show, as it disconnects the dancers from the audience and makes us feel like we’re watching a kind of ‘live cartoon’.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">There’s no denying the virtuosity of the cast, or the distinctiveness of Khan’s choreography, which draws on traditional Indian kathak as well as contemporary dance, predictably incorporating a lot of ‘animal’ work on all fours. However, the synchronised coordination of the dancer’s movements with the pre-recorded dialogue is reductive and over-literal; ironically it makes them less like animals, and more like humans using mime. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The set design is relatively minimal (apart from the projection scrims), consisting of a bare stage and a few piles of cardboard boxes (which according to Khan in a program note demonstrates the show’s commitment to sustainability). On the other hand, the staging is heavily reliant on video and sound technology (including a Hollywood-style ‘exotic’ score by composer Jocelyn Pook). All of this swamps the work of the dancers, as well as being at odds with the overall message about reconnecting with the natural world. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Harnessing Kipling’s stories and characters to the theme of climate change is a noble cause but reduces their complexity. As a result the show feels more like a work of Victorian moralising than the original. It also doesn’t address Kipling’s obsessions with abandonment and foster-families, colonialism and exile, and the contradictions between ‘the law’ and more ‘primordial’ impulses. Kipling's animals are not really animals at all, but human beings; Mowgli the 'man-cub' is arguably a representation of Kipling himself. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">All of this is brushed over in Khan’s ‘reimagining’ – ironically so, given the dancer/choreographer’s own cultural heritage as a British-Bangladeshi artist born in London, much of whose work has been preoccupied with his own conflicted sense of home and identity. His autobiographical solo show <i>Desh</i>, which came to the Melbourne Festival in 2012, remains the most powerful work of his I’ve seen. In comparison <i>The Jungle Book Reimagined </i>feels like a missed opportunity. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">*</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgZzGdEi14WYa-i3B3pkqrZ19CmLm5locOOqKctZAd60jrOzT6ZZRUL8uRspDqWrAs0L4BcuZpPuIWGj4ERYQUwHsHR3Vgf-HBPYIAjVr6neq_hx9OVLU1peQfLMg48AsJ8nZp4fQWGT8La7CWxszh-lA45eK76UUgKdivSIQYIWjWMWin2aJ2XvrdUTM0" style="font-family: -webkit-standard; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="148" data-original-width="171" height="346" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgZzGdEi14WYa-i3B3pkqrZ19CmLm5locOOqKctZAd60jrOzT6ZZRUL8uRspDqWrAs0L4BcuZpPuIWGj4ERYQUwHsHR3Vgf-HBPYIAjVr6neq_hx9OVLU1peQfLMg48AsJ8nZp4fQWGT8La7CWxszh-lA45eK76UUgKdivSIQYIWjWMWin2aJ2XvrdUTM0=w400-h346" width="400" /></a><br /><br /><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Broome-based Indigenous intercultural dance theatre company Marrugeku’s <i>Mutiara </i>is more intimate and reflective than their previous production <i>Jurrungu Ngan-ga (Straight Talk)</i>, an explosive large-scale work about the incarceration of Aboriginal people and asylum seekers. Nevertheless the two share a common focus on racialised violence and oppression as defining mechanisms of White Australia since colonisation. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><i>Mutiara </i>(which means ‘pearl’ in Malay) deals with the history of pearling in Broome, from its Indigenous antecedents – when pearl shells were carved and worn or traded across the continent and the region – to its colonial expansion as a global industry in the 19<sup>th</sup> Century, when pearls were primarily used for the manufacture of buttons in Europe. This expansion involved the enslavement, forced labour and exploitation of Aboriginal, Malay and Japanese divers, all of whom were overworked and many of whom died from decompression sickness.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The four performers are also co-choreographers: Dalisa Pigram (who is also Marrugeku’s co-artistic director alongside Rachael Swain, the show’s dramaturg), Soutari Amin Farid (who is also its cultural dramaturg), Zee Zunur and Ahmat Bin Fadal (who is also an advisor on pearl diving history and Malay culture). Collectively they bring to the work a strong mix of choreographic traditions and practices including Indigenous and contemporary dance as well as the Malay martial art known as silat. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">All four also have strong cultural and geographical connections to the work: Pigram was born and raised in Broome and has a mixed Yawuru/Bardi and Malay/Filipino heritage; Farid, Zunur and Bin Fidal are Malay Singaporeans. Bin Fidal also has a more personal connection: th the work: now in his 80s, he emigrated to Broome in the 1960s and worked as a diver in Broome from the 1960s until he retired after a near-fatal accident while diving, and this experience is a central thread in the content of the work. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The form is episodic and thematic rather than narrative-based. Certain sequences stand out: Zunur’s opening appearance as a quivering Bomoh (a Malay shaman-figure who acts as a kind of portal to the spirit world) with her hair hung forward in a curtain over her face; Pigram and Farid joyfully and lovingly partner-dancing to the popular music of the 1950s in defiance of regulations against interracial fraternisation; Farid doing an elegant fan-dance with two pearl shells; Bin Fidal performing an austere solo based on his sidat martial arts training; and most memorably Pigram doing a hauntingly expressive dance with spoken text invoking the fate of Aboriginal women who were kidnapped and enslaved (or ‘blackbirded’) in the 19<sup>th</sup>Century and forced to dive as well as being used as sex slaves (many of these women were pregnant because it was falsely believed that this gave them greater lung capacity for diving).<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">At other times the choreography is less specific and seems to wander and lose focus, as if an over-reliance on task-based improvisation has led to simply maintaining and exploring various physical or emotional states. This impression is underscored by the over-use of dim, moody lighting and ambient or repetitive music tracks. The set design by visual artist Abdul-Rahman Abdullah – consisting of a downstage pile of pearl shells and an upstage curtain of ropes which hung from the lighting grid and were reminiscent of the riggings of pearl luggers or the signal-ropes to which divers were tethered, as well as resembling fronds of sea grass – also induces a certain visual monotony, notwithstanding the fact that the ropes are also used as a projection surface for black-and-white archival footage of the pearling industry as well as being variously manipulated by the performers. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">A sense of being in an underwater world is effectively evoked, but even when Bin Fidal moves around the space reading aloud in Arabic from invisible gravestones we never emerge from a realm of memory and reverie. Recorded voiceovers using stereotypical accents and featuring excerpts from archival texts of racialized pseudo-science or officialese add a further layer of horror but are clumsy in execution, and (like the archival video projections) reinforce the sense of being continually pulled out of the present moment and back into the past.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><i>Mutiara </i>covers important historical ground, features some deeply moving performances (especially from Pigram and Bin Fidal) and is grounded (like all of the company’s work) in the authenticity of the performers’ connection with the material. Nevertheless in comparison with <i>Jurrungu Ngan-ga </i>the work feels underdeveloped and lacking in direction. It’s as if the aura of nostalgic myth surrounding the pearling industry still hasn’t quite been dispelled, despite the history of violence lurking beneath its deceptively placid surface. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">*</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Wolfgang von Flügelhorn is a writer and critic based in Perth, Western Australia. He was born and raised in Flügelhorn, a small town in Upper Austria, in 1963. After finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of Lower Flügelhorn he completed his doctoral thesis at Cambridge on the later Wittgenstein and the phenomenology of language games (<i>Der später Wittgenstein und die Phänomenologie den Sprachspielen, </i>unpublished) under the supervision of Wittgenstein’s literary executor Elizabeth Anscombe, whose famous paper ‘The First Person’ argues that the pronoun ‘I’ does not refer to anything. On returning to Austria he was the lead vocalist and flugelhorn player in Viennese prog-rock/jazz-fusion band The Flaming Squirrels <i>(Die Flammende Eichhörnchen)</i>, in which capacity as the band’s front-man he developed a unique form of contemporary dance combining elements inspired by Isadora Duncan with the traditional Austrian Schuhplattler<i>. </i>He left Austria and went into voluntary exile in 2000 after the formation of the far-right coalition federal government, vowing never to return. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Humphrey Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03841050029169012878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962718407053988991.post-48803224685329935582023-03-19T07:00:00.025-07:002023-03-20T13:52:12.001-07:00<h1 style="text-align: left;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Poème: Chamber Landscapes</span></i></h1><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">UKARIA Cultural Centre<br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Adelaide Festival</span></h2><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Reviewed by Wolfgang von Flügelhorn </span></h3><div><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><br /></span></div><div><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgAANlX7fj7JMVtAsefiPAX0KSjp2JjZjZRUTUkqdf_M-hrKcCKHUoJRbmmjKmRnaMAhl33WQmR9g7g0pxnHCAq9DPKtACbRggoHnKKkTMkyCtK_WbTrprBxckzqxWC7SxhkB8mO9mTOpu3ZXfUN9b6RWERoovxqwFqqArtdXgE3O0axjFB19-C4e-W" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="660" data-original-width="1140" height="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgAANlX7fj7JMVtAsefiPAX0KSjp2JjZjZRUTUkqdf_M-hrKcCKHUoJRbmmjKmRnaMAhl33WQmR9g7g0pxnHCAq9DPKtACbRggoHnKKkTMkyCtK_WbTrprBxckzqxWC7SxhkB8mO9mTOpu3ZXfUN9b6RWERoovxqwFqqArtdXgE3O0axjFB19-C4e-W=w400-h231" width="400" /></a></div><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">This year’s Chamber Landscapes weekend at the Ukaria Centre in the Adelaide Hills was curated by Finnish pianist Paavali Jumppanen, who says in a program note that he chose the title ‘Poème’ as a guiding theme to explore the interrelationships between music, text and myth. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">I was there for three concerts last Saturday 11</span><sup style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">th</sup><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> March, and found myself in various states of rapture and contemplation, as well as consuming large amounts of local produce from Ukaria's copious larder and excellent wine cellar.<br /><o:p></o:p></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> <br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">The day's activities kicked off at noon with a concert entitled ‘The Transcendental’. This began with Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 10, which Jumppanen introduced as one of his favourite pieces, before being joined onstage by fellow Finnish violinist Elina Vähälä. The serene beauty of the work – with its lovely opening birdlike trills echoing in call-and-response between violin and piano – was a perfect match for the venue and its bucolic surroundings. However, I felt that</span> <span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Jumppanen’s playing was a little too compressed and abrupt </span>to allow for the work’s expansive lyricism in the first two movements, <span face="Calibri, sans-serif">while Vähälä remained a little too poised and aloof</span>; although both players took more risks and had more fun in the rough-and-tumble of the Scherzo and Finale. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> <br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">After interval came a stupendous performance by Russian émigré pianist Konstantin Shamray of the rarely tackled Piano Sonata No.2 ‘Concord, Mass., 1840–60’ by Charles Ives. The work’s four movements are named after American writers associated with Transcendentalism – Emerson, Hawthorn, the Alcott siblings (Louisa May and her brother Bronson) and Thoreau – and are musically linked by references to the opening theme of Beethoven’s 5<sup>th</sup> Symphony. It’s a wild and wide-ranging work by a unique outsider voice in musical history, and Shamray has the necessary trifecta of spiritual focus, heart-on-sleeve passion and sheer pianistic chops to pull it off. For me this was the musical zenith of the entire day.<br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> <br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">After a fortifying lunch and glass of wine, I was back for the second concert of the day, entitled ‘Myth and Passion’, which Jumppanen introduced by speaking of three major currents in musical modernism represented by Schönberg, Scriabin and Bartok/Stravinsky. He invited us to consider the second and more ‘mystical’ current as being less well-known but perhaps having greater longevity and influence – at least as currently measured by contemporary sensibilities – after the respective heydays of serialism and neo-classicism had apparently run their course. Although in my humble opinion such historicist judgements are inevitably proved wrong by history itself, it was a telling way to frame the program that followed. <br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> <br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">This began with Szymanowski’s three ‘Myths’ for violin and piano, played by the formidable duo of Shamray and Polish violinist Jakub Jakowicz. The two players were perfectly matched in their fearless virtuosity and sense of spirit, both of which are required by the post-Symbolist idiom of the pieces, which follow in the footsteps of Debussy as well as Scriabin, their ambiguous harmonies opening suggestively onto atonality.<br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> <br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">After this cellist Timo-Veikko Valve – another member of Jumppanen’s Finnish circle – took the stage for a dazzling rendition of Kitty Xiao’s <i>In Flesh </i>for electrified cello. This introduced another stream of modernism in the form of electronic music by augmenting the rich natural tones of the instrument with various processing and sampling techniques. Personally, I found the work a little lacking in substance, but it certainly added a note of Frankenstein-like techno-horror to the palette of the afternoon. <br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> <br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Jakowciz then returned to the stage and was accompanied by Jumppanen for a fiery account of Lutoslawski’s ‘Subito’, a compressed and dramatic work for violin and piano that advanced further into the increasingly chromatic realm of Polish modernism pioneered by Szymanowski. <br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> <br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">The final item on the menu for this second concert was American late Romantic composer Amy Beach’s Piano Quintet. A contemporary of Ives, Beach was something of a pioneer as a female composer and pianist, whose career and genius suffered from similar restrictions to those endured by Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann. In fact the sense of tension and yearning in this work reminded me of the Piano Quintet of Brahms, but with an added dimension of almost Wagnerian ecstasy. Along with the Ives sonata, this work was another high point for me, especially in the ardent performance it was given by pianist Andrea Lam, with strong support from Vähälä and Jakowicz on violins, Christopher Moore on viola and Valve on cello. <br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> <br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">After another round of refreshments in the form of an unfeasibly large cheese platter, I was ready for the final concert of the day. Entitled ‘The Exotic’, this began with a rare performance of Pierre Boulez’s hard-core avant-garde masterpiece <i>Le Marteau Sans Maitre </i>(‘The Hammer Without A Master’). Written in the 1950s for an ensemble of instruments including soprano voice, flute, guitar, viola, xylophone, vibraphone and percussion – which evokes the sounds if not the forms of Japanese and Balinese music – the work is a setting of three surrealist poems by Boulez’s contemporary Rene Char. <br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> <br /></span><i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Le Marteau</span></i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> retains the composer’s signature post-War style of ‘total serialism’ but introduces an additional element of what he rather mischievously termed ‘local indiscipline’. Along with its exotic instrumentation, this sense of structural freedom allows space for the composer’s intuitive genius (as well as the interpretative artistry of the performers) and potentially provides some relief from the work’s otherwise almost mechanical sense of determinism (not to mention the formidable demands it places on the audience and musicians alike).<br /><o:p></o:p></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> <br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">As a composer, conductor and intellectual Boulez has always been something of a personal hero of mine, and there was a great sense of occasion about the event, but to be brutally honest (like the man himself) I found the performance surprisingly anticlimactic and strangely unaffecting. It’s hard to be sure, but I think this was due to the overly cautious and reverential spirit in which it was conducted by American contemporary music specialist and former Boulez student Jeffrey Means, and accordingly performed by the undeniably accomplished ensemble of musicians (which included the likes of guitarist Slava Grigoryan alongside a distinguished array of fellow instrumentalists). <br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> <br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">The glowing exception was soprano/mezzo Judith Dodsworth, whose voice has enormous range and expressiveness, and who brought out the work’s playfulness and sensuality, both of which are essential aspects of Boulez’s (typically French) musical personality (and of Char’s poetry). In other words: she brought an element of jazz to what otherwise sounded at times like the organised cacophony of a totally serialist marching band. <br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> <br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">After interval, I felt a similar sense of clockwork-like automatism detracted from Vähälä and Jumppanen’s otherwise flawless performance of Debussy’s Violin Sonata. As with the earlier Beethoven sonata, their playing seemed a little too tightly wound and controlled for the work to unfurl and display its glorious colours, or to evoke some of its more soulful and jazzy resonances. <br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> <br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">A more satisfyingly Debussyian conclusion to the concert – and the entire day – was ironically provided by contemporary German composer Hans Tutschku’s work for electronically processed piano <i>Shadow of Bells.</i>Played by Andrea Lam with the same sensitivity that informed her performance of the Amy Beach Piano Quintet, this spacious work created a sonic landscape that reminded me of wandering through a Japanese garden filled with the sound of distant temple bells, in which I heard echoes of Debussy’s <i>La cathédrale engloutie.<br /></i></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> <br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">As such it provided an appropriately poetic and exotic finale. I drove away into the darkness of the Adelaide hills on my way back to the city filled with an abiding sense of awe and mystery, and with an unfinished platter of cheese sitting on the passenger seat beside me.<br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> <br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">*<br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> <br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Wolfgang von Flügelhorn is a writer and critic based in Perth, Western Australia. He was born and raised in Flügelhorn, a small town in Upper Austria, in 1963. After finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of Lower Flügelhorn he completed his doctoral thesis at Cambridge on the later Wittgenstein and the phenomenology of language games (<i>Der später Wittgenstein und die Phänomenologie den Sprachspielen, </i>unpublished) under the supervision of Wittgenstein’s literary executor Elizabeth Anscombe, whose famous paper ‘The First Person’ argues that the pronoun ‘I’ does not refer to anything. On returning to Austria he was the lead vocalist and flugelhorn player in Viennese prog-rock/jazz-fusion band The Flaming Squirrels <i>(Die Flammende Eichhörnchen). </i>He left Austria and went into voluntary exile in 2000 after the formation of the far-right coalition federal government, vowing never to return. <br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> <br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Professor von Flügelhorn is currently editor of the <i>Zeitschrift für Unsozialforschung</i> (Journal of Anti-Social Research) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Lower Flügelhorn where he holds a chair (remotely) in Paranormal Phenomenology while engaging his core muscles for two minutes every day. He is also the author of several monographs including <i>Unlogische Untersuchungen</i> (<i>Illogical Investigations</i>),<i> Unzeitlich</i> <i>Sein </i>(<i>Not Being On Time</i>) and <i>Wahnsinn und Methode</i> (<i>Madness and Method</i>), all of which have been translated into English by his friend and colleague Humphrey Bower but none of which has yet been published in any language. <br /></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span></p>Humphrey Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03841050029169012878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962718407053988991.post-62809813145953874042023-03-16T08:20:00.016-07:002023-03-16T18:17:50.959-07:00<h1 style="text-align: left;"><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Jurrungu Ngan-ga </i></h1><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Marrugeku</span><br /></h2><h2 style="text-align: left;">Adelaide Festival</h2><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Reviewed by Wolfgang von Flügelhorn</h3><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh-WgSAFVrt16Wc_ILIg5y2naCXAoe-AyS87IEGMtKUw5ky_OZr3t1x5IDFLnUZk9BZkgqZZwGZC6r2A0FcqjFzCXr3qGiq64bv9lJvrwJ3EiLb6j9DwzquXRcJpO7amTZlzqfxwzvsqqhiHr9vLSZdTm_oNo73CdgmCrLA58eDxyowQ3Pzpx1fk1qq" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="450" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh-WgSAFVrt16Wc_ILIg5y2naCXAoe-AyS87IEGMtKUw5ky_OZr3t1x5IDFLnUZk9BZkgqZZwGZC6r2A0FcqjFzCXr3qGiq64bv9lJvrwJ3EiLb6j9DwzquXRcJpO7amTZlzqfxwzvsqqhiHr9vLSZdTm_oNo73CdgmCrLA58eDxyowQ3Pzpx1fk1qq=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"> </span></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><i>Jurrungu Ngan-ga</i> is the latest work by Broome/Sydney-based intercultural dance theatre company Marrugeku. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Jointly led by choreographer-dancer Dalissa Pigram and director-dramaturg Rachel Swaine, the company creates work through a deep and long-term process of consultation and collaboration with Indigenous communities, before touring to urban and remote Australia as well as internationally. More recently they’ve expanded their remit to connect with First Nations peoples around the world as well as other minority communities back home. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><i>Jurrungu Ngan-ga </i>makes a compelling link between the treatment of Indigenous Australians and asylum seekers in terms of their incarceration, brutalisation and death while in detention. In doing so it paints a convincing picture of White Anglo-Celtic settler Australia as shaped by an inherently carceral form of colonisation that can be traced back to its convict origins and is still going on today.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The title means ‘straight talk’ – a Yarawu concept that refers to direct and honest communication between family members. In the context of the show this takes the form of a frank and fearless conversation between Indigenous, refugee and settler populations, trans and CIS gendered subjects, prisoners and guards, performers and audience. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The work is informed by a similar process of ‘straight talk’ between creatives, performers and cultural dramaturgs. The latter include Yarawu elder and senator Patrick Dodson; Kurdish Iranian journalist, writer and former asylum seeker Behrouz Boochani (who was detained on Manus Island for five years); and Iranian-Australian philosopher and activist Omid Tofighian, who co-translated Boochani’s book <i>No Friend But The Moutains </i>(which was based on text messages from Manus Island sent via a smuggled mobile phone). This book is one of two departure-points for <i>Jurrungu Ngan-ga</i>; the other is <i>Australia’s Shame</i>, the Four Corners documentary about the torture of Indigenous youth at Don Dale Youth Detention Centre in the Northern Territory that was broadcast on the ABC in 2016.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Rather than directly staging or quoting from these sources, however, most of the scenarios in <i>Jurrungu Ngan-ga </i>have been developed through improvisation (the cast are listed as co-devisors). Nevertheless these clearly allude to scenes and images of Manus in the book or Don Dale in the documentary, framed by a nightmarishly surreal composite ‘prison of the mind’.