Marikiscrycrycry’s He’s Dead as part of Now 20 at The Yard

Marikiscrycrycry, He’s dead, The Yard, February 8

The predominant sensation of Marikiscrycrycry’s He’s Dead, presented as part of Now 20 festival at The Yard, is a density created not only by Jon Cleveland’s thick, blue haze through which we see the choreographed images but by the difficulty in teasing out the motif from its ground. Malik Nashad Sharpe is a cult figure in black/queer theatre where the body signifies both the subject and object of performance; joining them at The Yard in this blend of performance art and dance theatre are Gareth Chambers, Blue Makwana and Eve Stainton, all in Mia Maxwell’s fantastical costumes. 

He’s Dead is nominally about the rapper Tupac Shakur, aka 2Pac, widely respected for his stand on fighting inequality and discrimination, who was killed in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles at the age of 25. Sharpe looks at the narrative of Shakur’s life and asks if he might have been depressed. ‘I think he was, and that isn’t a large part of the narrative behind his aesthetics and his work’, Sharpe explains to Thomas Stichbury in a recent Attitude magazine interview, ‘and I am curious about what that means to someone like me. I want to tease out and materialize a black aesthetics of melancholia and experimentation that allows for the humanity of the things I might feel, and on terms that are not fatal or voyeuristic.’ Sharpe’s form of theatre draws oppression towards them so they can transform it into a complex aesthetic of racial and gender vulnerability that allows them to question their own state of mind as a ‘shy, ambivalent, black femme choreographer’. In one of the more symbolic moments of He’s Dead, a banner with Zeinab Saleh’s portrait of Shakur painted on it is unfurled with Sharpe and Makwana as flag waivers on either side; it is an act of funerary veneration and at the same time one of transference from activist to medium.

Violence is never far from the surface of He’s Dead; its course travels between racial and gender discrimination, united in Sharpe’s body and those of their colleagues. In a scene where Chambers lands several punches on Sharpe’s defenceless body stretched up against the back wall there’s a suggestion of masochistic pleasure, followed by a fight in which a victorious Sharpe deposits Chambers’ body on the front of the stage. At the same time, Sharpe looks beyond violence to its resolution. In one of the most moving scenes, we see them muffled in a cloak with a light inside their cowl searching slowly and silently among bodies on the stage, an illuminated face searching for guidance from the dead. It’s as if somewhere deep in the haunting shadows lurk the figures not only of Tupac but of Yukio Mishima and Jean Genet. Soon after Sharpe shares a ritual cleansing with Makwana that has the sense of religious atonement.

In their desire to confer humanity on their own identity as black and queer, Sharpe creates a rich, almost mystical imagery that corresponds with the sound design of JONI, Joanna Pope, and ¥ummy Online; within this conceptual audio-visual space a dialectic between violence and forbearance is played out in real time. In the initial mix of hard-hitting rap songs, it’s as if we are hearing the music in Sharpe’s head — and perhaps in Shakur’s too; the songs are both the context and the narrative of racial discrimination. But as the work progresses, and the body becomes the context and narrative of gender discrimination, the music subtly changes to give colour and texture to Sharpe’s emotional journey; when they begin to sing before the ritual cleansing, music and the physical body merge. Sharpe comments to Stichbury in the same interview that they use an alter-ego ‘to perfect the practice of crying in front of people, little wails and shouts for one alienated motherfucker — wanting to be seen as human and more and not knowing why.’ Crying is a sign of humanity, of our awareness of beauty and of fragility, but it is too often the abrupt effect of violence, which smothers both. Allowing themself to cry is Sharpe’s defence against the ever-present possibility of violence, but in the creation of He’s Dead they raise the act of crying to a polemical confrontation without its maudlin connotation. As the publicity material states, ‘He’s Dead sheds tears for the things that we cannot unearth.’ The long silence after the performers have left the stage is perhaps an unconscious acknowledgement of what still lies beyond our reach. 

