Resolution 2019: works by Vain, Minogue-Stone and Ben & Fred

Resolution 2019: Works by Vendetta Vain, Elliot Minogue-Stone and Ben & Fred, January 29

This year The Place has partnered with, among others, Jackson’s Lane, to cross-fertilize choreography with circus arts at Resolution. It’s a welcome initiative that hopefully develops the gene pool of both choreographic and circus expression rather than simply expanding the catchment area for Resolution’s artists. 

Vee Smith, who performs under the name of Vendetta Vain, trained at the National Centre for Circus Arts and Butterface is her first circus solo work. She is not the first to perform naked on a trapeze (though perhaps the first to do so at Resolution), but she approaches her performance with as little coyness and pudeur as apology. The title of her work is a derogatory noun for ‘an attractive woman with an undesirable face’, which is clearly understood to mean an attractive female body with an undesirable face. Vain makes this point quite evident by hiding her face, for most of the performance, under a muslin concoction tied loosely at the neck to which she attaches false eyelashes and a rude approximation of lips. But while our focus in Butterface is on the body and what Vain does with it, it is on our minds that Vain has focused her argument; the two don’t always acknowledge each other in the formation of her ‘message’.

There are two sets of projected texts, one that is designed to ease Vain into the performance as she enters behind two large feathers, and the other conveys the sexual animosity and stereotyping of the female circus artist as she performs on the trapeze. Because our eyes are watching her rather than the texts on the back wall, there is an argument that Butterface would benefit from Vain speaking the second set of texts while performing. It would give the taping together of her legs, for example, an edge of satirical wit over the comic absurdity of her actions. Vain’s choice of songs (Flawless, Paper Bag and She) show a natural sense of self-deprecatory humour and her subversive intelligence will not suffer fools. It’s a potent mixture.    

Elliot Minogue-Stone is a graduate of the incommensurable Orley Quick and the Hairy Heroines, inviting us in Sighs, Cries and Lies to ‘delve into platitudes, taboos, tangibility, big questions and odd sensations’ with the same lack of disambiguation he once brought to discussing big dogs and screwdriver heads. He takes an important step from performer to choreographer by creating Sighs, Cries and Lies on Isabella Arboleda Tovar and Pauline Thuriot who translate his sense of the absurd into another key. At first it’s a very low key, as the two bounce on to the stage in red shorts, white tops and trainers, arms enigmatically raised in front of their faces. But as Tovar begins to deck the stage in a wealth of props from a bright red shopping basket, the key begins to modulate. Sighs, Cries and Lies is not a work that can be defined by its external shape but by the paths that run through its apparent chaos, a physical grammar of associations and collisions that offer a fractured landscape of vulnerability. You make of it what you will; its meaning coalesces around a free association of props, popular songs, wit and repartee that Tovar and Thuriot weave into an emotional pattern that ultimately holds them — and us — together. 

Ben & Fred’s The Juggling of Science brings together two jugglers, Frederike Gerstner and Ben Nicholson, in a light-hearted introduction to quantum physics. The recorded voice of Professor Circumference introduces his two understudies with the tone of Listen with Mother but the principles in ‘possibly the most fun science lecture you could hope to see’ are staged rather than heard. Gerstner is a scientist in a white lab coat at her desk waiting for Dr. Dextrose (Nicholson), to arrive. With their wit and an ability to illustrate complex scientific notions like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the construction of an atom, dark matter and neutrinos through juggling, Gerstner and Nicholson have created a gem of crossover stimulation. The problem is that the crossover bypasses almost completely the choreographic nature of Resolution’s program. In his collaborations with Seeta Patel and Alexander Whitley, Sean Gandini has shown how the disciplines of juggling and dance can learn from and stimulate each other, but The Juggling of Science frames itself resolutely and unapologetically within science; it’s not a question of the excellence of the work but of the programming choices of this ‘festival of new choreography’.