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Visual artist <span lang="EN-GB">Abdul-Rahman Abdullah’s simple but devastatingly effective set features a towering cage-like fence or wall of perforated metal that also serves as a projection surface, with a doorway that opens and slams shut, and a surveillance camera mounted high up in the centre of the fence that the performers frequently interact with, turning their backs to the audience while large scale projections of their images stare or talk back at us. Downstage of the fence – and as it were inside the cage – huge brightly lit chandeliers are lowered and raised above the otherwise bare stage: obscene signifiers of wealth and power juxtaposed with the poverty and deprivation signified by the rest of the set. Andrew Treloar’s costumes are a ragtag mishmash of ‘found’ items like trackie pants, footy shorts, sweatshirts and tank tops, with a few creative adornments like baseball caps and chiffon slips</span>.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB">Sound is also crucial to the evocation of place and atmosphere, and includes mechanical noises, walkies-talkies, barking dogs and tropical birds. There are also pounding dance tracks by composers Sam Serruys, Paul Charlier and Rhyan Clapham (aka DOBBY), and a haunting song by Kurdish Iranian singer Farhad Bandesh.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB">The heart and soul of the show however is provided by the powerhouse ensemble of First Nations, Filipino, Palestinian and Anglo-Celtic Australian performers, each of whom brings their own unique physicality and personality to the show. Memorable sequences include a Don Dale/Dylan Voller-like scene featuring Wiradjuri performer Chandler Connell manically pacing inside an invisible cell (defined by Damien Cooper’s harshly effective lighting), punctuated by outbursts of furious dancing or yelling at the security camera; Australian-Filipino dancer Macon Escobal Riley dragging himself along the floor while being menaced and finally stripped naked by a pack of human hyenas; and Australian-Filipinx trans performer Bhenji Ra telling the story of the suicide of one of her Vogue ‘mothers’, and then beginning a Voguing routine while leading a group chant of the names of Indigenous people and refugees who’ve been violently killed or died from neglect while in detention. This leads directly into a climactic ‘krump army’ sequence, in which all the performers take turns to climb on a table and do their own wild solos – including White Aussie kangaroo-hopping security guards – while swapping clothes, cheering each other on, and embodying the spirit of resistance and freedom that defies all systems of domination and subjugation. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Marrugeku has developed a form of dance theatre which is radically different from most ‘contemporary dance’ in Australia. Its intercultural focus, raw physicality and generation of material through improvisation are all directly inspired by the ‘Flemish Wave’ of dance theatre – in particular the work of Alain Platel and les ballets C de la B (performance dramaturg <span lang="EN-GB">Hildegard de Vuyst is a long-term collaborator with both companies). </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB">The use of a strongly gestural language based on the stories and bodies of the dancers is also clearly influenced by the </span><i>Tanzteater</i> of Pina Bausch. Just as the latter’s work dealt with historical trauma and denial in post-war Germany as well as enduring gender-based hierarchies of power, <i>Jurrungu Ngan-ga </i>contends with the ongoing trauma and denial of colonisation and racism as well as intersecting forms of oppression like heteronormativity and transphobia. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">In doing so they’ve conjured up a form of ‘horrific surrealism’ (a phrase coined by Tofighian) that reminds me of Kafka as well as Expressionist painting or the cinema of David Lynch. More vitally, they’ve enlisted the subversive forces of resistance and creativity that belong to some of the most oppressed communities in our society and transformed them into something powerful and beautiful.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">*<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Wolfgang von Flügelhorn is a writer and critic based in Perth, Western Australia. He was born and raised in Flügelhorn, a small town in Upper Austria, in 1963. After finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of Lower Flügelhorn he completed his doctoral thesis at Cambridge on the later Wittgenstein and the phenomenology of language games (<i>Der später Wittgenstein und die Phänomenologie den Sprachspielen, </i>unpublished) under the supervision of Wittgenstein’s literary executor Elizabeth Anscombe, whose famous paper ‘The First Person’ argues that the pronoun ‘I’ does not refer to anything. On returning to Austria he wasthe lead vocalist and flugelhorn player in Viennese prog-rock/jazz-fusion band The Flaming Squirrels <i>(Die Flammende Eichhörnchen)</i>, in which capacity as the band’s front-man he developed a unique form of contemporary dance combining elements inspired by Isadora Duncan with the traditional Austrian Schuhplattler<i>. </i>He left Austria and went into voluntary exile in 2000 after the formation of the far-right coalition federal government, vowing never to return. He’s currently editor of the <i>Zeitschrift für Unsozialforschung</i> (Journal of Anti-Social Research) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Lower Flügelhorn where he holds a chair (remotely) in Paranormal Phenomenology while engaging his core muscles for two minutes every day. He’s also the author of several monographs including <i>Unlogische Untersuchungen</i> (<i>Illogical Investigations</i>),<i> Unzeitlich</i> <i>Sein </i>(<i>Not Being On Time</i>) and <i>Wahnsinn und Methode</i> (<i>Madness and Method</i>), all of which have been translated into English by his friend and colleague Humphrey Bower but none of which has yet been published in any language. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Humphrey Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03841050029169012878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962718407053988991.post-56823738416391433292023-03-14T07:35:00.023-07:002023-03-15T02:27:47.109-07:00<h1 style="text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Verdi’s</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Messa da Requiem</i></h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Ballett Zürich<br />Eleanor Lyons, Caitlin Hulcup, Paul O’Neill, Pelham Andrews<br />Adelaide Festival Chorus<br />Adelaide Symphony Orchestra</h2><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><o:p> <br /></o:p>Reviewed by Wolfgang von Flügelhorn</h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgwLQ7C17rqJlkOSQPOQ6fFYgM-WzxzFCA-r7-8ksSewUfqKdbSF1wzEAh2ywLpGC_hQqUTeGTJQz3d4rW3N1C0Hat2kv1vse4gNxc-SWoUpBRbWlUFEd2qGVkYYeh9Hy9NiWW97HxeeRT2aee8ZNnrPErF2OeVmrW__EO5mi8BuLXxAAZXDBR8iyvd" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgwLQ7C17rqJlkOSQPOQ6fFYgM-WzxzFCA-r7-8ksSewUfqKdbSF1wzEAh2ywLpGC_hQqUTeGTJQz3d4rW3N1C0Hat2kv1vse4gNxc-SWoUpBRbWlUFEd2qGVkYYeh9Hy9NiWW97HxeeRT2aee8ZNnrPErF2OeVmrW__EO5mi8BuLXxAAZXDBR8iyvd=w400-h225" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Verdi composed his <i>Messa da Requiem</i> in honour of his older contemporary the Italian writer and humanist Manzoni, whom he admired not only as an artist but as a social and political liberal committed to the <i>Risorgimento</i>. As for Manzoni’s religious views, while not as anti-clerical as Verdi, his avowed Catholicism was similarly liberal, stressing that while Catholic doctrine might comprise the sum of all truths, it doesn’t do so exclusively. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The work was first performed in a church (San Marco in Milan), and then almost immediately afterwards in an opera house (La Scala). Both were conducted by Verdi himself, and featuring four soloists who’d all previously been cast in the premiere of his most recent opera <i>Aida</i>. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Ongoing quibbles about whether or not Verdi was sufficiently religious, or whether his Requiem is more inherently ‘dramatic’ or ‘spiritual’, surely miss the point. Like his operas, the work expresses the Shakespearean breadth of his vision, from the blazing heights of love to the sombre depths of tragedy. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">In 1943–4 it was performed sixteen times by the inmates of Theresienstadt concentration camp, using a single copy of the score and accompanied by a piano. Eichmann joked: ‘Those crazy Jews are singing their own requiem.’ </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">More recently in 2021 it was performed at the Met to commemorate the 20<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. In the words of the Dies Irae: ‘The day of wrath will dissolve the world in ashes.’ <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Speaking as someone who’s neither an Italian nor a Catholic, I can still find comfort and joy – as well as hearing pain and anguish – in Verdi’s Requiem. Like all great masterpieces, its meaning depends on the context, and its truth is revealed by history. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">However, the meaning and truth of a work of art – like the meaning and truth of a religious text – aren’t entirely contingent or open to interpretation. They also lie within the work or text itself, for those who have the eyes and ears to read or hear what it has to say.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Unfortunately, Christian Spuck’s production and choreography for Ballett Zürich not only turns a blind eye to the libretto but also appears to be deaf to what Verdi wrote. In fact music and dance are at such cross-purposes that after a while I found myself alternately closing my eyes to listen, or trying to block my ears and watch.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The dancers were certainly impressive, and the soloists gave their all and were mostly in glorious voice, though tenor Paul O’Neill showed signs of strain on the night I attended. The chorus did outstanding work (especially given the choreography they were called upon to execute while singing); and the orchestra played with distinction under the thoughtful baton of Johannes Fritzsch. However, apart from some thrilling outbursts from the percussion in the Dies Irae, the performance sounded lacklustre and the pace dragged. Possibly the conductor was directed to follow what was happening stage – which is the opposite of what music should do in relation to dance, and completely robbed the score of its autonomous character. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Verdi’s music is nothing if not passionate and fiery – or alternatively pitch-dark. Spuck’s production on the contrary is all shades of grey and faded colours – from the set design, with its ash-covered floor and blackboard-like walls (which at one point the dancers use chalk to scribble on), to the drabness and pallor of the dancers’ costumes (apart from one flimsy black dress, and the staid black shirts and trousers worn by the soloists and chorus). <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">As for the choreography: apart from occasional outbursts of sprinting or darting around, the movement was mostly languid and heavily indebted to classical ballet but without any of the latter’s sense of weightlessness or flight (instead there’s a lot of prolonged lifting, carrying and dragging). Meanwhile the poor soloists wandered slowly and portentously around the stage as if in a Wagner opera, looking for something to do and hoping forlornly to be included in the action, while their voices ascended vainly into the lighting grid. The chorus came off best: often crouching and moving intently en masse while singing with hushed intensity, like a shuffling horde of zombies, or perhaps a corps de ballet of the damned trapped in a choreographic hell. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Possibly all of this was meant to make us feel ‘sad’. If so, ‘sad’ is the one thing Verdi’s music isn’t – tragic, defiant, raging, pleading, despairing, terrifying, liberating, soaring, beautiful, ethereal, but never ‘sad’. It’s a Requiem, but it’s not a dirge. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The inmates at Theresienstadt were surely singing it as an act of resistance and freedom; as an expression of their love of life; as an accusation levelled at the Nazis and the watching but indifferent world; and as a desperate cry for help addressed to the Red Cross delegation who came to inspect the camp and came away apparently convinced by the Nazi propaganda machine that there was nothing sinister going on. Whatever the case, they certainly didn’t sing it because they were feeling ‘sad’. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The bottom line is that Verdi’s Requiem isn’t written to be danced to. That doesn’t necessarily mean it <i>can’t</i> be danced to; but such an idea would call for something more energetic and transgressive than Spuck’s enervated and regressive choreography and staging<i>. </i>In other words: it would call for something more like Verdi’s Requiem. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">*<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Wolfgang von Flügelhorn is a writer and critic based in Perth, Western Australia. He was born and raised in Flügelhorn, a small town in Upper Austria, in 1963. After finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of Lower Flügelhorn he completed his doctoral thesis at Cambridge on the later Wittgenstein and the phenomenology of language games (<i>Der später Wittgenstein und die Phänomenologie den Sprachspielen, </i>unpublished) under the supervision of Wittgenstein’s literary executor Elizabeth Anscombe, whose famous paper ‘The First Person’ argues that the pronoun ‘I’ does not refer to anything. On returning to Austria he wasthe lead vocalist and flugelhorn player in Viennese prog-rock/jazz-fusion band The Flaming Squirrels <i>(Die Flammende Eichhörnchen)</i>, in which capacity as the band’s front-man he developed a unique form of contemporary folk dance combining elements inspired by Isadora Duncan with the traditional Austrian Schuhplattler<i>. </i>He left Austria and went into voluntary exile in 2000 after the formation of the far-right coalition federal government, vowing never to return. He’s currently editor of the <i>Zeitschrift für Unsozialforschung</i> (Journal of Anti-Social Research) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Lower Flügelhorn where he holds a chair (remotely) in Paranormal Phenomenology while engaging his core muscles for two minutes every day. He’s also the author of several monographs including <i>Unlogische Untersuchungen</i> (<i>Illogical Investigations</i>),<i> Unzeitlich</i> <i>Sein </i>(<i>Not Being On Time</i>) and <i>Wahnsinn und Methode</i> (<i>Madness and Method</i>), all of which have been translated into English by his friend and colleague Humphrey Bower but none of which has yet been published in any language. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Humphrey Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03841050029169012878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962718407053988991.post-62672297868355874462023-03-13T18:10:00.004-07:002023-03-13T18:27:24.564-07:00<h1 style="text-align: left;"><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Ngapa William Cooper </i></h1><h2 style="text-align: left;">Nigel Westlake, Lior, Lou Bennett<br />Andrea Lam, Rebecca Lagos, Kees Boersma<br />Australian String Quartet<br />Adelaide Festival</h2><h3 style="text-align: left;">Reviewed by Wolfgang von Flügelhorn</h3><div><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh_h_I2TEBUvMvrPP6YrJFZ-mndiHWnoP-5ygPt4P4cX5G3lDpY4zPQtMp0xn3wbxSFQ4ywUckCNu2X8JwpLv2Li3clHDahrmU4kLkKCwTdc5aKfYpvunY-1L-x984LzmMhKo97zULHxCFV8nExVHatKv8sVhhi3z-GfikPmF8hW5nu2EV5ZNhZpzng" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="258" data-original-width="196" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh_h_I2TEBUvMvrPP6YrJFZ-mndiHWnoP-5ygPt4P4cX5G3lDpY4zPQtMp0xn3wbxSFQ4ywUckCNu2X8JwpLv2Li3clHDahrmU4kLkKCwTdc5aKfYpvunY-1L-x984LzmMhKo97zULHxCFV8nExVHatKv8sVhhi3z-GfikPmF8hW5nu2EV5ZNhZpzng=w303-h400" width="303" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">I was deeply moved by the performance of <i>Ngapa William Cooper</i> (‘Uncle William Cooper’) at Adelaide Town Hall last Tuesday, following its debut at Ukaria Cultural Centre the previous Friday. The ornate neo-classical splendour of the venue, with its magnificent marble pillars and towering organ-pipes, made me feel like I was back in the Vienna Musikverein, and somehow seemed an appropriate setting for a work which is redolent with a sense of history and occasion while also being rich in musical and cultural complexity. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The song cycle is a follow-up to <i>Compassion, </i>a 2013 collaboration between Anglo-Australian composer Nigel Westlake and Israeli-Australian singer-songwriter Lior, which was based on ancient Hebrew and Arabic texts. Their new work is co-written and co-performed with Yorta Yorta Dja Dja Wurrung songwriter-composer Lou Bennett (who is also Cooper’s direct descendant) with additional lyric content by Sarah Gorey, and like its precursor is a stylistic crossover with contemporary classical and popular elements. It’s also similarly cross-cultural in inspiration and has the same underlying theme of compassion at its heart. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The work celebrates Yorta Yorta activist William Cooper, who as Secretary of the Australian Aborigines’ League led the only march of protest in the world at that time against the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany after Kristallnacht in 1938. Cooper and his fellow protesters marched from his home in Footscray to the inner city of Melbourne and attempted to deliver a petition of condemnation to the German consulate (which needless to say refused to admit them or receive their petition). <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Cooper had previously called for Aboriginal representation in Federal Parliament in his petition to King George V – a petition which (in an act of rich historical irony) Prime Minister Joe Lyons likewise failed to pass on to Buckingham Palace. Perhaps unsurprisingly Cooper saw the parallels between the plight of his people and the Jews in Europe, asserting that: ‘We are a very small minority, and we are a poor people, but in extending our sympathy to the Jewish people we assure them of our support in every way.’ <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The work began with a stirring traditional ‘Call to Ancestors’ by Lior and Bennett, who stood facing each other and sang in Hebrew and Yorta Yorta. Six sections followed, telling the story of Cooper’s protest and concluding with a reflection on his legacy, with the voices of both singers interweaving, accompanied by Andrea Lam on piano, Rebecca Lagos on percussion and Kees Boersma on double bass. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Westlake’s music is highly accessible, using a base language of post-Impressionism peppered with elements of jazz and rock, and is full of tonal colour and syncopated rhythms. In terms of harmonic progression and melodic material I found it a bit static and repetitive at times – reminding me of an older generation of Australian composers like Sculthorpe or Ross Edwards – but it was richly evocative, especially in descriptive passages like the one that accompanied the protest march itself.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Lior sang in English from Cooper’s perspective, his voice finely spun and delicate as a reed instrument, while Bennett’s rich, bluesy contralto responded with words and phrases in Yorta Yorta that were intuitively connected with the content of each section, evoking themes of endearment, loss, family, protest, mourning and commemoration. Bennett also joined Lagos on percussion in one movement by shaking eucalyptus leaves, which evoked a sense of place and ritual, and reminded me of the sound of wings in flight. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Before interval, two works were performed by the redoubtable Australian String Quartet. Bryce Dessner’s <i>Aheym</i>(Homeward) was a thrilling opening, written very much in a post-minimalist idiom; this was followed by arch-minimalist Philip Glass’s nostalgic and lyrical String Quartet No.3 ‘Mishima’, which was originally written as a film score for the Paul Schrader movie about the Japanese author (and quasi-fascist) who committed seppuku after a failed military coup (possibly a somewhat off-key choice in this regard, given the content of the main item that followed). Both works were given incisive renditions by the quartet, with superbly blended sound, exquisite tonal range and (in the Dessner) pounding rhythmic attack.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">All in all, then, a musically satisfying evening – and in the case of the song cycle, a timely and fitting tribute to a towering figure in the ongoing struggle for racial justice in this country and across history. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">*<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Wolfgang von Flügelhorn is a writer and critic based in Perth, Western Australia. He was born and raised in Flügelhorn, a small town in Upper Austria, in 1963. After finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of Lower Flügelhorn he completed his doctoral thesis at Cambridge on the later Wittgenstein and the phenomenology of language games (<i>Der später Wittgenstein und die Phänomenologie den Sprachspielen, </i>unpublished) under the supervision of Wittgenstein’s literary executor Elizabeth Anscombe, whose famous paper ‘The First Person’ argues that the pronoun ‘I’ does not refer to anything. On returning to Austria he was the lead vocalist and flugelhorn player in Viennese prog-rock/jazz-fusion band The Flaming Squirrels <i>(Die Flammende Eichhörnchen)</i><i>. </i>He left Austria and went into voluntary exile in 2000 after the formation of the far-right coalition federal government, vowing never to return. He’s currently editor of the <i>Zeitschrift für Unsozialforschung</i> (Journal of Anti-Social Research) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Lower Flügelhorn where he holds a chair (remotely) in Paranormal Phenomenology while engaging his core muscles for two minutes every day. He’s also the author of several monographs including <i>Unlogische Untersuchungen</i> (<i>Illogical Investigations</i>),<i> Unzeitlich</i> <i>Sein </i>(<i>Not Being On Time</i>) and <i>Wahnsinn und Methode</i> (<i>Madness and Method</i>), all of which have been translated into English by his friend and colleague Humphrey Bower but none of which has yet been published in any language. <o:p></o:p></p>Humphrey Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03841050029169012878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962718407053988991.post-488632748067989592023-03-12T18:52:00.015-07:002023-03-16T00:59:59.145-07:00<h1 style="text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">A Little Life</span></h1><h2 style="text-align: left;">Directed by Ivo van Hove<br />Based on the novel by Hanya Yanagihara<br />Adelaide Festival<br /></h2><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Reviewed by Wolfgang von Flügelhorn</h3><div><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgjHWyDpFj9cXR-aupSgDdKM06gcqV9o3SNVjChNNbhr7_72Wgf2j62aD8CdeuYI62wAov6lbE34lH_LlRRN1g1sQH5FrbD_gUx5Tu24ilDHKGQuwx-ov9SJsxQ6oLVdhXIHnM5hQenQpzGiDE92wcN6TiryzYFc3EAzFckGK6_2VjkOwyuOOFWGvHe" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="181" data-original-width="279" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgjHWyDpFj9cXR-aupSgDdKM06gcqV9o3SNVjChNNbhr7_72Wgf2j62aD8CdeuYI62wAov6lbE34lH_LlRRN1g1sQH5FrbD_gUx5Tu24ilDHKGQuwx-ov9SJsxQ6oLVdhXIHnM5hQenQpzGiDE92wcN6TiryzYFc3EAzFckGK6_2VjkOwyuOOFWGvHe=w400-h260" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><br /></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Belgian stage director Ivo van Hove works across Europe, the UK and the US with companies like the Young Vic and the Comédie Francaise as well as commercial productions on Broadway. However the International Theater Amsterdam (formerly the Toneelgroep) – where he’s been Artistic Director since 2001 – is his primary artistic home and creative laboratory. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Above all, his work with ITA demonstrates the value of his long-term collaboration with other creatives – in particular set and lighting designer Jan Versweyveld, video artist Mark Thewessen, sound designer Eric Sleichim and dramaturg Bart Van den Eyde – as well as a permanent ensemble of actors. Of course I speak as a humble Austrian emigré, but there seem to be few such theatre companies here in Australia, and our main stages seem to be the poorer for it.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Van Hove’s productions with ITA are often adaptations of novels or screenplays – as well as existing plays or cycles like Shakespeare’s Roman Plays or History Plays – that re-interpret the original works from the ground up in terms of their form and meaning. They typically use spectacular yet minimalist staging (there’s often little or no furniture except when absolutely necessary), with unconventional audience configurations and live-feed or pre-recorded video as crucial elements of the set design, as well as a low-key, understated acting style. To facilitate this, the cast use body-mics, wear contemporary clothes no matter where or when the play is set, and are often in bare feet or stripped naked as part of the action. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Theatrical abstraction, realism and a heightened sense of ritual sit side by side in van Hove’s aesthetic. The emotional tone and style of his productions alternates between ice-cold and white-hot; and their execution (in every sense of the word) is always rigorously disciplined and highly controlled no matter how violent or cruel their assault on the audience’s senses. As such there’s something profoundly Classical about them that harks back to the Ancient Greeks and other non-Western traditions like Japanese Noh drama. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><i>A Little Life</i> is based on Japanese-American author <span lang="EN-GB">Hanya Yanagihara’s 2015 novel about a group of male friends in New York City. The narrative slowly tightens its focus on the central figure, Jude, and gradually reveals itself to be about childhood sexual abuse and trauma, ongoing physical and emotional abuse, chronic pain and disability, self-harm and suicide (the list of trigger-warnings outside the theatre was probably the most comprehensive I’ve ever seen).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">As an orphan delivered into the ‘care’ of a monastery, Jude is initially tortured by the monks, before being kidnapped by Brother Luke, who kidnaps him with the false promise of being his friend and protector and then forces him into years of sexual slavery. After being rescued by the police he's made a ward of the state and subjected to further abuse by counsellors; escaping this, he becomes a hitchhiker prostituting himself to truck drivers; finally he's picked up by Doctor Traylor, who gives him antibiotics to cure him of venereal disease and then locks him in a basement and abuses him sadistically, before driving over him with his car and leaving him with permanent injuries to his legs and spine. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Despite being nurtured by his case worker Ana (who is dying of cancer), his college friends (especially Willem, who eventually becomes his lover and carer), his law professor Harold (who adopts him as a son), and his doctor Andy (who treats his ongoing ailments and self-inflicted injuries), Jude remains trapped in a cycle of self-harm and the underlying conviction that he's unworthy of being loved. This is exacerbated when he falls prey to another abusive relationship with Caleb, a fashion executive who repeatedly beats and rapes him before eventually throwing him down the fire escape of his apartment and leaving him for dead. After an unsuccessful suicide attempt, Jude accepts Willem’s offer of a relationship but is unable to enjoy sex; after an emotional struggle, Willem accepts this on condition that Jude tell the truth about his past. The two of them settle down to a brief period of happiness together; but more tragedy lies around the corner, and Jude’s travails are far from over.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB">Despite being shortlisted for numerous prizes, the novel divided critics and readers, and was decried by some as ‘trauma literature’ or ‘torture porn’; more than one friend of mine hated the book and/or found themselves unable to finish it. I personally felt its detailed account of abuse and self-harm – and their effect on Jude as well as everyone in the novel who loves or endeavours to help him – was in no way gratuitous or exploitative, but on the contrary revealed something profound about the ongoing ramifications of trauma for everyone affected by it either directly or indirectly.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB">Van Hove and his creative team have adapted Yanagihara’s 800-page chronicle into a four-hour work of ‘slow theatre’ (with one interval) which is similar to the effect of reading the novel in terms of duration and rhythm – as well as the form of attention required from the audience. The adaptation also includes long stretches of exposition which are more or less lifted from the novel and put into the mouths of the characters, so that the action is less dialogue-driven than narrative-driven – in other words, more like a novel than a conventional play. However, in contrast with the deliberately measured tone of the novel, van Hove’s production is much more confronting and brutal.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB">The audience is seated on either side of a traverse stage, with video screens at either end showing non-stop slow-motion footage of New York City streets. This is occasionally tinted by a pink filter or pixelated to become visual static during the later scenes of abuse or self-harm, which all occur centre-stage.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB">A live string quartet sits below the stage on one side of the traverse and plays various pieces during transitions between scenes – most notably a repeated version of the slow introduction to Mozart’s ‘Dissonance Quartet’. Music and sound are also conveyed through speakers placed around the theatre; and the actor-characters also play records on a stereo which is positioned on the opposite side of the traverse and forms part of the furniture in the apartment shared by Jude and his friend (and later lover) Willem. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB">The dialogue is in Dutch, and the actors all use body-mics, but surtitles in English are projected on either side of an inverted structure that hangs suspended over the stage and contains the lighting grid. This structure also plays a spectacular role in a typically van Hovean coup de théâtre at the climax of the play. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB">The effect of the surtitles is a bit like watching a foreign-language film, and one soon ceases to notice that the actors aren’t speaking in English. In any case, although the action is predominantly set in New York, with flashbacks taking place around the rural heartland of the United States, one feels that it could be taking place almost anywhere – or more precisely, right here – that is to say, wherever the play is being performed.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB">Like Yanagihara’s novel, </span>Van Hove’s production gradually turns up the heat, until what initially appears to be a generic story about a group of post-college friends becomes a slow-burning spectacle of carnage. In fact the cast spend much of their time either preparing and cooking food on a functioning stove-top at one end of the stage (which they eat in front of the audience during interval) or cleaning up stage blood that’s been visibly released from plastic bags taped to Jude’s body and dripped or leaked onto the floor during the scenes of self-harm and abuse (though his shirt remains soaked and stained with it for the duration of the show).<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">As such the production progresses stylistically from Stanislavskian naturalism to Brechtian alienation effects to a kind of Artaudian theatre of cruelty – where ‘cruelty’ is to be understood not merely in terms of physical violence or sadism (though these certainly feature in the story) but as a form of representation that transcends language, abolishes distance and exposes the audience to something dark and destructive at the heart of human nature. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">All of this is inhabited with a paradoxical sense of lightness and ease by the uniformly excellent ensemble cast – some of whom have been working with van Hove (and each other) for decades. Dutch-Palestinian actor Ramsay Nasr gives a carefully measured and distilled performance as Jude; <span lang="EN-GB">Hans Kesting is monstrously convincing in his serial incarnation of Jude’s abusers, his </span>transformative physicality and transfixing gaze mesmerising and terrorising Jude and the audience from one character to the next; and Marieke Heebink calmly haunts the stage as Jude’s dead social worker Ana – who in this adaptation is the only female character in the story, and who in van Hove’s staging accompanies Jude like a guardian angel during some of the most extreme scenes of abuse and self-harm. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB">In fact both the adaptation and staging tighten the narrative in terms of the underlying masculine dynamics that drive the story and relationships. For example, whereas in the novel Jude is adopted as an adult by his former law professor Harold and his wife Julia, who both become loving parents to him, in this version the character of Julia is omitted, making Harold’s interest in Jude potentially more ambiguous. The same is true of Jude’s doctor Andy, whose seemingly endless capacity to administer medical assistance while preserving confidentiality about Jude’s acts of self-harm almost comes to seem like a form of enabling. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The increasingly ritualised staging suggests that beyond the representation of abuse as something to be understood physically, psychologically, socially and institutionally (all of which <span lang="EN-GB">Yanagihara </span>extensively documents in her novel), for van Hove there seems to be a theological (or perhaps a-theological) dimension to Jude’s suffering (it’s no coincidence that his namesake is the patron saint of the hopeless and despairing), as he’s repeatedly and systematically reduced to a state of abjection that resembles the sufferings of Job or the Passion of Christ – an analogy which is surely alluded to by the copious amounts of blood onstage. In this regard the play becomes a parable about cosmic injustice and the torment of the innocent, with the audience as complicit witnesses in lieu of an implicitly absent, indifferent or cruel God – a tradition that harks back to the ancient tragedies of Euripides and Seneca and is recapitulated in the perverse visions of Pasolini and De Sade.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">This perspective in no way absolves us from our own ethical or political responsibility for what unfolds on van Hove's merciless stage. Compared with the solitary act of reading the novel, watching the play induces a sense of collective guilt and moral injury on behalf all who suffer injustice and oppression – victims of physical or sexual abuse; people with disabilities; sexual, racial and cultural minorities; First Nations peoples and asylum seekers. Beyond the consolations of love or piety, van Hove’s theatre of cruelty exposes us to what might be called our shared inhumanity, which no amount of sacrificial blood can wash away. Acknowledgements and reparations are all very well, but the cycle of abuse and trauma, rinse and repeat, also needs to stop.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">*<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Wolfgang von Flügelhorn is a writer and critic based in Perth, Western Australia. He was born and raised in Flügelhorn, a small town in Upper Austria, in 1963. After finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of Lower Flügelhorn he completed his doctoral thesis at Cambridge on the later Wittgenstein and the phenomenology of language games (<i>Der später Wittgenstein und die Phänomenologie den Sprachspielen, </i>unpublished) under the supervision of Wittgenstein’s literary executor Elizabeth Anscombe, whose famous paper ‘The First Person’ argues that the pronoun ‘I’ does not refer to anything. He left Austria and went into voluntary exile in 2000 after the formation of the far-right coalition federal government, vowing never to return. He’s currently editor of the <i>Zeitschrift für Unsozialforschung</i> (Journal of Anti-Social Research) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Lower Flügelhorn where he holds a chair (remotely) in Paranormal Phenomenology while engaging his core muscles for two minutes every day. He’s also the author of several monographs including <i>Unlogische Untersuchungen</i> (<i>Illogical Investigations</i>),<i>Unzeitlich</i> <i>Sein </i>(<i>Not Being On Time</i>) and <i>Wahnsinn und Methode</i> (<i>Madness and Method</i>), all of which have been translated into English by his friend and colleague Humphrey Bower but none of which has yet been published in any language. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></p>Humphrey Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03841050029169012878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962718407053988991.post-59389227868233549842023-03-09T12:52:00.016-08:002023-03-09T16:11:23.720-08:00<h1 style="text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Björk, Cornucopia</span></h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Perth Festival<span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span></h2><h3 style="text-align: left;">Reviewed by Wolfgang von Flügelhorn</h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Dear Björk <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">I’ve been your devoted fan ever since I watched The Sugarcubes music videos back in the 80s when I was living in a student share-house. My bedroom had the TV aerial socket, so it became the shared living room, and I’d stay up watching MTV after my fellow householders had all gone to bed. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">When you went solo I continued to follow your career through the 90s and into the new millennium. With your incredible voice, musical inventiveness and fearlessly independent artistry I felt like you were a worthy successor to your (and my) feminist singer-songwriter icons Joni Mitchell and Kate Bush. Your first four albums – <i>Debut, Post</i>, <i>Homogenic </i>and <i>Vespertine</i> – were each more wondrous than the last, as were the videos that accompanied the singles. As for your performance and soundtrack for Lars Von Trier’s <i>Dancer in the Dark</i>: I can still remember sitting in the cinema in devastated silence long after the film had ended. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">I have to admit that you lost me for a while when you released <i><span lang="EN-GB">Medúlla</span></i>, followed by <i>Volta</i> and <i>Biophilia</i>. I also had trouble getting on board the Nissan Maru with you and Matthew Barney for <i>Drawing Restraint #9</i>. I loved the soundtrack, but I was repelled by Barney’s self-absorbed aesthetic and fetishistic appropriation of Japanese culture, not to mention the uneasy sense of complicity and exploitation I felt while watching the two of you enact your nuptial rituals onboard a Japanese industrial whaling ship However ironic or critical your intentions, it seemed like an act of artistic hubris and political naivety, especially for someone like yourself with a professed commitment to the environment and biodiversity. More generally, I found myself troubled by an element of self-importance that seemed to have crept into your work, and a loss of the sense of humour and playfulness I’d always loved about you before.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">However, you won me back with your post-Barney breakup album <i>Vulnicura, </i>which felt like a return to <i>Vespertine</i>’s sense of intimacy and personal revelation, and its follow-up album <i>Utopia’s</i> transcendent embrace of love and nature in all their forms. More recently <i>Fossora </i>seemed like an airy expansion of that vision, while also<i> </i>including some of your most personal tracks yet; I especially loved your elegy for your activist mother, ‘Ancestress’. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">So it was with great expectations that I attended your much heralded and critically hailed visual and musical extravaganza <i>Cornucopia.</i> I found myself sitting about halfway back – that is to say, in the back row of the ground-level seating, just in front of the rear, tiered sections – in the huge five-thousand seat pavilion at Langley Park which was apparently designed and constructed according to your specifications. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">As a result I felt less immersed in the experience than I imagine would have been the case had I been sitting closer to the stage. I could barely see you in the distance over the heads of the rows of audience sitting in front of me; to be brutally honest a regular stadium would have provided better sightlines. In any case you were totally dwarfed and often completely obscured by the digital art projected onto the curtain of ropes in front of the stage as well as the screens on either side and behind you. As for the video content itself, this was impressive for a while, but eventually became a bit like watching an endless series of screen savers interspersed with clips from your music videos, and hardly included any live coverage of you or your fellow musicians.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">I’m sure the designer costumes and masks worn by you all were marvellous, but I couldn’t really see them either; and while the choreographed antics of the female flute septet in their fairy wings provided some visual and comic relief, there was otherwise little to engage me in terms of what I could see onstage. As for the blinding lights that were blasted into the audience at regular intervals, these had two young fans sitting beside me cowering and covering their eyes.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">This visual onslaught was reinforced by the rolling waves of incoherent and indiscriminate sound delivered by the (again apparently specially designed) surround-sound system, which added an extra layer of reverb to the already dense of mix of live and prerecorded sources. A friend later remarked that all of this made her feel a bit seasick. The effect was exacerbated by the occasionally out-of-synch video clips. In fact as I increasingly withdrew internally from the experience I found myself wondering if I’d be better off watching and listening to your music videos in a well-designed surround-sound cinema.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">As for the music itself:<i> </i>I was more than happy with the selection of songs, predominantly drawn from <i>Utopia</i> and supplemented by some additions from <i>Fossora</i>, as well as some interesting new arrangements of some of my favourite hits from your back catalogue like ‘Isabel’, ‘Hidden Place’<i> </i>and ‘Pagan Poetry’. I also enjoyed the instrumentation and musicianship – especially from the septet of flautists, the harpist, the drummer/percussionist (mostly using an electronic drumkit, but with some occasionally intriguing additions), and the 18-voice choir (also dressed in white and wearing golden masks and headgear) who opened and closed the concert, as well as augmenting what was for me a stand-out central performance of ‘Body Memory’ from <i>Utopia</i> (the video art for this was also amazing, with what looked like hordes of dancers appearing at the base of the screens and then slowly floating upwards like souls towards the gates of Heaven).<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">However, the strange sense of your ‘live absence’ (as opposed to the virtual presence of your digital avatars onscreen) was reinforced by your frequent disappearances into a specially designed reverb chamber cocoon, as well as the fact that neither you nor the musicians interacted with us throughout the show, apart from the four-word ‘Thank you for tonight’ you left us with in parting. You didn’t even bother to return for the encore, which was valiantly performed by the choir without you, in what must be the most abrupt ending to any live gig I’ve ever attended.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">As for the video of Greta Thunberg delivering a variation on her now-all-too-familiar speech about climate change which was projected across the rope curtains just before that encore: the whoops and cheers from the audience in response made me feel like I was at an eco-revivalist tent rally of the culture-knowledge class faithful blindly signalling their collective virtue and worshipping their celebrity saint – all the while blithely ignoring the apparent contradiction between your fantasy of saving the planet by becoming one with nature and the massive use of sound, lighting and audio-visual technology involved in your <i>Cornucopia</i> travelling show. I wanted less of all that, and more of what makes you special: your astounding voice, your glorious music (without all those layers of reverb) and your pagan poetry.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">I remain as ever</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Your devoted but brutally honest fan</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Wolfgang.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">*</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEizmAMyF_ozXMLFA33WgAWEKgSgHG8rtMSNwAptth93qhRw6P20O7LH8pPT9rZeYQicOrpAOb8YzuSPLfiipkPX-9ufaYW5OwYobggGuzM5nDgQHvmIyAE8T_xKwewvcaDTSUMntf4YE8fGxS1hMpm9bCzura5TENLbPdki25wIJDUrsfeVOFUbETCj" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="583" data-original-width="1300" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEizmAMyF_ozXMLFA33WgAWEKgSgHG8rtMSNwAptth93qhRw6P20O7LH8pPT9rZeYQicOrpAOb8YzuSPLfiipkPX-9ufaYW5OwYobggGuzM5nDgQHvmIyAE8T_xKwewvcaDTSUMntf4YE8fGxS1hMpm9bCzura5TENLbPdki25wIJDUrsfeVOFUbETCj=w400-h180" width="400" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Wolfgang von Flügelhorn is a writer and critic based in Perth, Western Australia. He was born and raised in Flügelhorn, a small town in Upper Austria, in 1963. After finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of Lower Flügelhorn he completed his doctoral thesis at Cambridge on the later Wittgenstein and the phenomenology of language games (<i>Der später Wittgenstein und die Phänomenologie den Sprachspielen, </i>unpublished) under the supervision of Wittgenstein’s literary executor Elizabeth Anscombe, whose famous paper ‘The First Person’ argues that the pronoun ‘I’ does not refer to anything. On returning to Austria he was the lead vocalist and flugelhorn player in Viennese prog-rock/jazz-fusion band The Flaming Squirrels <i>(Die Flammende Eichhörnchen)</i>, in which capacity as the band’s front-man he developed a unique form of contemporary folk dance combining elements inspired by Isadora Duncan with the traditional Austrian Schuhplattler<i>. </i>He left Austria and went into voluntary exile in 2000 after the formation of the far-right coalition federal government, vowing never to return. He is currently editor of the <i>Zeitschrift für Unsozialforschung</i> (Journal of Anti-Social Research) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Lower Flügelhorn where he holds a chair (remotely) in Paranormal Phenomenology while engaging his core muscles for two minutes every day. He is the author of several monographs including <i>Unlogische Untersuchungen</i> (<i>Illogical Investigations</i>),<i>Unzeitlich</i> <i>Sein </i>(<i>Not Being On Time</i>) and <i>Wahnsinn und Methode</i> (<i>Madness and Method</i>), all of which have been translated into English by his friend and colleague Humphrey Bower but none of which has yet been published in any language. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Humphrey Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03841050029169012878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962718407053988991.post-1632258402830253822023-03-05T16:35:00.000-08:002023-03-05T16:35:09.078-08:00<h1 style="text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Kronos Quartet</span></h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Perth Concert Hall<br />Perth Festival</h2><h4 style="text-align: left;">Reviewed by Wolfgang von Flügelhorn</h4><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhpAr6CF36O76tTPFbxV3F6Jc1We70fNlgDC-r6BM1rpXy-dxBPqH909JdlgAG4mBPo1Qx0pVC6qeydMqt7lvVUDB512FC9ZJJeUgZ9YmF_Ur-bDjTjXYGuoTpZh6glkXk49CBpfZIrKU8P3hmz_7dJMReXDXzm0LGHXJHsFPq32iukHVM2U-qG54XV" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="3505" data-original-width="5258" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhpAr6CF36O76tTPFbxV3F6Jc1We70fNlgDC-r6BM1rpXy-dxBPqH909JdlgAG4mBPo1Qx0pVC6qeydMqt7lvVUDB512FC9ZJJeUgZ9YmF_Ur-bDjTjXYGuoTpZh6glkXk49CBpfZIrKU8P3hmz_7dJMReXDXzm0LGHXJHsFPq32iukHVM2U-qG54XV=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The Kronos Quartet are the rock stars of contemporary classical music. Original members David Harrington (first violin), John Sherber (second violin) and Hank Dutt (viola) have been playing together since 1973, and at least for this old Gen X former prog-rocker they still haven’t lost their cool. They belong to the same generation as comparably influential and wide-ranging figures in avant-garde popular music like David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno or David Byrne. Unlike those artists, Kronos are primarily interpreters of the music of others; but just as Bowie or Gabriel continually reinvented themselves and their sound, so Kronos have progressively embraced a breadth of repertoire which is surely unparalleled among classical ensembles, extending from medieval and Renaissance music to the various strands of 20<sup>th</sup> century modernism and postmodernism (largely skipping over the Classical and Romantic repertoire) as well as arrangements of world music and tracks by Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin. In so doing they’ve expanded the possibilities of what a string quartet can play or even sound like; the only comparable classical music ensemble I can think of would be the Australian Chamber Orchestra.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Like other great classical ensembles (and rock bands) of their generation, Kronos have resisted the temptation to cultivate an excessively blended or polished sound; instead they’ve retained and even refined their own sharply individuated voices. As became apparent during the concert, Harrington can still coax the wildest sounds from his violin; Sherber is an incisive, almost astringent counterpart as a second fiddle; and despite his deadpan demeanour, Dutt is surely the funkiest viola player on the planet. This ethos of diversity in unity extends to their new cellist Paul Wiancko, who played with enormous delicacy and finesse, and who briefly became the star of the evening in the second half of the concert when the quartet played George Crumb’s <i>Black Angels</i>, which in its third and final movement features haunting extended solo cello passages eerily backed by the other three players playing water-tuned crystal glasses.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Like the ACO, Kronos have also enjoyed long-term relationships with established and emerging composers and played a key role in commissioning new works. Most recently they’ve embarked on a project called <i>50 for the Future</i>, commissioning and recording fifty new works in a huge variety of genres and making these – together with sheet music and supporting material – freely available online, with the intention of inspiring and enabling future musicians to carry the torch of tradition and innovation into the 21<sup>st</sup> Century. A selection from this body of work formed the bulk of the first (and for me most successful) section of their Five Decades Tour recital at Perth Concert Hall. Indeed I almost wished they’d devoted the entire concert to this new repertoire, perhaps supplemented by a few choice items from their back catalogue – but more of that later.