Resolution 2017: Orley Quick & the Hairy Heroines, Mater-Filia

Resolution 2017, January 31, Orley Quick & the Hairy Heroines, Mater-Filia

Elliot Minogue-Stone, Tyrrell Foreshaw and José Diogo Fernandes de Jesus in Orley Quick’s As We Like It (photo: Emmeline Cresswell)

Unfortunately due to the length of this evening’s program I had to leave to catch a train before seeing the final work. Apologies to Sketch Dance Company.

There’s a riotous imagination at play in Orley Quick & The Hairy Heroine’s As We Like It; while Quick throws a variety of feminine attributes at them (metaphorically and literally) the three (hairy) men — Tyrrell Foreshaw, José Diogo Fernandes de Jesus and Elliot Minogue-Stone — maintain their masculinity in a colourful exploration of gender such as Shakespeare himself might have liked.

The tone of the opening sequence is sublime: accompanied by the beautiful protest song, Los Hermanos (“the brothers”) by Atahualpa Yupanqui sung by Bia Krieger and Lhasa De Sela, the three men with eyes closed feel their way across the stage with arms outstretched as if on a religious pilgrimage until a sensual rhythm takes over their bodies. Their hands start to accent musical rhythms on their thighs but this transforms subtly into a hilarious competition of beats that goes downhill fast into an outright slapping fight. Quick thus takes us seamlessly from the height of sensibility to the depths of human foibles and what is refreshing is that the performers appear as surprised as we are by the deteriorating turn of events. It is their understated, deadpan performances that raise As We Like It to a high level of artistic achievement but it is Quick’s anarchic, earthy sense of humour that communicates to us throughout, destabilizing appearances to the point of absurdity. How else could you thread Minogue-Stone’s monologue about trousers, screw-drivers and big dogs, to the debonair de Jesus bellowing with rage, to the burly Foreshaw seducing the audience with his improbably supple pole dancing, to a skateboard ballet sequence, to a lip-synched trio fumbling for the correct name of a spirit level?

It is one of the longer works for Resolution — touching the maximum of 25 minutes — but the energy, sensuality and humour never pall. Quick is helped by dramaturg Karla Ptáček, costume designer Giulia Scrimieri (who clearly had fun finding the wigs, costumes and accessories kept in a wicker basket on stage until needed), costume maker Hania Kosewicz, lighting designer Joshua Gadsby and sound editor Alex Mitchell. But what makes As We Like It stand out is that Quick and the Hairy Heroines draw us unerringly through their irreverently fertile minds and light hearts to reveal a richness of observation played out with flamboyance, confidence and a fine sense of timing.

I had already interviewed Debbie Lee-Anthony and her daughter Lauren a couple of weeks before so I was aware of the emotional complexity behind Do Not Go Gentle and the high stakes mother and daughter (Materfilia) had placed in the work. It was the first time they were performing together and the inspiration was the life of Lee-Anthony’s late sister-in-law, Kath Posner. It was also the first time Posner’s husband, musician Hamilton Lee (aka Hamid Mantu), had composed a dance score and the first time he was seeing the work dedicated to his late wife. It is a tribute to the artistry of all three that their individual creativity contributes to the full realization of the whole without becoming emotionally fraught: the score arises as much from the poem of Dylan Thomas as it does from the choreographic input of the dancers, and the choreography flows inseparably from the score.

Time is very much the crucible of the poem, and time is what Do Not Go Gentle addresses; we see it in the relative ages of mother and daughter, in time as memories and time as absence, yet the work drills down into the present with stoical force. Lee-Anthony speeds up her movements and her daughter slows down hers in deference to each other’s time when they dance together but each explores their own vocabulary and pace in distinct and poignant soliloquies. Do Not Go Gentle is a meeting of lyrical expressionism and youthful optimism, a conversation in which both mother and daughter fully contribute their feelings and abilities with mutual respect and emotional warmth. Heard but not seen is the essential contribution of Hamilton Lee, the man and the musician, that links mother and daughter in a timeless paean to the enduring bonds of life itself.