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The opening selection of works from <i>50 for the Future </i>showed off the quartet’s and the new repertoire’s variety of sounds and styles. West African singer-songwriter Angélique Kidjo’s <i>YanYanKliYan Senamido #2 </i>was a gently swaying piece based on traditional Beninese vocal music, with Kronos nimbly accommodating its complex syncopations and cross-rhythms. Next came Indonesian composer Peni Candra Rini’s <i>Maduswara</i>, a moody and atmospheric work that featured weirdly sliding microtones, insect-like patterns of ostinato, an occasional burst of percussion or shouting, and a background field recording of burbling frogs and the sounds of a gathering storm. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">This was followed by Serbian émigré composer Aleksandra Vrebalov’s <i>My Desert, My Rose</i>, an emotionally and physically gripping piece with scooping melodic fragments of lamentation and increasingly insistent rhythms that reminded me of Balkan or Romani folk music and took things to another level of intensity. After this, electronic musician Jlin’s <i>Little Black Book </i>gave things a darker and more contemporary urban edge, at times almost sounding like a nerve-wracked film score by Bernard Hermann.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">An excerpt from Canadian composer John Oswald’s <i>Spectre</i> (which was written for Kronos in 1990) was a little more conceptual, beginning with the quartet ‘tuning up’ and then launching one by one into a series of long held notes and tremolos, to which overdubs were added until they became a 1000-piece-string-orchestral version of themselves, the whole piece building to a shattering tsunami of sound. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The quartet were then joined by twelve musicians from the University of Western Australia, the Western Australia Academy of Performing Art and the Western Australian Youth Orchestra in a generously conceived performance of Philip Glass’s <i>Quartet Satz</i>, another work commissioned for the <i>50 for the Future </i>project<i>. </i>Glass has written for and been championed by Kronos since their inception; this particular work had a lightness and lyricism that made it an ideal pedagogical exercise, as well as being a homage to the composer’s longstanding relationship with the quartet (and more distantly to Schubert’s unfinished and similarly titled masterpiece).<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The last item in the first half of the program was a new work by local Noongar composer, musician and scholar Maatakitj (Dr Clint Bracknell) commissioned for Kronos by Perth Festival and entitled <i>Bindari (thunderstorm).</i> The quartet were joined onstage by Maatakitj, alongside fellow Indigenous performer Rubeun Yorkshire leading five <o:p></o:p>other young First Nations dancers. Personally I found all these elements made for a slightly awkward and uncomfortable fit; but it was warmly embraced by the audience and the quartet, who vigorously lent their instruments to sounds and rhythms that would traditionally be made by voices and clapsticks.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">After interval came a dramatic change in tone, substance and scale with a highly charged, sombrely lit and elaborately staged performance of <i>Black Angels</i>, which began with the quartet’s four instruments hanging from wires like corpses waiting to be brought back to life<i>. </i>Crumb’s macabre anti-war masterpiece for amplified string quartet also involves a battery of percussion and other sound objects – including gongs, maracas and an array of water-tuned crystal glasses (which were initially concealed beneath black cloths on tables upstage). The work was written in 1970 in response to the Vietnam War but also evokes other atrocities – not least with its outbursts of shouted or whispered counting in various languages, its sinister musical references to Schubert’s <i>Death and the Maiden</i> and the <i>Dies Irae</i>, and its terrifying high-pitched vibrato swoops and screeches on the upper strings, as well as other unconventional bowing techniques and tapping effects on the strings and fingerboards. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">It’s an extreme work – one that apparently inspired Harrington to form the quartet when he first heard it on the radio – and has become something of a Kronos signature piece since they first performed and later recorded it; so it felt like a harsh but appropriate way to close the program. To my taste, it’s almost impossible to listen to anything afterwards; to paraphrase Adorno’s dictum about writing poetry after Auschwitz, to play an encore after <i>Black Angels</i> is almost more barbaric than the work itself. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">So it felt like a false step to me when the work was followed by not one but two encores. The first was a ‘remixed’ version of the Tune-Yards track ‘Colonisation’, for which the quartet were rejoined by Maatakitj on vocals and clapsticks, alongside dancer Yorkshire in body paint, all of which again felt a bit clumsy and inept to me – though again, the audience were enthusiastic. The final encore was an arrangement of Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’ as sung by Janis Joplin, which in contrast seemed like a tasteless display of self-indulgence – especially coming after <i>Black Angels</i> – notwithstanding the incredible sounds Harrington wrung from his violin, which indeed sounded uncannily like Joplin. If anything, I felt, the only appropriate piece to play after <i>Black Angels </i>would have been something more minimalist and healing, like Kronos’s equally iconic version of Arvo Pärt’s <i>Fratres</i> – perhaps preceded by their searing arrangement of Jimi Hendrix’s <i>Star Spangled Banner</i> or <i>Purple Haze</i>. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">In sum, then: phenomenal playing by one of the great ensembles of our time, in a pot-pourri of a program which didn’t quite cohere for me despite some effective moments and thrilling highlights. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">*<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhmxoHteR_0OsXOkcwHm-K8b9ZiRnZiRaYotadGsilNwv2j1dFygydu5l60-rXo3VBd2UFA7vPGbOzIOmg7oUTynn6qAvH83J6x5T6ARLu3zA5-rr9LSkVDuZNRLwG6HN8Us9FICabXiIavTezQKDCK3lXngO7Sp71iC7-Ld0k2rJ_-6KdYf4hz8tfx" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="583" data-original-width="1300" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhmxoHteR_0OsXOkcwHm-K8b9ZiRnZiRaYotadGsilNwv2j1dFygydu5l60-rXo3VBd2UFA7vPGbOzIOmg7oUTynn6qAvH83J6x5T6ARLu3zA5-rr9LSkVDuZNRLwG6HN8Us9FICabXiIavTezQKDCK3lXngO7Sp71iC7-Ld0k2rJ_-6KdYf4hz8tfx=w400-h180" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Wolfgang von Flügelhorn is a writer and critic based in Perth, Western Australia. He was born and raised in Flügelhorn, a small town in Upper Austria, in 1963. After finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of Lower Flügelhorn he completed his doctoral thesis at Cambridge on the later Wittgenstein and the phenomenology of language games (<i>Der später Wittgenstein und die Phänomenologie den Sprachspielen, </i>unpublished). On returning to Austria he was the lead vocalist and flugelhorn player in Viennese prog-rock/jazz-fusion band The Flaming Squirrels <i>(Die Flammende Eichhörnchen). </i>He left Austria and went into voluntary exile in 2000 after the formation of the far-right coalition federal government, vowing never to return. He is currently editor of the <i>Zeitschrift für Unsozialforschung</i> (Journal of Anti-Social Research) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Lower Flügelhorn where he holds a chair (remotely) in Paranormal Phenomenology while engaging his core muscles for two minutes every day. He is the author of several monographs including <i>Unlogische Untersuchungen</i> (<i>Illogical Investigations</i>),<i> Unzeitlich</i> <i>Sein </i>(<i>Not Being On Time</i>) and <i>Wahnsinn und Methode</i> (<i>Madness and Method</i>), all of which have been translated into English by his friend and colleague Humphrey Bower but none of which has yet been published in any language. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><u><o:p> </o:p></u></p>Humphrey Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03841050029169012878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962718407053988991.post-65604712283896822852023-03-04T21:57:00.004-08:002023-03-04T21:57:51.581-08:00<h1 style="text-align: left;"><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The Cage Project</i></h1><h2 style="text-align: left;">Cédric Tiberghien and Matthias Schack-Arnott<br />Perth Concert Hall<br />Perth Festival</h2><h3 style="text-align: left;">Reviewed by Wolfgang von Flügelhorn</h3><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjlRjgOupYZQT8EEJq1lpGItWdL3pBGZNVWAfmm8IfwF5wCQ9aDeERbmdhXKNDVaU5CJlDEZAinQr3oWHdRBUyLm5FoQFk2ey5o1ZIyt0yVN8twzXcRcwgIJ1OUCgcJc853xsKfIuCDlFEvGWVZ4laTPhbi_afPbn_7yG-6V8-BbPVOk4OCA_l_a9GX" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="2400" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjlRjgOupYZQT8EEJq1lpGItWdL3pBGZNVWAfmm8IfwF5wCQ9aDeERbmdhXKNDVaU5CJlDEZAinQr3oWHdRBUyLm5FoQFk2ey5o1ZIyt0yVN8twzXcRcwgIJ1OUCgcJc853xsKfIuCDlFEvGWVZ4laTPhbi_afPbn_7yG-6V8-BbPVOk4OCA_l_a9GX=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The third and final week of Iain Grandage’s penultimate Perth Festival leans heavily into two of his strengths as an artist and curator: namely, First Nations performance (including the Australian Dance Theatre’s new work <i>Tracker</i> and BIGhART’s work-in-progress showing of <i>Punkaliyarra</i>) and contemporary music (with <i>The Cage Project</i>, Kronos Quartet and Linda May Han Oh’s <i>Ephemeral Echoes</i> all being performed on successive nights at Perth Concert Hall). One senses that having programmed some large-scale crowd-pleasers in the opening week (as well as the series of concerts by Björk that close the festival this weekend and continue next week), Grandage has reserved some of the works that are closest to his heart for this phase of the festival, when most of the big-ticket items have already landed (and mostly sold out).<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><i>The Cage Project</i> is a collaboration between French pianist Cédric Tiberghien and Melbourne-based percussionist and sound artist Matthias Schack-Arnott, whose companion piece <i>Everywhen</i> was performed at PICA last week. Both are solo performance works for a bespoke form of percussion orchestra which is also a composite visual art object. The works can thus be seen (and heard) as inventing a new genre of musical and visual assemblage, which adds the fourth (and performative) dimension of time to the usual three dimensions of sculpture. As such, Schack-Arnott follows in the footsteps of Cage himself, who was also deeply interested in visual and performance art, and who accepted his former teacher Schönberg’s description of him as an inventor rather than a composer (though like Schönberg he was surely both).<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">In the case of <i>The Cage Project</i>, the musical and material substratum for Schack-Arnott’s visual-sonic assemblage is Cage’s <i>Sonatas and Interludes</i> for prepared piano. The original work was composed between 1946 and 1948, and Cage’s invention involved inserting found objects like screws, bolts and pieces of rubber or plastic onto or between the piano strings, so that some notes still sound like a piano while others sound more like plucked strings, bells, chimes, or gongs, or even lose their original frequency and sound like unidentifiable and untuned objects being tapped, rattled or struck. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">As for the music itself: at this stage in his career, Cage had not yet fully embraced his later aleatory aesthetic (although there’s still a crucial element of chance involved in the choice and positioning of the objects inserted into the piano, notwithstanding Cage’s detailed instructions). Each of the twenty pieces – sixteen ‘sonatas’ and four ‘interludes’ – is highly structured (the interludes are a little freer), with the musical proportions of each piece (both internally and in relation to the whole work) having a complex mathematical pattern based on randomly chosen numbers and fractions.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">All this might sound rather cerebral, but the effect is engagingly playful, richly emotional and deeply meditative. Cage was inspired by the Indian philosophy of eight emotional <i>rasa</i> ‘flavours’ in art, ranging from the more ‘negative’ or ‘black’ emotions to the more ‘positive’ or ‘white’ ones, and leading to a ninth <i>navarasa</i> or state of tranquility. In terms of Western music, one hears echoes of Debussy and Ravel, Bartók and Stravinksy, Schönberg and Webern, as well as modern jazz – all played on what sounds like a Balinese gamelan orchestra with a conventionally tuned (if somewhat note-restricted) Western piano as part of the mix – and the more one surrenders to the experience, the more one is transported on a musical and spiritual journey. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">In this case, the experience was heightened by Schack-Arnott’s appropriately inventive addition to Cage’s original instrumentation. As with <i>Everywhen, </i>this took the form of a visual and sonic object that hung suspended above the performer and the piano, rotating slowly and randomly in response to currents of air generated by fans, and looking a bit like a huge chandelier or Alexander Calder mobile – or perhaps a revolving space station from Kubrick’s <i>2001</i>. The structure consisted of horizontal metal bars connected by wires, with various sound-objects attached like bronze plates, metal tubes, wooden planks and granite tiles; these were individually struck by mysterious robotic devices that were invisibly connected to and activated by the prepared piano keys (don’t ask me how). The entire apparatus was touch-sensitive in relation to Tiberghien’s playing and resonated without amplification in the characteristically warm yet detailed acoustics of the Perth Concert Hall. An additional layer of visual dynamics was provided by the lighting, which slowly shifted from overheads to floor lights and back again as the performance progressed, variously illuminating the revolving structure, the performer and piano, and the walls and ceiling – as well as resonating with the Festival theme of Djinda (stars) – until the final sonata saw Tiberghien’s face framed by a single light and surrounded by darkness. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Every aspect of <i>The Cage Project</i> reflected a deep sense of collaboration and mutual trust between Tiberghien and Schack-Arnott, as well as their shared love and understanding of Cage’s original work. The sense of dialogue between artists and across artforms as well as across time and space reminded me of Rilke’s poem ‘Lovesong’ about souls ‘swaying in time’ and ‘vibrating in sympathy’. We need such works in troubled times, and I applaud both the artists and Grandage for having faith in them.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhsDOQU0vCN883mFZmR1Cj4GrTfCmlBAlXIu1mbzKmcBd17T5j3KFieGNqu1D0NGEruEc-Znp9-5-D9Bchpujj8a04PQjzot_z4OkT17adzeW_JXYqcoYcb4B8TR_4jwIBtzbKCDdeRsbWczAV9Qa7xRqw8cGT8Itww7BtJXJt5gaRxDulK_-6LYrRw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2400" data-original-width="2362" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhsDOQU0vCN883mFZmR1Cj4GrTfCmlBAlXIu1mbzKmcBd17T5j3KFieGNqu1D0NGEruEc-Znp9-5-D9Bchpujj8a04PQjzot_z4OkT17adzeW_JXYqcoYcb4B8TR_4jwIBtzbKCDdeRsbWczAV9Qa7xRqw8cGT8Itww7BtJXJt5gaRxDulK_-6LYrRw" width="236" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">*<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Wolfgang von Flügelhorn is a writer and critic based in Perth, Western Australia. He was born and raised in Flügelhorn, a small town in Upper Austria, in 1963. After finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of Lower Flügelhorn he completed his doctoral thesis at Cambridge on the later Wittgenstein and the phenomenology of language games (<i>Der später Wittgenstein und die Phänomenologie den Sprachspielen, </i>unpublished) under the supervision of Wittgenstein’s literary executor Elizabeth Anscombe, whose famous paper ‘The First Person’ argues that the pronoun ‘I’ does not refer to anything. On returning to Austria he wasthe lead vocalist and flugelhorn player in Viennese prog-rock/jazz-fusion band The Flaming Squirrels <i>(Die Flammende Eichhörnchen). </i>He left Austria and went into voluntary exile in 2000 after the formation of the far-right coalition federal government, vowing never to return. He is currently editor of the <i>Zeitschrift für Unsozialforschung</i> (Journal of Anti-Social Research) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Lower Flügelhorn where he holds a chair (remotely) in Paranormal Phenomenology while engaging his core muscles for two minutes every day. He is the author of several monographs including <i>Unlogische Untersuchungen</i> (<i>Illogical Investigations</i>),<i> Unzeitlich</i> <i>Sein </i>(<i>Not Being On Time</i>) and <i>Wahnsinn und Methode</i> (<i>Madness and Method</i>), all of which have been translated into English by his friend and colleague Humphrey Bower but none of which has yet been published in any language. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Humphrey Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03841050029169012878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962718407053988991.post-6457528782118069292023-03-01T17:51:00.007-08:002023-03-01T23:30:13.248-08:00<h1 style="text-align: left;"><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">All the Beauty and the Bloodshed</i></h1><h2 style="text-align: left;">Lotterywest Films<br />Perth Festival</h2><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><o:p>Reviewed by Wolfgang von Flügelhorn</o:p></h3><div><o:p><br /></o:p></div><div><o:p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgTalBjJaJgapNDbgP3jY3bPQNjX8RoF3VPQc4LMbo5KZ10-j_oknDVJewzTn9pViWPrr7UUoiW9J2qE5S3TJ7KWoBUk690o3A_4sxbU-fZrSZlMOv3PrpD_iUYEvoCOkX04KM_kJHwWFKoPgJp-6xyIMjOacAooL5hUkYaUgpOovNyYoo98fNuc6_m" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="176" data-original-width="286" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgTalBjJaJgapNDbgP3jY3bPQNjX8RoF3VPQc4LMbo5KZ10-j_oknDVJewzTn9pViWPrr7UUoiW9J2qE5S3TJ7KWoBUk690o3A_4sxbU-fZrSZlMOv3PrpD_iUYEvoCOkX04KM_kJHwWFKoPgJp-6xyIMjOacAooL5hUkYaUgpOovNyYoo98fNuc6_m=w400-h246" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /></div></o:p></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Laura Poitras’s multilayered documentary about the artist and activist Nan Goldin’s campaign against the Sattler family – and their complicity in the opioid epidemic that’s currently claimed over 500,000 lives in the US – has three intertwining strands. As a work of political reportage, an artistic biography and a family history, at times it almost feels like three different films. However it’s an important archival work that deserves to be seen by everyone interested in Goldin or the opioid crisis – which it must be emphasised is far from over, notwithstanding the effectiveness of her campaign. It also raises interesting questions about the genre of ‘artist documentaries’ and the complex interrelations between the artistic, the personal and the political.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The Sattlers are (or were) the owners of Purdue Pharma and owe their family fortune to the manufacture and distribution of OxyContin, a 'controlled-release' painkiller which the company aggressively marketed despite its addictive properties and potentially deadly effects. They’ve also donated millions to leading art museums and institutions, and until recently the family name adorned countless collections and walls. Goldin on the other hand is a leading figure in contemporary art who also happens to be a recovered OxyContin addict. In 2017 she set up an organisation called <i>Prescription Addiction Intervention Now</i> (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.A.I.N." title="P.A.I.N."><span color="windowtext" style="text-decoration: none;">P.A.I.N.</span></a>) and began staging mass protests inside those same museums and institutions in order to pressure them to divest themselves of Sattler money and all connection with the Sattler name. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">This strand of the film features gripping footage – much of it shot by Goldin herself on her smart phone – of those protests in action, beginning with the scattering of hundreds of empty Oxycontin bottles followed by a mass ‘die-in’ in front of the Ancient Egyptian Temple of Dendur which is housed in the Sackler Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The film then documents the campaign’s success through meetings and other tactics such as Goldin’s threat to cancel a proposed retrospective of her work at the National Portrait Gallery in London, as well as further protests at the Guggenheim and elsewhere. One by one institutions like the Met, the Guggenheim, the National Portrait Gallery, the Louvre and the Tate all cut their ties with the Sattlers and sandblast their name from the walls. Meanwhile Goldin and her organisation pursue Purdue Pharma and the Sattlers in the courts, leading to the bankruptcy of the company. The family themselves escape criminal liability, but in some of the most powerful footage of the film they’re compelled to attend an online meeting with survivors of the epidemic – including the parents of those who’ve died – and to listen to their testimony about how the drug has destroyed their lives, and their blistering face-to-face condemnation of the Sattlers for their responsibility.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The second, more biographical and ‘artistic’ layer of the film covers Goldin’s life and work, from her childhood in suburban Massachusetts in the 1950s to her years in downtown Boston and later New York City in the 70s and 80s as a photographer documenting herself and her friends in the drag-queen and queer community, including the years when that community was decimated by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This strand is broken up into chronological sections and consists of archival footage and ‘slideshows’ by (or in the style of) Goldin herself, including some of her most iconic images and image-sequences, and accompanied by voiceovers (mostly by Goldin) and a soundtrack (also chosen by Goldin) featuring music from the successive eras being covered (bands like The Velvet Underground, Television and Blondie feature heavily).<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Goldin’s photography was itself deeply influenced by cinema – in particular the early films of Andy Warhol, John Waters and Larry Clarke – and largely consists of snapshots of friends and lovers (as well as Goldin herself) in unstaged and unguarded moments of action or repose. The images dispense with traditional or ‘artistic’ lighting or framing, and their subjects offer themselves to be seen – and often look back at the viewer – in an open, honest, sometimes confronting and always powerful way, no matter what they’re doing or wearing, and however intimate or revealing. Goldin insists that she always asked her friends’ permission before showing their photographs publicly, and this in turn enhances the consensual way they show themselves in the photos. The sense of equality and shared experience between her ‘outsider’ subjects and Goldin herself as a fellow ‘insider-outsider’ is palpable, and differentiates her work from someone like Diane Arbus, who also focussed on marginalised communities, but arguably did so in a more objectifying and voyeuristic way.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Despite the apparently spontaneous nature of Goldin’s photos, recognisable themes emerge: sexual freedom and gender-playfulness, certainly, but also pain and abuse<i>. </i>It’s as if there’s a level of trauma that’s been inflicted on Goldin and her subjects because of their refusal to conform to sexual and gender norms and stereotypes, and which resurfaces in their relationships with each other and themselves. This sense of shared trauma gives the photos their sense of subjectivity and compassion, and pierces the viewer in a way that evokes what Roland Barthes called the ‘punctum’ of photographs, in addition to their literal subject matter or ‘studium’. This is especially apparent in Goldin’s 1986 slideshow sequence <i>The Ballad of Sexual Dependency</i> – perhaps most indelibly in the self-portrait of her own battered face after a sexually addictive relationship had come to a violent end.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><i> </i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">However the key section in this strand of the film documents the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 80s on Goldin and her community, not only in terms of illness and death (as she says in the film, ‘I watched almost everyone I knew die’), but also in terms of the indifference and contempt (not to mention fear and hatred) that HIV-positive artists and other communities experienced on the part of the government – as well as the rest of so-called civil society, from pharmaceutical companies to churches and families – during the Reagan era and the rise of neoconservatism that provided the ideological ballast for Reagan’s cynically titled ‘morning in America’ re-election campaign in 1984, while effectively consigning hundreds of thousands of people to their deaths. It’s here that this second, artist-biographical strand of the film links up with the first, more overtly ‘political’ strand about OxyContin, and the parallel narratives of the two epidemics – opioids and HIV/AIDS – become a single story of artistic and political resistance to social stigmatisation, which according to Goldin herself is the guiding thread in her work as an artist and activist. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Her photos during this period focus not so much on the physical manifestations of the disease itself as on the lives and relationships of long-term friends who were HIV-positive. As such they are filled with beauty and tenderness; and she sharply distinguished them from the work of photographers who went into hospitals to take pictures of dying people they didn’t know. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">A key episode in this narrative is the exhibition <i>Witnesses Against Our Vanishings</i>, which Goldin curated at the Artists Space in New York in 1989 in response to HIV/AIDS; and in particular the HIV-positive artist David Wojnarowicz’s refusal to modify his text for that exhibition ‘Fat cannibals in black skirts’ (referring to sexual abuse by high ranking members of the Catholic clergy), despite pressure from the management of the venue to censor it. This led to Goldin’s ‘Days Without Art’ protest-actions, which involved covering statues in museums with black cloth –clearly foreshadowing the ‘die-in’ protests she later organised against the Sattler family with P.A.I.N. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The third and most deeply personal layer in the film – which also provides a crucial link between the other two strands – is the story of Goldin’s older sister Barbara, whose sexuality and independent personality led to her being sent away from the family home to a psychiatric institution as a teenager, and who killed herself at the age of 18 by lying down on the commuter train tracks outside Washington when Goldin was only 11. The film presents this as the defining trauma of Goldin’s life and work as an artist and an activist; towards the end of the film, we see images from Goldin’s 2006 exhibition <i>Chasing Ghosts</i>, juxtaposing family snapshots with contemporary photographs and video footage of empty landscapes and railway tracks, recalling the photos of empty rooms she started taking after her friend the actor and writer Cookie Müller died of AIDS in 1989. These images of absence recall the closing shots of deserted locations where the protagonist-lovers have met throughout the film at the end of Antonioni’s <i>L’eclisse</i>, and evoke the aura of memory, transience, nostalgia and loss that haunts all of Goldin’s work, and which is arguably intrinsic to the medium of photography and film.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Poitras is a political reporter as well as being a filmmaker and artist in her own right – she founded the online news service <i>The Intercept</i> and is well known for her role in receiving and publishing national security documents leaked by Edward Snowden, as well as for her films about Snowden and Julian Assange; and she also created an immersive and interactive solo exhibition of documentary material at the Whitney Museum in 2016 entitled <i>Astro Noise</i>; so it’s fair to assume that she’s responsible for the overall form of the film, even if Goldin provided most of the visual and aural substance. My sense is that Poitras’s aesthetic is more formal and controlled than Goldin’s radically uncontainable energy and wildness, and there’s a certain tension between these two artistic forces in the film. This tension is most evident in the second, artist-biographical strand, where the difference between Poitras’s aesthetic and Goldin’s inevitably becomes most apparent. Overall, Poitras’s film is also more conventional than Goldin in terms of its psychology and politics. In short: Poitras relies on a familiar progressive and character-based narrative about overcoming personal trauma and slaying the corporate dragon, whereas Goldin’s work is far more ambiguous and disturbing– which arguably accounts for its political subversiveness, as well as its enduring sadness and beauty.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">*<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Wolfgang von Flügelhorn is a writer and critic based in Perth, Western Australia. He was born and raised in Flügelhorn, a small town in Upper Austria, in 1963. After finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of Lower Flügelhorn he completed his doctoral thesis at Cambridge on the later Wittgenstein and the phenomenology of language games (<i>Der später Wittgenstein und die Phänomenologie den Sprachspielen, </i>unpublished) under the supervision of Wittgenstein’s literary executor Elizabeth Anscombe, whose famous paper ‘The First Person’ argues that the pronoun ‘I’ does not refer to anything.<i> </i>He left Austria and went into voluntary exile in 2000 after the formation of the far-right coalition federal government, vowing never to return. He is currently editor of the <i>Zeitschrift für Unsozialforschung</i> (Journal of Anti-Social Research) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Lower Flügelhorn where he holds a chair (remotely) in Paranormal Phenomenology while engaging his core muscles for two minutes every day. He is the author of several monographs including <i>Unlogische Untersuchungen</i> (<i>Illogical Investigations</i>),<i> Unzeitlich</i> <i>Sein </i>(<i>Not Being On Time</i>) and <i>Wahnsinn und Methode</i> (<i>Madness and Method</i>), all of which have been translated into English by his friend and colleague Humphrey Bower but none of which has yet been published in any language. <o:p></o:p></p>Humphrey Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03841050029169012878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962718407053988991.post-79430536473787623552023-02-27T07:31:00.019-08:002023-02-27T20:27:50.460-08:00<h1 style="text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Writers Weekend: Steadfast As The Stars</span></h1><h2 style="text-align: left;">Perth Festival</h2><h2 style="text-align: left;">Fremantle Arts Centre</h2><h3 style="text-align: left;">Reviewed by Wolfgang von Flügelhorn</h3><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgAGXWbRGO12_Spxz_6Q1q7eCT_w7i7UzEhsnYv0sWEC7gXTdIYio-o5WZonwvRfE5d55fujj-MOovaJi-nGWiFR-Ehyukol-VTdwrl-eZmN7p6m528-Z2IEgGvSoRVqH5Rn1ArKU1tk9XUdF9qYUtp_Tz_1RB19inPkJHkMHEBc7ykkXBeGp3vK6XV" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="749" data-original-width="1196" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgAGXWbRGO12_Spxz_6Q1q7eCT_w7i7UzEhsnYv0sWEC7gXTdIYio-o5WZonwvRfE5d55fujj-MOovaJi-nGWiFR-Ehyukol-VTdwrl-eZmN7p6m528-Z2IEgGvSoRVqH5Rn1ArKU1tk9XUdF9qYUtp_Tz_1RB19inPkJHkMHEBc7ykkXBeGp3vK6XV=w400-h250" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">In celestial harmony with the 2023 Perth Festival theme of Djinda, this year’s Writers Weekend bore the Shakespearian-sounding subtitle: ‘Steadfast As The Stars’. Curated by Perth-based South African author Sisonke Msimang (who's also Head of Storytelling at the Centre for Stories in Northbridge), the weekend was hosted by Fremantle Arts Centre, and sessions were dispersed across the front garden, lawns and inner courtyard of that imposing complex of colonial gothic architecture, which was built using convict labour and originally served as the Fremantle Lunatic Asylum – and later as ‘housing’ for homeless and ‘delinquent’ women. It’s now a place of tranquil beauty and a hive of artistic activity, but like so many convict-era sites it’s also steeped in a history of sadness and torment. To paraphrase Walter Benjamin, there's no monument to culture which isn't also a monument to barbarity. I felt the same way the first time I visited Melk, a popular tourist destination in my native land of Lower Austria, with its beautiful baroque monastery overlooking the Danube, and noticed a small memorial plaque to the forced labour camp of Mauthausen-Melk with its gas chamber and crematorium, the entrance to which faced directly onto one of the main roads, much like Fremantle Arts Centre. As such the latter was an appropriate setting for the constellation of thoughtful lectures, conversations and readings I attended, with the twin themes of social justice and cultural democracy emerging as a discernible pattern to guide me through the weekend.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">I started my journey in the Inner Courtyard with Perth poet and performance maker Andrew Sutherland’s Randolph Stow Memorial Lecture. Sutherland’s recently published debut collection <i>Paradise (points of transmission) </i>is a brilliant and mordant series of poetic reflections on his ongoing experience as someone who identifies as a Queer-Poz PLHIV (person living with HIV), and who divides his time between Perth and Singapore. His perspective and writing style provided a fascinating prism through which to review Stow’s work as well as (by implication at least) his life as a gay man from an earlier (and more 'silent') generation who struggled not only sexually but also culturally and geographically with his ongoing search for a place to belong. As the scion of a White settler family who (like Sutherland) grew up in Geraldton and the Mid West, Stow spent time living and working on an Aboriginal mission in the Kimberley and as an anthropologist’s assistant and patrol officer in the Trobriand Islands before relocating to his ancestral homeland in Suffolk and finally settling in Harwich – all of which provided the background material for his novels and poetry. For his part, Sutherland mobilised tropes of virality, invasion, colonisation, appropriation, exile, blood and transmission – as well as identity and desire – in order to read Stow against the grain and talk back to him. His lecture was in effect a kind of ‘infected tissue’ of quotations and original text, in which the borderlines between prose, poetry, Stow and Sutherland became effectively indeterminable. The entire performance inspired me to reread Stow (and Sutherland), in the happy certitude that I’ll never read either of them the same way again. As Stow writes at the end of his poem ‘Portrait of Luke’: ‘and the dolphins of his thought cannot obscure / (look down) the coral bones of all our ancestors.’<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">After this I relocated to the Front Garden for a conversation between Don Watson and Carmen Lawrence about Watson’s most recent book <i>The Passion of Private White</i>, which recounts the travails of his lifelong friend the anthropologist and Vietnam veteran Neville White, who has lived worked for many years alongside other former members of his platoon in a remote Aboriginal community in Arnhem Land. Watson’s characteristically self-mocking sense of humour unflinchingly identified patriarchy as the root cause of many problems shared by Settler and First Nations societies – at one point wryly opining that the only solution might be for men to die out, with the proviso that this mass extinction be deferred for about twenty more years. More seriously, he could scarcely conceal his underlying contempt for the bureaucratic inefficiency (and patronising racism) that continues to afflict Aboriginal people (and well-meaning allies like his friend White). Not for the last time in the sessions I attended, the question of an Aboriginal Voice to Parliament was raised and tentatively affirmed (with cautious reservations) as a possible circuit-breaker, if not indeed a ‘solution’ (a word which both Watson and Lawrence were rightly wary of). I also noted with approval Watson’s preference for ‘sympathy’ in place of the much-overused (and perhaps over-rated) term ‘empathy’; to my mind at least, the former implies a form of understanding that also acknowledges difference rather than simply feeling (or claiming to feel) someone else’s pain.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">I concluded my afternoon on Saturday back in the Inner Courtyard with Msimang and Egyptian-Danish-Australian journalist, photographer and fiction author Massoud Morsi in conversation with Tongan-Australian writer Winnie Dunn, who has edited a new anthology including stories by both of them and collectively titled <i>Another Australia</i>. Msimang and Morsi read extracts from their stories and were refreshingly candid about the challenges of being in interracial partnerships with multiracial children, and the complications of family life that ensue when issues of race (and racism) inevitably enter the picture. Love – it became apparent from their stories and anecdotes – is an ever-fixed star that looks on tempests and is never shaken (as some dead White male poet once wrote), but it’s no more of a ‘solution’ than sympathy or a Voice to Parliament. Msimang also voiced her own qualified support for a Voice, alongside a treaty and a process of truth-telling – with the proviso that based on her own experience in relation to post-apartheid South Africa as well as with friends and acquaintances in Australia, White people also need to give an account of their historical and personal complicity with racism, rather than Black people doing most of the work of remembering and reckoning with the past.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">I began Sunday morning on the South Lawn listening to Msimang in conversation with political reporter Amy Remeikis discussing the latter’s book <i>On Reckoning</i> about sexual assault and harassment in the corridors of power and elsewhere<i>. </i>Remeikis movingly shared her own story of assault and was passionately articulate about male dismissiveness of women’s anger – a discussion to which Msimang added complexity by raising the spectre of the ‘angry Black woman’ and the ways in which racism further divides and polices ‘acceptable’ behaviour. In her capacity as a storytelling mentor who frequently works with migrant women, Msimang also reflected on the need to speak or write about one’s scars, but not necessarily about one’s wounds, at least while they’re still raw. I couldn’t help thinking about the applicability of this remark to the way the criminal justice system currently handles allegations of rape and sexual abuse, and the harm it typically does to the victim regardless of the legal outcome.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Back in the Inner Courtyard, <i>Future Tense</i> was a panel discussion about how Australia might be changing (or failing to change) as a nation with specific reference to racial justice but also the environment and climate change. The panel included Noongar elder and organisational leader Carol Innes; two White female elders (and Professors Emeritus in their respective fields of Psychology, and Media and Culture) Carmen Lawrence and Julianne Schultz; and journalist and broadcaster Tabarak Al Jrood. The discussion was facilitated by fellow journalist Antoinette Lattouf, and all the panellists were clear-eyed and incisive about the work that still needs to be done. I was left with an overriding sense of urgency about restorative justice for First Nations people – with a yes-vote for the Voice again being affirmed by all on the panel – as well as the principle of Indigenous sovereignty and care for country as a precondition for any possible reversal of environmental and climate catastrophe. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The last session I attended (also in the Inner Courtyard) was a heartening return to the reading and discussion of poetry – albeit with an edge of social and cultural critique. <i>Dead Poets Society </i>was an exploration of poetic influences, once again featuring Sutherland alongside fellow WA-resident poets Tineke Van der Eecken and Nadia Rhook, and Noongar writer, editor and educator Casey Mulder, facilitated by another Perth-based writer and poet Elizabeth Lewis. Belgian-born Van der Eecken nominated Jacques Brel, and read samples of her own multilingual poetry, including the self-reflexive ‘On Language’ – inspired by Brel’s song ‘<i>Le plat pays’</i> and containing untranslated lines in Flemish and French that were a delight to surrender oneself to – followed by a playful ‘Ode to Jacques Brel’, containing a host of references to other Brel songs for anyone with ears to hear them. Sutherland spoke next, invoking the shades of precursors who had died of AIDS-related complications, including Malaysian-Singaporean-American poet and performance artist Justin Chin (who once famously proclaimed that ‘every work of art that works as art is a critique’); he then read his own hilarious and heart-rending poem ‘afterwards, bring me back as Tom Cruise’s wig in <i>Interview with the Vampire’.</i> Rhook ironically cited Dorothy Mackellar’s ‘My Country’ in order to reiterate the notion of ‘speaking back’ to the Anglo-Celtic colonial canon (much as Sutherland had done with Stow), before reading two poems from her own recent collection <i>Second Fleet Baby </i>that juxtaposed her own convict ancestry with her experience of becoming a ‘pandemic parent’, during which (as she writes in the closing lines of her poem ‘I offered advice’) she ‘read enough / experts / on / freedom / to understand that / it is the opposite to breath it / starts in / the mind then / travels / along / melodies / ancestors / out through the / mouth’. Finally Mulder spoke of overcoming her sense of imposter syndrome at being appointed First Nations Editor for Westerly Magazine, and encouraged other Indigenous writers to seize the power of the spoken and written word – as well as exhorting us Wadjellas to do our own research and stop asking her who were the latest Blak authors we should be reading in order to count ourselves as allies.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">*<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Wolfgang von Flügelhorn is a writer and critic based in Perth, Western Australia. He was born and raised in Flügelhorn, a small town in Upper Austria, in 1963. After finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of Lower Flügelhorn he completed his doctoral thesis at Cambridge on the later Wittgenstein and the phenomenology of language games (<i>Der später Wittgenstein und die Phänomenologie den Sprachspielen, </i>unpublished). He left Austria and went into voluntary exile in 2000 after the formation of the far-right coalition federal government, vowing never to return. He is currently editor of the <i>Zeitschrift für Unsozialforschung</i> (Journal of Anti-Social Research) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Lower Flügelhorn where he holds a chair remotely in Paranormal Phenomenology while engaging his core muscles for two minutes every day. He is the author of several monographs including <i>Unlogische Untersuchungen</i> (<i>Illogical Investigations</i>),<i> Unzeitlich</i> <i>Sein </i>(<i>Not Being On Time</i>) and <i>Wahnsinn und Methode</i> (<i>Madness and Method</i>), all of which have been translated into English by his friend and colleague Humphrey Bower but none of which has yet been published in any language. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Humphrey Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03841050029169012878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962718407053988991.post-89731130092315125602023-02-23T19:37:00.003-08:002023-02-25T18:01:30.457-08:00<h1 style="text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Equations Of A Falling Body/Everywhen</span></h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Perth Studio Underground/PICA<br />Perth Festival</h2><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Reviewed by Wolfgang von Flügelhorn</h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgxlb1wQr4wq7jr8UOPiyGRxwrWiZmb7yPVsnxb8K1oN15mfOAsMj9GskXqVpSZa_xNPofPnWRiPmUo-bUuzpauZJhs7Zdd8JgL4oIrlAeNnqehI0XGzqxyD2WpPd5qrEYtt-QtdoMIE6dJ2lOe0WsYBLbtfHchLkASOwW6yIv_cEMGm-1zPqFTsB4g" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgxlb1wQr4wq7jr8UOPiyGRxwrWiZmb7yPVsnxb8K1oN15mfOAsMj9GskXqVpSZa_xNPofPnWRiPmUo-bUuzpauZJhs7Zdd8JgL4oIrlAeNnqehI0XGzqxyD2WpPd5qrEYtt-QtdoMIE6dJ2lOe0WsYBLbtfHchLkASOwW6yIv_cEMGm-1zPqFTsB4g=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi46BS8vsYER19-RlVDEHhzmo_94wexOUT-RhWVJQpGHd8UiRyL-WCRNs0Yeo4JKj_aELyo-g4juSUtanLNdo0uvsWH-LM6BecCoPjx0BS-NpZpTAwRwjZdnJcT4EYVA3tiuYzpGV-dfrS09yXRN-S4eIl1RbyXsNnnGIaTo7rfRppD-rz0SwlEaxsN" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="163" data-original-width="310" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi46BS8vsYER19-RlVDEHhzmo_94wexOUT-RhWVJQpGHd8UiRyL-WCRNs0Yeo4JKj_aELyo-g4juSUtanLNdo0uvsWH-LM6BecCoPjx0BS-NpZpTAwRwjZdnJcT4EYVA3tiuYzpGV-dfrS09yXRN-S4eIl1RbyXsNnnGIaTo7rfRppD-rz0SwlEaxsN=w400-h210" width="400" /></a></div><br /></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">As Perth Festival rolls into its second week, two relatively low-budget avant-garde works of contemporary dance and music are a welcome extension to the festival’s predominant focus on works of scale and popular appeal. It’s a bold act of programming that demonstrates how Festival director Iain Grandage’s personal ethos of cultural democracy includes works that demand more of audiences, ask less in terms of resources and offer local and independent artists fresh opportunities.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Perth choreographer and director Laura Boynes’s new work <i>Equations Of A Falling Body </i>is a Perth Festival commission. The title alludes to the festival theme of Djinda – the stars and the cosmos – but it does so in a more abstract, process-oriented, comical and anxious way than other works in the festival program. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">In fact comedy and anxiety are states of mind (and body) that this work arouses in (and imposes on) its three performers – dancers James O’Hara and Ella-Rose Trewe and actor/physical performer Tim Green. Each of them has a distinctive movement style and stage persona – O’Hara more loosely expressive, Trewe more tautly contained, and Green more flexible and clown-like. However, all three swap functional roles in the course of the show and progressively develop their sense of individual and collective engagement as they spontaneously interpret the sequence of enigmatic instructions they're given via earpieces by Boynes, who sits at one side of the stage whispering into a head-mic. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Their interpretations are often hilarious but also result in images of beauty and sadness. The process reminded me of the surrealist game of ‘exquisite corpse’ in which each player adds to the contribution of his or her predecessor without knowing what comes next, so that a kind of spontaneous visual logic and poetry unfolds without any apparent overarching plan or divine intervention – apart from the tasks and structures put in place by the director-choreographer, who also appears to be responding spontaneously to the work of the performers.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">There’s a strong sense of agency – and urgency – but also of inevitable failure and even powerlessness on the part of the performers in the face of the ongoing stream of instructions. I felt like I was watching a trio of hapless fools attempting to handle and deal with some kind of historical catastrophe, and was reminded of Beckett's words: ‘Try again, fail again, fail better.’<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The motif of ‘falling bodies’ is repeatedly invoked, along with acts of hiding and revealing, denial, frustration, anxiety, desperation, surrender and resignation, counterbalanced by an ongoing sense of mutual trust, support and care. Beneath it all I felt a growing sense of helplessness and even grief that I couldn’t help associating with the era we’re living through, as clumsy and vulnerable beings in a broken world that we’ve been given the seemingly impossible task of putting right.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The overall form of the work could only sporadically be described as ‘dance’, though there’s undeniably dance and movement in the work. It’s more like a kind of bricolage, with the performers also acting as their own stagehands, dragging onstage and manipulating a collection of large and often unwieldy objects and materials such as giant industrial fans, lengths of green carpeting or rolls of silver reflective covering typically fitted inside car windscreens as a sunshield, as well as technical gadgets like headtorches and loudhailers.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Bruce McKinven’s evolving set and costumes are similarly practical and utilitarian: the black curtains, walls and floor of the venue, black clothes and underwear, knee pads, gloves, tape, earpieces and battery pacs. Matt Marshall’s elegant lighting is similarly minimal and mostly monochrome.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Initially – and perhaps inevitably given the task-based improvisatory form – there were some uneven and bumpy moments, deliberately underlined by abrupt blackouts followed by house lights snapping up. However the performance gradually revealed itself to have an underlying sense of unity, no doubt due to the deep layer of collaboration between the performers, the ceaseless flow of inspiration coming from Boynes, the overarching functional aesthetic of McKinven’s and Marshall’s visual designs, and the carefully structured emotional progression of Felicity Groom and Tristan Parr’s music and sound design, culminating in a heart-stopping sequence choreographed/improvised to Saint-Saëns’ “Mon coeur s'ouvre à ta voix” (“My heart opens to your voice”) from <i>Samson et Dalila</i> – the title of the aria perfectly encapsulating the work’s methodology and underlying ethos.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The work of the performers was astonishing in its openness, honesty, fearlessness and tenderness, and required a similar spirit from the audience – to laugh, to accept, to wonder and to grieve. It’s rare to see something as daring and risky as this, especially in a Festival setting, and I applaud everyone involved – but especially Boynes, for having the courage and vision to expose and embrace the unknown, in all its nakedness and terror. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">*<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><i>Everywhen </i>is a solo performance by Melbourne-based composer and percussionist Matthias Schack-Arnott. Essentially it’s a kind of sonic and visual meditation or mandala, involving a rotating structure of concentric circles like a kind of musical Hills Hoist or Alexander Calder mobile that hangs from the lighting grid, from which a collection of roughly hundred sound objects – ranging from cymbals, chimes, bells and marimba keys to found objects like branches, bunches of dried seeds or strings of shells – are suspended on counterweighted strings. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">While the structure rotates, Schack-Arnott walks on his own narrow circular path between the objects – either in the same or the opposite direction – while raising or lowering them using the counterweights so that they scrape along the floor, which has variously corrugated, smooth or tiled surfaces that are also arranged in concentric circles. Whenever the structure briefly pauses and comes to rest, he detaches some of the objects from the strings, enters the inner circle – like the inner shrine of a Buddhist temple – and arranges them on the floor, where he scrapes or plays them with sticks more rhythmically and intricately, as well as ‘playing’ the tiles on the floor, and striking the objects still hanging on the structure when it resumes its rotation around him. Objects also swing and collide with each other, and the strings of shells also vibrate and shake, almost as if they had minds of their own.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">This one-person percussion orchestra is augmented by small shotgun mics which are placed on the floor around the mandala, as was pointed out to me afterwards by a helpful venue technician and further explained by a knowledgeable colleague. These crucially pick up harmonics and overtones and feed them back to a sound desk behind the audience, where they’re remixed and fed back into the auditorium, generating an ambient soundscape of shifting tones and textures that sometimes reminded me of the music of the spheres, and at one point sounded like rain.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Finally the entire apparatus is side-lit by theatre lights on tree-stands so that the surfaces and shapes of the objects as they move – especially the metallic instruments – serendipitously refract and change the overall lighting state as it subtly fades up and down. This visual effect, as well as the overall sense of a revolving microcosm, also echoes the Festival theme of Dinjda.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><i>Everywhen</i> is a deeply meditative work of sound art, visual art and contemporary performance. It’s also a work of haunting beauty and – in its own way – absorbing drama. Schack-Arnott’s state of relaxed yet heightened attention – which is essential for him to effectively navigate and become part of the work – inspires a similar state in the audience as we watch, listen and notice things. Fifty minutes flew past, and I left the theatre in silence and at peace with the universe.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">*<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p>Wolfgang von Flügelhorn is a writer and critic based in Perth, Western Australia. He was born and raised in Flügelhorn, a small town in Upper Austria, in 1963. After finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of Lower Flügelhorn he completed his doctoral thesis at Cambridge on the later Wittgenstein and the phenomenology of language games (<i>Der später Wittgenstein und die Phänomenologie den Sprachspielen, </i>unpublished) under the supervision of Wittgenstein’s literary executor Elizabeth Anscombe, whose famous paper ‘The First Person’ argues that the pronoun ‘I’ does not refer to anything. On returning to Austria he was the lead vocalist and flugelhorn player in Viennese prog-rock/jazz-fusion band The Flaming Squirrels <i>(Die Flammende Eichhörnchen)</i>, in which capacity as the band’s front-man he developed a unique form of contemporary dance combining elements inspired by Isadora Duncan with the traditional Austrian Schuhplattler<i>. </i>He left Austria and went into voluntary exile in 2000 after the formation of the far-right coalition federal government, vowing never to return. He is currently editor of the <i>Zeitschrift für Unsozialforschung</i> (Journal of Anti-Social Research) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Lower Flügelhorn where he holds a chair (remotely) in Paranormal Phenomenology while engaging his core muscles for two minutes every day. He is the author of several monographs including <i>Unlogische Untersuchungen</i> (<i>Illogical Investigations</i>),<i> Unzeitlich</i> <i>Sein </i>(<i>Not Being On Time</i>) and <i>Wahnsinn und Methode</i> (<i>Madness and Method</i>), all of which have been translated into English by his friend and colleague Humphrey Bower but none of which has yet been published in any language. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p>Humphrey Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03841050029169012878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962718407053988991.post-32973348762291709732023-02-21T06:59:00.032-08:002023-02-25T17:18:26.441-08:00<h1 style="text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><i>Cyrano</i></span></h1><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Melbourne Theatre Company, Perth Festival, Heath Ledger Theatre</span></h2><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Reviewed by Wolfgang von Flügelhorn</span></h3><div><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><br /></span></div><div><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjr8wCBNYgIQIADch8EfwcQnmlhkguFDtHzoll1mf1p3lDDriSdZAo1h8RRQWJRi840E1F_m2W9kwDQrFi6OOgLxyuumlg1BPs1aqua5SfPVhsLsissBnM_0xLgI1dt5zEjoVvyt9iHtN3h8_PQtv3VHTvlUQmMpxAWwPchK6jAyzqu_4-QjpTSSGWZ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjr8wCBNYgIQIADch8EfwcQnmlhkguFDtHzoll1mf1p3lDDriSdZAo1h8RRQWJRi840E1F_m2W9kwDQrFi6OOgLxyuumlg1BPs1aqua5SfPVhsLsissBnM_0xLgI1dt5zEjoVvyt9iHtN3h8_PQtv3VHTvlUQmMpxAWwPchK6jAyzqu_4-QjpTSSGWZ=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /></div></div></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">It’s been an invigorating experience seeing two major theatre productions from the eastern States (which also happen to be literary adaptations) back-to-back as part of Perth Festival. MTC’s <i>Cyrano</i> and STC’s <i>Jekyll and Hyde</i> are two wildly different shows; I’m tempted to say, one plays Jekyll to the other’s Hyde. However, both have a level of artistic and technical finesse (and, it has to be said, budgets) that Perth audiences aren't used to seeing, at least on our main stages. It also has to be said that I had conceptual issues with both shows (see my previous review of <i>Jekyll and Hyde</i>), but I couldn't fault the expertise with which they were delivered.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Virginia Gay’s contemporary adaptation of Rostand’s <i>Cyrano de Bergerac </i>follows in the footsteps of previous popular film versions of the play, including the Steve Martin/Daryl Hannah vehicle <i>Roxanne</i>; <i>The Truth About Cats and Dogs </i>(which gender-swapped all three main characters); and most recently the similarly titled <i>Cyrano </i>(based on the Broadway musical and starring Peter Dinklage as a short-statured actor in the title role). <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The most notable recent English-language stage version by British playwright Martin Crimp (directed by Jamie Lloyd and starring the incongruously good-looking James McAvoy) brilliantly translated the play’s original French classical Alexandrines into uneven hip-hop-like rhyming couplets – a device which Lloyd’s production took further by putting the actors in contemporary street clothes, giving them hand-held microphones and transposing the Act One swordfight into a spoken-word duel. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Gay’s adaptation emphasises the fact that Cyrano is also a playwright (played by Gay herself), who in collaboration with her fellow actor-characters appears to rewrite the original text as she goes along in order to make it more ‘positive’. In effect this means that Rostand’s 19<sup>th</sup> century romantic tragedy becomes a 21<sup>st</sup> century queer romantic comedy – which in some ways is not such a stretch, as the original already has farcical elements, and Cyrano’s nose already sets him apart as an outsider.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">In this version, Gay’s female Cyrano falls hopelessly in love with Roxane, who's in lust with the handsome but inarticulate Christian (or ‘Yan’, as he prefers to call himself). Like McAvoy, Gay also dispenses with Cyrano’s famously big (and usually false) nose – which is the ostensible reason for the character’s sense of romantic despair in the original play – while still (somewhat bewilderingly) referring to it in the text. If in McAvoy’s case this had the effect of making Cyrano’s problem seem more to do with neurotic inhibition than actual deformity, in Gay’s version Cyrano’s ‘obstacle’ initially appears to be her gender and sexuality – although it’s eventually revealed to be more a case of mutual misunderstanding and fear of rejection (like all good rom-coms). <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Meanwhile a three-person Chorus in the form of a troupe of travelling players take the place of Cyrano’s friends and fellow soldiers in the original play. They also sing, dance and provide musical underscoring, as well as embodying snippets of other characters from the original, like the poet/pastry chef Ragueneau or the villainous De Guiche (though these characters seem largely irrelevant without the context of the original plot).<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Gay’s adaptation also highlights the ‘toxic’ nature of Cyrano’s ‘betrayal’ of Roxane by impersonating Christian and verbally seducing her on his behalf. This act of ‘catfishing’ is duly called out as such by Roxane, but Cyrano’s last-minute apology leads (somewhat implausibly) to forgiveness. True love prevails, and Roxane and Cyrano end up together (no one gets killed in this version), while ‘Yan’ conveniently hooks up with ‘Charlotte’/Chorus Member 3. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">All this might sound a bit half-baked and over-sweetened (like one of Rageneau’s less successful pastries). Fortunately, the dialogue is sparkling, and Gay has the rockstar acting chops to deliver the goods in the title role – both of which are essential for a play about a famous real-life poet and wit. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Director Sarah Goodes and her design team also deliver a knock-out production in terms of the staging. Instead of a huge fake nose, there’s a huge fake proscenium arch – somewhat battered and broken – opening onto a bare stage with a fake back wall, loading bay, exit doors and fluorescent work lights. (All of this cleverly invokes the opening Act of Rostand’s original play, which is likewise set in a theatre.)<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The actors wear rehearsal-style clothes, unload props from road cases, and perform all the songs and most of the music live (in fact the show is practically a musical, in form as well as substance). However – perhaps inevitably for a mainstage production – the sense that we’re watching poor theatre is an illusion, as there’s also an elaborate sound and lighting design (including haze), as well as some spectacular stage tricks that are pulled out of the hat in order to get the show's somewhat corny ending over the line. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">To be honest I felt a bit confused at times about the rules of the metatheatrical world that we were being asked to believe in, and as a result the dramatic stakes weren’t always entirely clear. In this regard I found myself missing the all-important action-plot – involving duels, mob violence and war – that grounds the central relationship story in the original play. In comparison the implied context of contemporary culture wars felt a bit insubstantial, and the whole thing started to feel like a series of comedy routines with progressive moral lessons attached about being affirmative and telling the truth.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Consequently, despite the best efforts of the actors, Roxane and Christian felt even more like two-dimensional props for Cyrano’s fantasies than they do in the original, with Roxane seeming like an immature student of life who doesn’t yet know herself but learns to 'speak her truth', while ‘Yan’ came across as a borderline misogynist frat-boy jock who eventually embraces his inner dork. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">As for Cyrano herself: despite Gay’s bad-girl charisma and irresistible sense of complicity with the audience, there was arguably still something a little creepy about her fixation with Roxane – as there is in the original, the key difference being that in Rostand’s play their love remains unconsummated (and indeed undeclared until the end when they’re about to be parted by death).<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><i>Cyrano</i> has always been a crowd-pleaser, and this version shares that popularise spirit. There’s a great sense of celebration at the end, and some terrific performances (especially from Gay, but also Holly Austin as ‘Charlotte’/Chorus Member 3) and moments of staging along the way. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">It doesn’t entirely free itself from the some of the original play’s complications – and arguably gets itself even more entangled by trying to do so. Regardless of our gender or sexuality, or even what century we live in, we’ve all been Cyrano (or Roxane, or Christian) at some point in our lives. Perhaps that’s why the play still has such a hold on us.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Humphrey Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03841050029169012878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962718407053988991.post-86056045840327581332023-02-18T21:37:00.006-08:002023-02-19T16:09:50.606-08:00<h1 style="text-align: left;"><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde</i></h1><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Sydney Theatre Company, His Majesty's Theatre, Perth Festival</span></h2><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Reviewed by Wolfgang von Flüglehorn</span></h3><div><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><br /></span></div><div><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEggxDQ0o02y50NI-F-XDv3i0a-RB7D30mdeTtUmIfdxkAie9FhkUi813M_nxQ9IurMvN_YtIPnz4iAsM9wB9QBmjs7uGJzHvyAyZp0uJkeTrdWxsVgCUSq60hEFiMkEdOsMMOmXW7cdw9hh-aBcL4WY_qCUFWxjtHoL0-kqmcjPbyKttiCwYO5ixBGy" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="1000" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEggxDQ0o02y50NI-F-XDv3i0a-RB7D30mdeTtUmIfdxkAie9FhkUi813M_nxQ9IurMvN_YtIPnz4iAsM9wB9QBmjs7uGJzHvyAyZp0uJkeTrdWxsVgCUSq60hEFiMkEdOsMMOmXW7cdw9hh-aBcL4WY_qCUFWxjtHoL0-kqmcjPbyKttiCwYO5ixBGy=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><br /></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">I felt especially fortunate to be seeing Kip Williams’s dazzling adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s <i>Strange Case of </i><i>Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde</i> in Perth framed by the Edwardian grandeur of His Majesty’s Theatre, with its sumptuous blood-red carpets, curtains, seats and walls, and its beautifully restored ambience haunted by theatre ghosts. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">In fact the production could hardly have been put on elsewhere in the city because of the vast space required in terms of the dimensions of the stage – initially almost bare apart from a diagonal line of streetlamps and a continuous drift of stage fog – not to mention the capacious wings and especially the fly-tower. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Inside the frame of the proscenium arch, two actors – Ewen Leslie and Matthew Backer – play Hyde and Seek in an ever-changing hall of mirrors. Adaptor-director Williams’s self-described hybrid form of ‘cine-theatre’ is a kind of infernal machine with continuously moving parts. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Huge flats rapidly descend and reascend from the flies to serve as projection screens, displaying a seamless mix of live-feed and pre-edited video footage with which the two actors (equally seamlessly) interact; in a more traditionally theatrical way, the flats also provide temporary screens for them to hide behind for the purpose of quick costume changes. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Meanwhile a crack team of technical and stage crew hurtle around the stage with Steadicams or scenery on wheels including building facades, doors, rooms, inner walls and staircases, as well as props and costumes like tables, chairs, portraits, looking-glasses, glasses of wine, writing materials, laboratory equipment, walking sticks, hats, coats, wigs and facial hair. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">This Heath-Robinson-like assemblage reflects the convoluted structure of Stevenson’s novella, with its nested stories, time jumps, plot twists and continual changes in narrative form and perspective; its enigmatic urban geography, maze-like streets and puzzling architecture; its locked doors, desk drawers and safety-deposit boxes; and its sealed envelopes-within-envelopes containing legal documents and letters. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Williams’s previous adaptation of Wilde’s similarly Victorian Gothic novel <i>The Picture of Dorian Gray </i>(which I reviewed in an earlier blog post when it was at the Adelaide Festival last year)<i> </i>used screen technology to present a brilliantly superficial world of simulation and hypervisibility. <i>Jekyll and Hyde </i>employs the same devices to investigate a darker realm of dissimulation and concealment (as the name ‘Hyde’ suggests). In both cases the Victorian preoccupation with thresholds and portals – mysterious doors, portraits, potions, looking-glasses, rabbit holes – leads us into a labyrinth from which there is no escape. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">If Eryn-Jean Norvill’s solo portrayal of all the characters in <i>Dorian Gray</i> gleefully (if tragically) emphasized that novel’s underlying theme of narcissism, then Backer and Leslie’s hand-in-glove double-act in <i>Jekyll and Hyde</i> evokes the typically Victorian Gothic figure of the doppelganger. The effect is heightened by the fact that the two actors physically resemble each other onstage; it’s reinforced by the use of costume as a form of disguise; as well as the blocking, where they frequently mirror each other; and the screens, where they’re reduplicated by multiple versions of themselves (and in the case of Leslie sometimes play multiple characters simultaneously).<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Backer plays Jekyll’s taciturn but tolerant lawyer-friend and confidante Utterson; the name is also surely a joke, as he listens but rarely speaks to Jekyll, while maintaining the role of protagonist and narrator-in chief to the audience. He also becomes a prototypical detective in the ‘strange case’ that unfolds. Meanwhile Leslie plays Jekyll and Hyde as well as all the other characters in an astonishing tour-de-force of virtuosity and sustained intensity. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0cm 0cm;">As far as I could tell, the text seemed remarkably faithful to the words of the original; Williams’s edits or interpolations were as difficult to detect as the transitions from live to pre-edited footage. The most significant departure from the novella – and the turning point of the show – occurs in the final section when Utterson reads Jekyll’s confession and ‘full statement of the case’. At this point both actors repeatedly drink the transformative potion, while the soundtrack transitions from a Bernard Hermann-style classically themed score to pounding techno, and the entire production slides into a kind of drug-fuelled gay-nightclub rave/delirium (this was my favourite part of the show). At the same time, the images on the screens – which have hitherto been in black-and-white, using dreamlike Expressionist or Surrealist-inspired dissolves and superimpositions that recall Rouben Mamoulian’s 1930s film version – explode into colour, invoking <i>The Wizard of Oz</i> (complete with footage of Backer as Dorothy and Leslie as the Cowardly Lion), while the two actors join hands and run off into the maze of screens, finally reappearing at the front of the stage wearing dresses and dance the can-can. We’re not in Kansas anymore.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0cm 0cm;">A queer sub-text is certainly implied in Stevenson’s novella, but its narrative and thematic concerns lie elsewhere. Jekyll’s problem is one of compartmentalisation or splitting; the effect of the potion is to further dissociate the two aspects of his personality rather than reconciling them in a rainbow coalition of peace and love (it’s probably more like ice or crack than weed or LSD). His addiction to the drug (and the psychical fragmentation that results) facilitates the release of unchecked aggressivity and the death-drive, including the enactment of sadistic, destructive, misogynistic, homophobic, murderous and suicidal fantasies of domination and control over his victims (and ultimately himself). In this regard he arguably embodies the forces of right-wing reactionary populism or fascism more than sexual or political liberation.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0cm 0cm;">Williams is less interested in Hyde’s more properly horrifying and monstrous attributes. Instead, the unspoken theme of queerness is heightened – especially in the final section, which almost feels like the raison d’être of the whole show. Consequently the allegory goes beyond the theme of duality – good and evil, Freudian ego and id, Jungian persona and shadow self – and becomes a prophetic celebration of contemporary theories and practices of multiplicity, non-binary ways of thinking and being, and even trans-identity. It’s a laudable aim, even if it feels like a bit of a stretch (I felt like Williams’s and Norvill’s gender-queering of <i>Dorian Gray</i> was closer to the mark).<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0cm 0cm;">For all the ingenious perversity of Williams’s adaptation and the razzle-dazzle, smoke-and-mirrors magic of his cine-theatre, the heart and soul of the production (as always) lies with the actors (as it did with Norvill in <i>Dorian Gray</i>). Backer’s Utterson conveys a touching vulnerability beneath his veneer of impassive stiffness and is wonderfully liberated when he finds his inner Dorothy in the final section. Leslie resembles John Barrymore in the silent film version both as Jekyll and when he transforms into Hyde with minimal changes in costume, makeup or special effects. While there’s a certain calculated and almost brittle coldness to his Jekyll – a quality which extends to all the other characters he plays, almost as if it were something inherent in the façade of Victorian masculinity itself – this is counterbalanced by his demonic Hyde, whose scuttling, cowering figure is dressed in a too-large overcoat and long, unkempt wig, and who addresses his interlocutors (and the camera) with glowering eyes, leering smile and rasping voice. Leslie manages to imbue this figure with the uncanny yet indefinable malevolence and repulsiveness required by the story (and which arguably exceeds the symbolic framework of Williams’s interpretation), while simultaneously embodying something abject and even pitiable, both monster and child.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0cm 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0cm 0cm;">All of this is captured and amplified by the astonishing video design and camerawork, especially by the team of Steadycam operators, who in one sequence chase the actors around the perimeter of the stage like paparazzi, while an expertly framed and (presumably) live-edited tracking shot follows them on the screens.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0cm 0cm;">At times however I found myself longing for some relief from the predominantly mediated nature of my contact with the actors, as my eyes were continually drawn to the screens and away from was happening on the stage. It’s almost as if in cine-theatre ‘onstage’ has become a form of ‘backstage’ to which the audience is allowed access in the form of endless voyeuristic ‘sneak-peaks’.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0cm 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0cm 0cm;">Perhaps one could argue that in a Brechtian fashion the devices of cine-theatre expose the artifice of theatre and cinema – and potentially the hidden mechanics of capitalism and exploitation or the psychodynamics of repression and the unconscious – that normally occur ‘behind the scenes’. However, the effect is still predominantly to ‘cinematize’ the theatrical experience, framing everything for the benefit of the camera as a lure for the spectator’s gaze.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0cm 0cm;">Clemence Williams’s thrilling but relentless score also emphasised the cinematic aspect of the show, imposing a hypnotic mood that risked becoming monotonous. The actors’ continuously rapid-fire delivery of non-stop text had a similarly relentless and hypnotic effect. This was exacerbated by their amplified voices being mixed into the soundtrack and dispersed around the auditorium with use of body-mics and surround-sound speakers, with the inevitable slight delay and echo that attends the use of live-feed audio and cinema-style sound equipment in a resonant theatre space. All of this made it hard for us to connect their voices to their bodies or to what was happening onstage (or even onscreen), or even at times to follow what they were saying. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0cm 0cm;">In sum, I couldn't help feeling that there's a strange Jekyll-and-Hyde-like quality to the form of cine-theatre itself, with the cinematic elements devouring the theatrical ones, like a parasite devouring its host. At times I almost wished I could watch the two actors perform the show ‘unplugged’. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">In a way, the whole cine-theatrical apparatus made me think of a hermetically sealed lab experiment, with the cine-stage as a space-time-compression chamber inducing a heightened version of what my friend and colleague the philosopher and architect Paul Virilio calls ‘speed-space’ – with the actors as experimental subjects, the adaptor-director and his fellow creatives as scientists, the crew as their assistants, and the audience as observers. Perhaps it’s a demonstration of the fact that we’re all Jekyll-and-Hydes now, addicted to the drug of digital technology, and trapped in our fragmented and compartmentalised performative identities and virtual worlds. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">That said, it’s an amazing creation flawlessly executed, and the virtuoso performances by the actors and technical crew carry all before them. Williams is one of the most interesting directors working in theatre today; and Leslie is one of the most charismatic actors currently working onstage and onscreen.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">*</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Wolfgang von Flügelhorn is a writer and critic based in Perth, Western Australia. He was born and raised in Flügelhorn, a small town in Upper Austria, in 1963. After finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of Lower Flügelhorn he completed his doctoral thesis at Cambridge on the later Wittgenstein and the phenomenology of language games (<i>Der später Wittgenstein und die Phänomenologie den Sprachspielen, </i>unpublished) under the supervision of Wittgenstein’s literary executor Elizabeth Anscombe, whose famous paper ‘The First Person’ argues that the pronoun ‘I’ does not refer to anything. <i> </i>He left Austria and went into voluntary exile in 2000 after the formation of the far-right coalition federal government, vowing never to return. He is currently editor of the <i>Zeitschrift für Unsozialforschung</i> (Journal of Anti-Social Research) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Lower Flügelhorn where he holds a chair (remotely) in Paranormal Phenomenology while engaging his core muscles for two minutes every day. He is the author of several monographs including <i>Unlogische Untersuchungen</i> (<i>Illogical Investigations</i>),<i> Unzeitlich</i> <i>Sein </i>(<i>Not Being On Time</i>) and <i>Wahnsinn und Methode</i> (<i>Madness and Method</i>), all of which have been translated into English by his friend and colleague Humphrey Bower but none of which has yet been published in any language. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Humphrey Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03841050029169012878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962718407053988991.post-15393588674761331862023-02-14T15:55:00.004-08:002023-02-15T00:06:35.274-08:00<h1 style="text-align: left;"><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Music of the Spheres </i></h1><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Perth Concert Hall, Perth Festival</span><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </i></h2><h3 style="text-align: left;">Reviewed by Wolfgang von Flügelhorn</h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj9s8N7Bo7jIY3m6K8NlNgz5GoSRID5xbOmXPPS6kAoTYYx9DhEtKK6CrfNkn5opyKY_1JjH2kpuQjXysNQBOa614vHwV00aJLtsjo5ggdf2ALhYSqhFtwfPaVfiuz3TNQDVzq2F-ccCP-c1-9h9_LtIPSEYRSJKc8dQL6Hqi04Ydd4M64eXXtK1RyQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="798" data-original-width="1200" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj9s8N7Bo7jIY3m6K8NlNgz5GoSRID5xbOmXPPS6kAoTYYx9DhEtKK6CrfNkn5opyKY_1JjH2kpuQjXysNQBOa614vHwV00aJLtsjo5ggdf2ALhYSqhFtwfPaVfiuz3TNQDVzq2F-ccCP-c1-9h9_LtIPSEYRSJKc8dQL6Hqi04Ydd4M64eXXtK1RyQ=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><i> </i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">In keeping with this year’s Perth Festival theme Djilda (stars), <i>Music of the Spheres</i> was a program of early, classical and contemporary music with explicitly sidereal references. It was performed at Perth Concert Hall, which as well as being one of my favourite classical music venues because of its wonderful acoustics is also a masterpiece of brutalist architecture and poured concrete.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">In fact the title-phrase doesn’t refer to the stars at all, but to the ancient Greek theory (which persisted into the Renaissance) that the movements, positions and dimensions of the sun, moon and planets were related to each other in mathematical proportions that not only resembled but actually generated a form of music that could be ‘felt’ by the soul. It’s a beautiful theory even if it isn’t true; and – at least when understood metaphorically rather than literally – a promising idea for a concert program. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The problem for me was that the works in question were chosen simply because they’re all settings of texts that literally refer to the stars. Not only did this reduce the texts themselves to a kind of repetitive blandness (an impression reinforced by having the English translations projected as surtitles on a huge screen above the concert platform); it also lumped together works that had little in common in terms of their musical language or the musical forces required – an incongruity made even more jarring by hearing them performed continuously one after the other without allowing breaks for applause (though the audience attempted valiantly to do). Consequently, masterpieces by Tallis, Palestrina, Purcell, Monteverdi, Handel, Mahler and Strauss became more like a series of musical ‘treats’ than windows into the composers’ souls (as is the case with the Mahler and Strauss songs); their dramatic personae (as with arias like Handel’s<i> </i>‘Total Eclipse’ from <i>Samson</i> or Dvořák’s ‘Song to the Moon’ from <i>Rusalka</i>); or the religious beliefs that they shared with their era (in the case of Tallis or Palestrina).</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">That said, there were some wonderful performances, notably by soprano Samantha Clarke in luminous versions of ‘Song to the Moon’ and Strauss’s <i>Morgen, </i>both richly accompanied by WASO under the thoughtful baton of Richard Mills; tenor Shanul Sharma in a sensitive rendition of ‘Total Eclipse’; and the small bespoke ten-person choir, who shone in the short sacred pieces by Tallis, Palestrina, Monteverdi, and the latter’s lesser-known Spanish contemporary Juan Esquivel de Barahona, as well as a haunting piece by contemporary American composer Morten Lauridsen called ‘O Nata Lux’. The latter shared the same text as the Tallis, and nicely rounded out the choral thread of the program, which (appropriately expanded) could easily have provided the basis for an entire concert, or at least an entire first half; just as the Dvořák, Mahler and Strauss works could have been part of a separate program – conceivably after interval – of Romantic and Late Romantic music for voice and orchestra (perhaps with a little Wagner and some more Mahler and Strauss to flesh things out). <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Gumbaynggirr/Yamatji singer-songwriter Emma Donovan’s contemporary creation song about the night sky ‘Yira Djinang’ was sung with great nobility by Donovan as an opening number, using a mic and backed by WASO and Mills in a skilful and imaginative orchestral arrangement by Grandage. However, to my ears the arrangement underscored the musical stretch involved in yoking together what was essentially a folk-pop ballad – which would normally be accompanied by a guitar or a backing band – with those musical forces or the repertoire that followed. While I applauded the inclusiveness of the programming, the song felt like something of an outlier as the only piece written or performed by a First Nations artist, especially as Donovan didn’t appear in any of the other works, unlike any of the other artists. Perhaps the inclusion of at least one other First Nations work – such as a more traditional creation song or a more demanding contemporary work by a composer-musician like William Barton – would have provided more context.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">I was also unconvinced by the inclusion of Mills’s ‘Glimpses and Dialogues’ from <i>Galileo</i>, a Festival co-commission (perhaps as an opera or oratorio?) that was performed after interval by all the singers and musicians from the first half of the concert (except Donovan), once again conducted by Mills. I found the pieces musically intriguing but difficult to connect with, as they seemed more like a series of fragments from a larger (perhaps unfinished?) work, and as such once again lacked context – apart from being about 'the stars'. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">In sum: <i>Music of the Spheres</i> was a musically accomplished evening that felt a little forced to me in terms of its conception and execution, notwithstanding the stellar contributions of all the artists involved.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">*</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Wolfgang von Flügelhorn is a writer and critic based in Perth, Western Australia. He was born and raised in Flügelhorn, a small town in Upper Austria, in 1963. After finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of Lower Flügelhorn he completed his doctoral thesis at Cambridge on the later Wittgenstein and the phenomenology of language games (<i>Der später Wittgenstein und die Phänomenologie den Sprachspielen, </i>unpublished) under the supervision of Wittgenstein’s literary executor Elizabeth Anscombe, whose famous paper ‘The First Person’ argues that the pronoun ‘I’ does not refer to anything. On returning to Austria he was the lead vocalist and flugelhorn player in Viennese prog-rock/jazz-fusion band The Flaming Squirrels <i>(Die Flammende Eichhörnchen)</i><i>. </i>He left Austria and went into voluntary exile in 2000 after the formation of the far-right coalition federal government, vowing never to return. He is currently editor of the <i>Zeitschrift für Unsozialforschung</i> (Journal of Anti-Social Research) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Lower Flügelhorn where he holds a chair (remotely) in Paranormal Phenomenology while engaging his core muscles for two minutes every day. He is the author of several monographs including <i>Unlogische Untersuchungen</i> (<i>Illogical Investigations</i>),<i> Unzeitlich</i> <i>Sein </i>(<i>Not Being On Time</i>) and <i>Wahnsinn und Methode</i> (<i>Madness and Method</i>), all of which have been translated into English by his friend and colleague Humphrey Bower but none of which has yet been published in any language. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Humphrey Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03841050029169012878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962718407053988991.post-13415436751253731842023-02-11T00:29:00.016-08:002023-02-14T07:59:38.401-08:00<p> <span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span></p><h1 style="text-align: left;">Stephanie Lake Company: Manifesto</h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Perth Festival, Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre of WA</h2><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><h1 style="text-align: left;">STRUT Dance: Perth Moves/10 Duets on a Theme of Rescue</h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Perth Festival, State Theatre Centre of WA Courtyard</h2><h3 style="text-align: left;"></h3><h3 style="text-align: left;">Reviewed by Wolfgang von Flügelhorn</h3><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhwQ1yW_c15rsrJuMYrth7zSMZfC8sVR3R1r7sY1puAAlMDmB5i6gs65bL-YRIo_fQeXMLIVOV1QlE_KtM7tS1CjyXEyCYHQmCEPACTl_q65RU5GUVZsFjxKdjFgpKtyeruVDu2JAQQbBsIY9nSiiHs08NShl_Ov-RbpgG1sVy0JwdYpIhw_voBxkFK" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="432" data-original-width="768" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhwQ1yW_c15rsrJuMYrth7zSMZfC8sVR3R1r7sY1puAAlMDmB5i6gs65bL-YRIo_fQeXMLIVOV1QlE_KtM7tS1CjyXEyCYHQmCEPACTl_q65RU5GUVZsFjxKdjFgpKtyeruVDu2JAQQbBsIY9nSiiHs08NShl_Ov-RbpgG1sVy0JwdYpIhw_voBxkFK=w400-h225" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjBlQVuFssVumv_DBj8G367_uZZPJSSw2nXx6HnRR6hBAYJVETdjyGBgWeOaMaXip1PUQVsHza5CbQQfOfizuy3vuxjJ7NRVIUW4qivyitnmU2mWFPvyFlPnIRJ_gl0Bih0flfqLXz4IGPgfLxR_IvX4w4kT-FQuNHtz1Id4L4J7vpWS_cLj2bSM9GB" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="665" data-original-width="992" height="269" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjBlQVuFssVumv_DBj8G367_uZZPJSSw2nXx6HnRR6hBAYJVETdjyGBgWeOaMaXip1PUQVsHza5CbQQfOfizuy3vuxjJ7NRVIUW4qivyitnmU2mWFPvyFlPnIRJ_gl0Bih0flfqLXz4IGPgfLxR_IvX4w4kT-FQuNHtz1Id4L4J7vpWS_cLj2bSM9GB=w400-h269" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="text-align: left;"> </span></div></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Stephanie Lake’s <i>Manifesto</i> is the opening in-theatre show of Iain Grandage’s 2023 Perth Festival. It’s a big, bold, brash work; and a bold choice for a festival opener. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Lake’s gutsy, accessible style of choreography and staging is a perfect match for Grandage’s own heart-on-his-sleeve, openly popularist aesthetic as a festival director, and the opening night audience seemed to eagerly devour it – spontaneously clapping and cheering during the show and giving it a standing ovation at the end.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Nine dancers – five women, four men – are initially revealed onstage lounging on chairs and wearing neat white pants and tops with black trimmings and bare feet. Above them nine drummers – with a similar gender-mix including at least one non-binary performer – sit dressed in black behind black rock’n’roll drum kits on a tiered platform with pink drapes descending to the floor. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Charles Davis’s set, Paula Levis’s costumes and Bosco Shaw’s lighting all explicitly invoke the look and feel of a classic 1930s Depression-era Busby Berkley Hollywood musical. The prevailing mood of Lake’s choreography and Robin Fox’s score is for the most part similarly upbeat, upfront and shamelessly free of pretensions to deeper content or significance.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><i>Manifesto </i>was conceived by Lake and Fox over the past two years of the pandemic during the seemingly endless series of lockdowns in Melbourne, and the sense of relief, joy and (literally) tongue-poking defiance is palpable (and must have been even more so when it was first performed there in 2022 after debuting in Adelaide earlier that year). Lake describes the work as a ‘A Tattoo to Optimism’, and there’s a demonstrative and even regimented quality to the exuberance of the movement, music and staging that reminded me of cheerleading or ritualized military display. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">This sense of regimentation mercifully breaks down (and breaks out) into more freewheeling and individually expressive sequences, including trios, duets and solos by both the dancers and drummers (there are some explosive drum solos, call-and-response sections and chain-reactions). The dancers change costumes twice, their outfits becoming more dressed-down and then more personalised, leading to a final outburst of collective celebration, with hair loosened, items of clothing discarded, furniture attacked, and even the odd outbreak of that uniquely Australian (and much missed) form of protest, streaking (bring it back, I say). <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The technical virtuosity and evident sense of enjoyment shared by the dancers and drummers was palpable, and the audience duly responded in kind, but I felt more ambivalent.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Much of the choreography and music – most notably in the opening section – took the form of jarring, unpredictable stop-start freeze-frames and ‘samples’ of suddenly erupting and immediately arrested movement and sound (the two seemed to be so conjoined that it was impossible to say which was leading or following the other). This form of image and music-making reminded me of the jarring, unpredictable rhythm of the lockdowns themselves, especially in Melbourne, as well as the stop-start freeze-framing and sampling associated with video and hip hop, and the accelerated expansion of digital media into every aspect of our lives during the pandemic – including the increasing colonisation and even replacement of live performance by the internet and the small screen. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">At least it felt like an act of resistance to see this embodied onstage by the dancers and drummers, rather than invading the stage with cameras and screens or bombarding it with pre-recorded sound. In terms of movement, it's a contemporary-dance trope that’s almost become a cliché, but as a form of group spectacle I’ve never seen it taken to such extremes. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">In keeping with this sense of traumatised fragmentation I also felt there was a (possibly deliberate) absence of overall structure in the choreography and music, despite the impressive creation of stage pictures and the dazzling execution. In a way the whole show was more like a circus or cabaret consisting of a series of disjointed routines or ‘acts’ than a fully integrated work, which perhaps accounts for the strange sense of anticlimax I was left with at the end. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Again, perhaps this lack of formal architecture was itself a refusal to abide by traditional forms of progression or integration, or a statement that such forms have been irrevocably shattered or are no longer relevant. As such, the work could be read as an aesthetic ‘manifesto’ as well as a physical and emotional one.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">At times however I felt an urge to resist the insistent sense of mass appeal and the relentless if unspoken barrage of injunctions (‘Stop! Go! Enjoy!’). After all, the pandemic is not yet over; and the social, political and environmental problems that preceded it are still in train, perhaps more catastrophically than ever. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">That said, the show was at least a welcome distraction and invitation to put those problems out of mind for a while – much like the effect of watching a Busby Berkeley musical, in fact.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">*</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Outside in the State Theatre Centre Courtyard something more subtle and complex (and arguably more interesting) is afoot. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">STRUT Dance have programmed five days and nights of free activities and performances under the collective title: ‘Perth Moves’. The program includes meditation and yoga sessions, dance classes (Afro-Fusion, Hip Hop, Latin Social, House and contemporary dance are all covered, as well as classes for beginners and older or less experienced movers like yours truly), dance battles, late night DJ sets, open-access cast warmups, and free performances twice nightly of Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite’s <i>10 Duets on a Theme of Rescue</i>. Appropriately for this year’s Festival theme of <i>Djinda</i> (stars), it all takes place under the night sky, and is a shining example of what a Festival can deliver to enliven a community.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">STRUT has been running workshops with Pite’s company Kidd Pivot over the past five years, and now long-term Pite collaborator and Kidd Pivot member Cindy Welik-Salgado is restaging <i>10 Duets </i>with a team of ten local, interstate and New Zealand dancers. The work was originally made for Cedar Lake in New York in 2008, and is performed by five dancers who take turns to inhabit the duets in a series of continuously and seamlessly shifting and changing partnerships (I’m assuming two groups of dancers alternate between the two performances each night). <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The energy and pace of the work also shifts and changes, but the mood is predominantly dark. The duets themselves are intimate, tender and full of unresolved conflict. This requires a sense of deep interiority as well as physical strength, lightness and dexterity on the part of the dancers, who effectively become actors as well, albeit silent ones – a silence that only intensifies the yearning in their fleeting exchanges.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The sense of intimacy is supported by the elegantly minimalist costumes – designed by Linda Chow and realised for this production by Nicole Marrington – and the even more minimalist set and lighting. The dancers wear non-gender-specific casual indoor clothing, including socks rather than bare feet or shoes, all of which adds to the sense of domesticity. It’s as if we’re in series of rooms, even though there’s no furniture or carpeting – an effect that’s ironically heightened by staging the work outdoors. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Lighting is provided by floodlights on stands which are initially positioned in an arc upstage and then moved around peripherally by the dancers while fading up or down (these lights are augmented by overheads on the rear balcony of the Courtyard that become barely noticeable once the work begins). The effect is subtle but adds to the sense of shifting and changing energy and partnerships.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The overall atmosphere of melancholy is underscored by the use of ambient music by Cliff Martinez from the soundtrack to the film <i>Solaris</i> (the Stephen Soderberg version, not the Tarkovsky), with its mournful sheen of synthesized strings and soft tuned percussion, which adds another layer of continuity to the work, gently taking us ‘elsewhere’ than the Courtyard, and inside the heads and bodies of the dancers.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Pite is evidently interested in the physical and emotional connections and disconnections between as well as within human beings. The dancers’ movements, gestures, and postures – pushing, pulling, grasping, hugging, holding, releasing, falling, rising, standing, walking, crawling and even sitting at the edge of the stage with their backs to us – express a vast range of possible scenarios involving physical or emotional rescue as well as loss, its inevitable counterpart. In fact this overarching ‘duet’ between rescue and loss is arguably the theme of the entire work.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><i>Ten Duets</i> lasts for about fifteen minutes but has more content and coherence than most hour-long dance manifestos. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">See it if you can.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> *</o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p><br /></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Wolfgang von Flügelhorn is a writer and critic based in Perth, Western Australia. He was born and raised in Flügelhorn, a small town in Upper Austria, in 1963. After finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of Lower Flügelhorn he completed his doctoral thesis at Cambridge on the later Wittgenstein and the phenomenology of language games (<i>Der später Wittgenstein und die Phänomenologie den Sprachspielen, </i>unpublished) under the supervision of Wittgenstein’s literary executor Elizabeth Anscombe, whose famous paper ‘The First Person’ argues that the pronoun ‘I’ does not refer to anything. On returning to Austria he was the lead vocalist and flugelhorn player in Viennese prog-rock/jazz-fusion band The Flaming Squirrels <i>(Die Flammende Eichhörnchen)</i>, in which capacity as the band’s front-man he developed a unique form of contemporary dance incorporating elements inspired by Isadora Duncan with the traditional Austrian Schuhplattler<i>. </i>He left Austria and went into voluntary exile in 2000 after the formation of the far-right coalition federal government, vowing never to return. He is currently editor of the <i>Zeitschrift für Unsozialforschung</i> (Journal of Anti-Social Research) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Lower Flügelhorn where he holds a chair (remotely) in Paranormal Phenomenology while engaging his core muscles for two minutes every day. He is the author of several monographs including <i>Unlogische Untersuchungen</i> (<i>Illogical Investigations</i>),<i> Unzeitlich</i> <i>Sein </i>(<i>Not Being On Time</i>) and <i>Wahnsinn und Methode</i> (<i>Madness and Method</i>), all of which have been translated into English by his friend and colleague Humphrey Bower but none of which has yet been published in any language. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Humphrey Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03841050029169012878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962718407053988991.post-20879362835316663412022-12-29T12:39:00.005-08:002023-01-20T05:59:13.741-08:00<h1 style="text-align: left;"><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Enlightenment </i></h1><h2 style="text-align: left;"><i>(The Enlightenment of the Siddhartha Gautama Buddha and the Encounter with the Monkey King – Great Sage, Equal of Heaven)<br /></i>Written by Joe Paradise Lui<br />Directed by Marcel Dorney<br />Elbow Room Productions<br />Perth Studio Underground</h2><h3 style="text-align: left;">Reviewed by Wolfgang von Flügelhorn</h3><h3 style="text-align: left;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjscgZHa1_fGWiJNWvn50E0_Inj6NRqqA14ky8qq9tNTcba4APe21glgnDgJGJsoJ_Vu-yQ_dDVmiXIggMm65rmfATeEFArWO7NLlKkSa7q724ZJJJLp0wmtJ7HwD4aAbX4_G6bBrIwi2SazFHUMnFk32JbbAuP1R3KQUtEoypQWyGPPCESGp_E9Wkk" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjscgZHa1_fGWiJNWvn50E0_Inj6NRqqA14ky8qq9tNTcba4APe21glgnDgJGJsoJ_Vu-yQ_dDVmiXIggMm65rmfATeEFArWO7NLlKkSa7q724ZJJJLp0wmtJ7HwD4aAbX4_G6bBrIwi2SazFHUMnFk32JbbAuP1R3KQUtEoypQWyGPPCESGp_E9Wkk=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></div></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The late-70s Japanese TV series <i>Monkey</i> is one of my all-time favourite shows. The English-dubbed version was broadcast by the BBC when I was at Cambridge in the early 80s, and I became an instant fan. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Growing up in Lower Flügelhorn I’d been glued to the TV screen after school watching the 60s Japanese historical action series <i>Shintaro</i> and the 70s American East-meets-Western series <i>Kung Fu </i>(both dubbed into German for Austrian TV). Then as a budding teenage cinephile I’d eagerly devoured Hong Kong 70s martial arts movies like <i>Five Fingers of Death</i> and <i>Fist of Fury</i> with German subtitles on weekend excursions to Vienna<i>. </i><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><i> </i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">As a nostalgic overseas student at Cambridge, I loved <i>Monkey’</i>s combination of fight scenes, slapstick comedy, Chinese folklore, Buddhist wisdom, and (in the BBC version) rapid-fire dialogue in ‘Asian’ accents by British actors – not to mention the head-banging theme song ‘Monkey Magic’ about the title character (‘the punkiest monkey that ever popped’), which I later covered back in Vienna with my prog rock band The Flying Squirrels. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Later my interest in literature led me to the 16<sup>th</sup> century Chinese novel <i>Journey to the West</i> on which <i>Monkey </i>was based – a novel which was in turn inspired by the pilgrimage to India of 7<sup>th</sup> century Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzhang. Eventually my para-phenomenological researches took me on my own inner journey to the East after having visited India and Nepal with my parents as a 10-year old – see my blog post last year at <o:p></o:p><a href="http://humphreybower.blogspot.com/2022/01/" rel="nofollow">http://humphreybower.blogspot.com/2022/01/</a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Perth-based Singaporean-Chinese-Australian theatre-maker Joe Paradise Lui has long been on his own personal, artistic, political and spiritual pilgrimage. A mainstay of the Perth independent and mainstage theatre scene, he's created his own post-dramatic contemporary performance works (many devised in collaboration with other local independent luminaries) for his company Renegade Productions; lent his freelance talents as a lighting and sound designer, director, composer, musician and actor to innumerable productions by other companies and fellow artists; and undoubtedly clocked in more shows at The Blue Room (allegedly two hundred and counting) than any other artist in history. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Even by his own eclectic standards <i>Enlightenment </i>is an unusual addition to the Joe Lui oeuvre because it flexes his muscles as a playwright rather than a contemporary performance maker, and because he’s entrusted its first production to another director and company in a different city: namely, Melbourne-based director Marcel Dorney and his company Elbow Room (though Lui was seemingly unable to resist the temptation of designing the lighting and sound as well). The production premiered in Melbourne at Northcote Town Hall in early 2000 with the intention of transferring to Perth; but events took an unexpected turn with the onset of the pandemic and the closure of state borders; and it took almost two years for the show to hit the road for a cruelly brief four-night season at the Perth Studio Underground.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">In fact <i>Enlightenment</i> reminds me of another anomalous work in the Lui canon: the confessional solo show <i>Letters Home</i>, which he wrote, directed, designed and performed at The Blue Room in 2015. That show reflected on the journey from his birthplace in the authoritarian city-state of Singapore to his self-imposed exile in Perth: first as an international student and then as a renegade artist, after deciding at the last minute not to go home on the completion of his studies. Despite our very different trajectories I related deeply to that show as a former international student at Cambridge and later self-imposed exile in Perth myself after the formation of the far-right Austrian coalition government in 2000 – an event which now seems to presage the global rise of right-wing populism over the last two decades.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Unlike <i>Letters Home</i> the genre of <i>Enlightenment</i> is not confessional. Instead it might be described as a mash-up of mythic/religious epic, social/political satire, erotic/crime thriller, romantic comedy and superhero movie: think Strindberg’s <i>Road to Damascus </i>meets Brecht’s <i>Good Person of Szechuan</i> meets <i>Fatal Attraction</i> meets <i>My Super Ex-Girlfriend</i>. Nevertheless, a confessional element is surely present even if in a disguised form. Like Strindberg and Brecht, Lui dons the masks of his dramatis personae in order to wrestle with personal questions about identity, sex, religion, ethics and politics. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">In particular, the character-avatars of The Buddha and The Monkey King as they appear in the play seem like dual aspects of a single person (conceivably the playwright himself). As such they’re reminiscent of the way the ‘good’ prostitute Shen Te in <i>The Good Person of Szechuan </i>splits off a part of herself and pretends to be her ‘bad’ male cousin Shui Ta in order to survive in a broken world (a splitting that also arguably reflected Brecht’s own compartmentalised personality).<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><i>Enlightenment</i> is set in a comic-book-style generic dystopian metropolis that could be Perth, Melbourne, Singapore or Gotham City. The plot concerns an idle rich young Asian princess Sid (played by Alice Qin), a contemporary avatar of the young prince Siddhartha Gautama, who renounced his former life and became the Buddha. Sid hooks up via a dating app with angry young hustler Sage (Merlynn Tong), likewise an avatar of the legendary Monkey King (the title character in <i>Monkey</i>), who called himself ‘great Sage, equal of Heaven’ and was imprisoned under a mountain by the Buddha, until freed after promising to serve the monk Tang Sanzang in <i>Journey to the West </i>(Tripitaka in the TV series) on his pilgrimage to India. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">A sub-plot features two hapless straight White male cops (John Marc Desengano and Conor Gallacher), who I fancied might also be avatars of Tripitaka’s monster-companions Sandy and Pigsy in <i>Monkey </i>and <i>Journey to the West</i> (Sandy was a particular favourite of mine). Like their originals, they provide comic relief as objects of satirical mockery, though things take a somewhat darker turn when Sage gets pulled over for speeding and is recognized as the poster of a viral online video threatening to kill a cop in a violently explicit manner as revenge for a previous harassment. Elbow Room co-artistic director Emily Tomlins played a series of characters including a streetwalker, Sid’s housemaid, a police chief and a narrator-figure who was ultimately revealed (without being explicitly named) as the Buddha himself in his deified form.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><i>Enlightenment</i> deftly sutures Eastern and Western high art and pop culture in a way that’s worthy of <i>Monkey</i> itself and the TV shows and movies that followed it, right up to Tarantino’s <i>Kill Bill </i>or more recently (and most brilliantly) the Daniels Kwan and Scheinert’s <i>Everything Everywhere All At Once</i> (easily my film of year for 2022). The production also featured an exhilarating performance by Merlynn Tong as Sage/Monkey, encompassing all the registers of the genre mash-up from slapstick comedy to rom-com cuteness, horror-movie terror, monstrous rage and spiritual angst. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The characters, scenes, dialogue and plot owe more to popular film and TV than to a more rigorous and fleshed-out dramaturgy like Brecht's (at least in his mature work). In short, this is a form of theatre mediated by the screen – big, small and hand-held. As such it assumes a degree of pop-culture literacy on the part of an audience for its shorthand to communicate. Scenes are mostly short and begin or end abruptly; dialogue is relentlessly snappy or self-consciously cheesy (‘You’re so corny!’ is a signature catchcry); and there are holes, jumps and coincidences in the plot that a regular viewer of popular film or TV would easily take in their stride. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The queering of the relationship between Sid and Sage is a refreshing twist on the standard rom-com formula – as well as a nod to the casting of a woman as the monk Tripitaka in the original <i>Monkey</i> TV series (one of that show’s many delights). Admittedly the portrayal of a queer relationship between two women as a ‘safe space’ free of patriarchal and heterosexual norms initially seemed a little idealised (including the orgasmic sex). In any event, their honeymoon period ended when it came to personal and class differences (though such differences were probably a plus when it came to orgasmic sex). <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">However, the characterisation of both protagonists seemed a little lacking in backstory and motivation (in the case of Sage) or (in the case of Sid) as an avatar of the Buddha, even at the stage of unenlightened Bodhisattva. As a result, the climax of the play (or rather its anti-climax) felt contrived and implausible, with Sid convincing Sage to turn herself in, learning at second-hand from the police about her alleged betrayal, and then betraying and abandoning her in return – a somewhat complicated parallel to the Buddha’s entrapment of Monkey in the original story.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The minor characters were more two-dimensional and as such easy targets – especially the clownish cops, who seemed unsuited to their roles when the plot took a more sinister turn. They were also easy targets in a double sense, as Sage’s cop-killing harangue had unfortunate overtones in the light of recent events, which made it hard to laugh despite Tong’s ebullient delivery (a little rewriting here would be an easy fix).<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Despite her stage presence and acting chops, I found the casting of Tompkins in her series of roles problematic, especially when she was revealed as the Buddha in the final scene. (In fact I was initially unsure ‘who’ she was in this scene, possibly because I’d identified Qin in the role of the Buddha up to that point.) Doubtless having a White actor with platinum blonde hair playing these roles was intended to be ironic. However her final manifestation as the Buddha felt clunky, as did the reduction of the Enlightened One to a variation on Tompkins’s earlier role as the police chief. Perhaps this clunkiness was likewise meant to be ironic, like a <i>deus ex machina</i> in a Greek tragedy. However, it had the retroactive effect of making Tompkins’s cumulative role seem like that of a White puppet-master throughout the play. As such, it left me confused as to the target of the play’s critique: Buddhism; wealth and privilege; or a more generalized notion of power in all its forms. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">To represent these alternatives as isomorphic surely involves a false equivalence. To be sure, we can attribute the emergence of Buddhism to a certain historical moment or class outlook. However, to reduce it to a form of ruling class ideology is as simplistic as reducing Christianity to what Nietzsche called the morality of slaves; and to identify Buddhism with theocracy, patriarchy, heteronormativity or White supremacy is a bit of a stretch. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">More broadly, to lump caste, class, race, gender or sexuality together as forms of oppression is to ignore the specificity of each and use a blunt instrument when more specialized tools are needed. Alongside a Nietzschean hammer, a Marxist sickle comes in handy, along with an anti-racist bolt-cutter, a feminist nutcracker, a queer screwdriver, and perhaps even a philosophical or theological torch to shine some light on things. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">As an aside: a common contemporary reading of Nietzsche or my old friend Michel Foucault leads to a similar oversimplification about power and its seeming ineluctability. However, Foucault was always careful to remind people that ‘where there is power, there is resistance’ – and therefore the possibility of freedom, which he said was the ontological condition of power and the underlying theme of his work. My old friend Jean-Francois Lyotard’s distinction between <i>pouvoir </i>and <i>puissance </i>(which might be translated as ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ power) also comes in handy here. The distinction helps us to maintain a sense of political optimism, as opposed to pessimism or cynicism (which Nietzsche said are the hallmarks of a slave morality) – but I’m wandering off the track.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">To return to the play: possibly casting a non-White actor like Desengano (who gave an engaging performance as the more likeable of the two cops) instead of Tompkins in some of these roles would have helped. Alternatively (or additionally) having Qin play the Buddha in the final scene would have developed the relationship between Buddha and Monkey as a qualitative dialectic between alternately attracting and opposing personalities or forces (like Apollo and Dionysus) as well as socio-economic classes (like bourgeois and proletarian or master and servant). Instead, it was reduced to a quantitative difference between power and powerlessness that ultimately appeared to be about colonisation and race.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">With substitution of a White Buddha in the final scene, Sid’s character-arc was left unfinished – unlike the story of Siddhartha, who leaves his life of privilege and enters a period of asceticism before finding the middle way of enlightenment and becoming the Buddha. Foreshortening this dialectic of enlightenment (to borrow a phrase from my old friends Adorno and Horkheimer) in the case of both characters led to a simple reinforcement of social and psychological structures with no possibility of change.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The original story is more complex (even in the TV show). Monkey is tricked and imprisoned by the Buddha, but later released by the Boddhisatva Guanyin; and the golden circlet of restraint placed around Monkey’s head by Guanyin and activated whenever Monkey becomes violent represents the force of conscience rather than oppression – with the promise of liberation once enlightenment is attained. Thus one might argue both Buddha and Monkey undergo a similar journey from excess (of wealth and privilege in the one case, or aggressiveness and the lust for power in the other) to privation (asceticism in the case of the Buddha, imprisonment and servitude in the case of Monkey) before finding the middle way and reaching enlightenment, which ends the cycle of suffering. This spiritual path arguably points the way to a political one as well (see my ‘Buddhism, Critical Theory, Post-Structuralism: Liberation Theology for a Neoliberal Age’ (<i>Buddhismus, Kritische Theorie, Poststrukturalismus: Befreiungstheologie für Ein Neoliberales Zeitalte,</i> translated by Humphrey Bower, unpublished). </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">However, by foreshortening the dialectic of enlightenment to a vicious circle of entrapment and betrayal, the ending of <i>Enlightenment </i>(at least in this production) left the audience feeling as trapped and betrayed as Sage herself by the prospect of a revolution forever forestalled (a common reading of Adorno and Horkheimer too, by the way, which is just as cynical and pessimistic as the reading of Nietzsche and Foucault mentioned earlier).<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">This feeling of entrapment was reinforced by Cherish Marrington’s otherwise elegant set: a temple-like structure featuring steps rising from the forestage to a platform framed by an architrave of curtains and a roof-shaped banner onto which neon-outlined street-protest or emoji-style illustrations by Chinese dissident cartoonist Badiucao were projected. The whole ensemble was evocative of both ancient and contemporary China, but entrances and exits were made cumbersome by having actors slink behind the curtains and then clamber onto or off the stage – notwithstanding much creative use of fabrics being draped over bodies to ‘conceal’ them while they were having sex or make them ‘appear’ or ‘disappear’ at the beginning or end of scenes. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Similarly, I loved the use of Mandarin surtitles throughout, but their impact was skewed by projecting them onto the bottom right-hand corner of the architrave rather than across the lintel above the action, where the Badiucao projections – while striking – were ultimately little more than decorative distractions. Alternatively, it might have been simpler and more effective (and more Brechtian) to do the whole thing on a bare floor or platform and project the surtitles across the back wall, allowing the space to transform as needed from bedroom to street and the actors to come and go without needing to hide anything.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">The most disturbing scene (and arguably the turning point) in the play is when Sage is pulled over by the cops and identified, after which things rapidly spiral out of control. This was staged in darkness using voiceover, allowing the audience’s imagination to flesh things out. However, the impact of the scene was reduced by the fact that the cops had previously been played for laughs, and by the close-mic voiceover delivery (both factors made it hard to discern if these were even the same cops). Perhaps if Sage had recorded the event on her phone (like her online harangue at the start of the play) and played it back to Sid onstage, the device would have been more dramatically effective and allowed for more interesting possibilities in terms of the couple’s subsequent choices, as well as making the scene feel less like exploitation/torture-porn.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">In sum: there’s a great play here about the relationship between Sid and Sage – whether in the fully realised form of a Brechtian parable, thriller, rom-com, superhero movie, or all of the above – waiting to be liberated like a trapped Monkey from beneath the mountain of intertextuality under which <i>Enlightenment </i>currently labours. That play (even in its current avatar-form) awaits a production that would strip away the artistic and cultural baggage of temple-structures and problematic casting to deliver the work’s potentially hilarious, sexy, touching, searing, terrifying and liberating message. The process of liberation might involve the original Monkey and Buddha stories being fully integrated and transcended; the violence of the artist-renegade being tempered by the golden circlet of theatrical discipline; and their artistic and spiritual pilgrimage from East to West and back again being accomplished.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Meanwhile, if the heavy-handedness of this critique of the play and production seems like using a hammer to crack a walnut – well, that’s how you crack a walnut, if you want to get to the kernel of things. It’s also a tribute to the thoughtful and thought-provoking nature of the artistic team and their work.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">*<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><i>Enlightenment (The Enlightenment Of The Siddhartha Gautama Buddha And The Encounter With The Monkey King – Great Sage, Equal of Heaven) </i>was at The Studio Underground, State Theatre Centre of WA, from December 14 to 17.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Wolfgang von Flügelhorn is a writer, critic and non-conceptual artist based in Perth, Western Australia. He was born and raised in Flügelhorn, a small town in Upper Austria, in 1963. After finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of Lower Flügelhorn he completed his doctoral thesis at Cambridge on the later Wittgenstein and the phenomenology of language games (<i>Der später Wittgenstein und die Phänomenologie den Sprachspielen, </i>unpublished) under the supervision of Wittgenstein’s literary executor Elizabeth Anscombe, whose famous paper ‘The First Person’ argues that the pronoun ‘I’ does not refer to anything. After leaving Cambridge he spent some years in Paris as Michel Foucault’s barber and personal stylist and as Jean-Francois Lyotard’s personal shopper, in which capacity he is said to have influenced the latter’s move away from libidinal economics towards the theory of language games as well as towards wearing more layers of clothing. On returning to Austria he was the lead vocalist and flugelhorn player in Viennese prog-rock/jazz-fusion band The Flaming Squirrels <i>(Die Flammende Eichhörnchen). </i>He left Austria and went into voluntary exile in 2000 after the formation of the far-right coalition federal government, vowing never to return. He is currently editor of the <i>Zeitschrift für Unsozialforschung</i> (Journal of Anti-Social Research) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Lower Flügelhorn where he holds a chair (remotely) in Paranormal Phenomenology while engaging his core muscles for two minutes every day. He is the author of several monographs including <i>Unlogische Untersuchungen</i> (<i>Illogical Investigations</i>),<i> Unzeitlich</i> <i>Sein </i>(<i>Not Being On Time</i>) and <i>Wahnsinn und Methode</i> (<i>Madness and Method</i>), all of which have been translated into English by his friend and colleague Humphrey Bower but none of which has yet been published in any language. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Humphrey Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03841050029169012878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962718407053988991.post-72971025461872447172022-12-07T16:30:00.000-08:002022-12-07T16:30:38.502-08:00<h1 style="text-align: left;"><i>Return to Seoul</i></h1><h2 style="text-align: left;">Perth Festival Lotterywest Films</h2><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Reviewed by Wolfgang von Flügelhorn</h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgFMyg7GyO-76AlmVImSIw47H8rQFsPT9B4C6EwFhCXelWHoO43KGPrXuT6buhKVDCh_YcPWCYj697NWvT7xpj16hNj091wTJdXsKz2qyLl68Cv9WMMC3CB9N4CZJ3qNJu9celxHR6cMkdGEeYUKK7j-Mo5RoOp_t2vmulhhVpSCU9P_S14xkz0rcBw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="710" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgFMyg7GyO-76AlmVImSIw47H8rQFsPT9B4C6EwFhCXelWHoO43KGPrXuT6buhKVDCh_YcPWCYj697NWvT7xpj16hNj091wTJdXsKz2qyLl68Cv9WMMC3CB9N4CZJ3qNJu9celxHR6cMkdGEeYUKK7j-Mo5RoOp_t2vmulhhVpSCU9P_S14xkz0rcBw=w400-h270" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">When I was a precocious 14-year-old schoolboy in Lower Flügelhorn my parents allowed me (possibly unwisely) to go on a one-year student exchange program to Melbourne, Australia, where I was billeted with the family of my future friend and colleague Humphrey Bower. I didn’t speak English but learned the language and culture immersively. Without realising it at the time I was repeating my mother’s childhood exile from Austria with her parents which took place before the Nazi occupation in 1938. History, as Marx said, repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Later I would continue this pattern by going to Cambridge to study philosophy, and finally by going into voluntary exile from Austria after the election of the far-right coalition government in 2000. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Davy Chou is a Cambodian-French filmmaker whose parents emigrated to Paris before most of their remaining family were killed by the Khmer Rouge. He ‘returned’ to Cambodia for the first time to make <i>Golden Slumbers</i> (2012), a documentary featuring relics and interviews with witnesses from the ‘golden’ era of Cambodian filmmaking that preceded the Khmer Rouge regime under which over 400 films were lost or destroyed and most the artists who worked on them were killed or fled. His subsequent film <i>Diamond Island </i>(2016) featured a cast of young debut actors and dealt with a teenager from a rural province in Cambodia who comes to Phnom Penh to earn money as a construction worker on a half-finished luxury development and is reunited with a long-lost older brother. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><i>Return to Seoul</i> (2022) similarly deals with themes of trauma, loss, migration, reunion, heritage, identity and coming to terms with the past (the original English title was <i>All The People I’ll Never Be</i>). Freddie (a mesmerising debut from Ji Min Park) is a free-spirited but emotionally dissociated 25-year-old French-Korean adoptee who returns to her country of origin for the first time since she was a baby and embarks on a journey of discovery that includes learning the language and culture and eventually seeking out her birth-parents. Chou has explained in interviews that he based Freddie on a French-Korean adoptee-friend who accompanied him to South Korea for the screening of <i>Golden Slumbers</i> in Busan and was reunited with her birth parents; and that the character was further developed in collaboration with Park; but that the film (co-written with Claire Maugendre) also draws on his own life. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Park’s performance drives the film, her alternately radiant or coldly expressionless face in almost every frame, half-filling it in close-up or carefully placed as if almost lost or forgotten in carefully composed wide shots. Her co-star is Seoul itself and other locations in South Korea where most of the film is shot apart from a final scene in Romania, all evocatively captured in luminous colours by cinematographer Thomas Favel and fluidly edited by Dounia Sichov. The city changes mood and identity in the course of the film as dramatically as Freddie herself, who in a series of time-jumps over the ensuing years transforms from casual slacker to glamorous femme fatale to high-class arms dealer and finally globe-wandering backpacker, seeking or offering and then rejecting or withholding affection from random strangers, lovers, friends, colleagues and family along the way.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><i>Return to Seoul </i>resists the temptation of psychological, sociological or moral commentary about the ‘issue’ of adoption in favour of a meditation on the elusive nature of identity and belonging, meaning and purpose, being and desire. Freddie ceases to be a case-history and becomes an everywoman perpetually trapped by her own and others’ demands for love. The final shot of her pausing to sight-read Bach’s despairing supplication <i>Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ</i> at a hotel foyer piano in Romania on her birthday before leaving without even checking in – and after learning that an email to her birth mother has bounced – is an exquisite image of existential abandonment and transcendental homelessness. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">*<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Return to Seoul screens at Somerville Auditorium, University of Western Australia, as part of Perth Festival Lotterywest Films from Mon 12 to Sunday 18 December.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;">Wolfgang von Flügelhorn is a writer, critic and non-conceptual artist based in Perth, Western Australia. He was born and raised in Flügelhorn, a small town in Upper Austria, in 1963. After finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of Lower Flügelhorn he completed his doctoral thesis at Cambridge on the later Wittgenstein and the paraphenomenology of language games (<i>Der später Wittgenstein und die Paraphänomenologie den Sprachspielen, </i>unpublished) under the supervision of Wittgenstein’s student and literary executor Elizabeth Anscombe, whose famous paper ‘The First Person’ argues that the pronoun ‘I’ does not refer to anything. He is currently editor of the <i>Zeitschrift für Unsozialforschung</i> (Journal of Anti-Social Research) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Lower Flügelhorn where he holds a chair (remotely) in Paranormal Phenomenology while engaging his core muscles for two minutes every day. He is the author of several monographs including <i>Unlogische Untersuchungen</i> (<i>Illogical Investigations</i>),<i> Unzeitlich</i> <i>Sein </i>(<i>Not Being On Time</i>) and <i>Wahnsinn und Methode</i> (<i>Madness and Method</i>), all of which have been translated into English by his friend and colleague Humphrey Bower but none of which has yet been published in any language. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><b> </b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span> </p>Humphrey Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03841050029169012878noreply@blogger.com0