National Dance Company Wales in Awakening at Riverfront Theatre

National Dance Company Wales: Awakening, Riverfront Theatre, Newport, March 1

Opening their Spring 2019 season, Awakening, in Newport, National Dance Company Wales offers ‘three unique dances to amuse and amaze’. With two premières — Fernando Melo’s Afterimage and resident choreographer Caroline Finn’s Revellers’ Mass — alongside Marcos Morau’s Tundra from 2017 we are welcomed with a five-minute pre-show speech by the new artistic director, Fearghus Ó Conchúir, outlining his support for the ‘brilliant performers’ on stage alongside the plurality of what dance can be and the benefits it offers to our communities, stages and studios across Wales.

Tundra is a 30-minute work for eight dancers that ‘tears pages from the Russian history books on folk dance, mass parades and revolution, revitalising old ideas with renewed meaning. It’s as mesmerizingly beautiful as it is robotically precise.’ If you’re going to self-define to these high expectations then you have to have the skill, discipline and technique to execute; unfortunately the NDCWales dancers do not. 

With an air of religious menace in the opening scene we have eight bodies smoothly and footlessly hovering about the stage in competitive Japanese walking patterns, their bell skirts covering their feet as they glide across floor in formations of treacle. This is followed by an attempt at choreographic precision that sits somewhere between a multi-part canon, a pedestrian domino rally and a kaleidoscopic image but executed by more than a quarter of the company surprisingly poorly for a national organisation. If a work demands such a degree of precision and musicality then dancers cannot be one or two beats behind or five degrees out of alignment, especially when Joseff Fletcher’s back-lit lighting exposes and emphasises the exact site of legs, arms and torsos. The discrepancies draw our attention because only five bodies are adhering to the choreographic instruction. Choreographically it is a work full of illusion that succeeds in the front-to-back cluster as we see bodies slowly tipping off balance like pendulums and then reversing back to centre. It’s visually clever and would be more satisfying if it were better rehearsed.

Afterimage by Fernando Melo is a 20-minute work for six dancers that uses the effect of Pepper’s Ghost to make figures appear and disappear in this look at loss, memories and sliding door moments. It describes itself as ‘a journey of fleeting images; of appearance and disappearance. Mirrors are used on stage to form a unique theatrical experience where the past and the present collide with a poetic and creative style of dance.’ Sat at table with two chairs we see encounters between pairs of people who move on and off stage, in and out of light delivering letters from beyond the grave or from another time. Melo’s regular artistic team of Shumpei Nemoto, Yoko Seyama and Peter Lundin make the company look great. It’s a study of simple movement and a bundle of what-ifs that match the stillness, mood and reverence that the work demands. 

However if you’ve seen Melo’s work before, Afterimage is essentially a recycling/stitching together of three of his previous commissions for other companies: If walls could speak, Les Enfants du paradis and Pepper’s Ghost. We have the same table, the same chairs, the same mirror, the same mood. As a choreographer for hire this is not unusual; with any commission what you’re getting is a time-limited licence for an existing product and a name that enhances your own brand and gets you into new touring territories.

Finn’s Revellers’ Mass ‘delves into a world of ritual as an unlikely group gathers for a dinner party, where etiquette is put to the test. Curious choreography and characters are inspired by historical paintings.’ Finn’s première for nine dancers is a presentation of Dionysian revelry. There is excess, but for a 30-minute portrayal of a rousing banquet it is just too clean and dainty; no one is letting go. I lack a belief in what is being presented because the dancers don’t appear to believe in what they’re doing: artifice leaks out their bodies and faces. Revelry has to be embodied, as Gareth Chambers showed in his Excess at Chapter last summer where he explored revelry’s sweaty and transgressive relationship to ecstasy and pleasure. Throwing together movement, a hotchpotch of soundtracks, multiple lighting designs and a water-filled trough on stage smacks of choreographic masking. And we need to talk about the ending which cheapens an already lightweight work.

Do I believe in the dancers? Do I believe in what they’re being asked to do and are they able to deliver it? In Afterimage yes, in Revellers’ Mess and Tundra, no. If the financially safest and largest dance company in Wales is presenting apolitical, light, under-rehearsed entertainment at the opening of their Spring season, what message does that send to the rest of the ecology? NDCWales receives a similar amount of public subsidy and operates at a similar scale to Scottish Dance Theatre but the difference in the quality of dancers and choreographic choices is marked; when you’re in receipt of the highest public subsidy the critical lens should be at its sharpest. This triple bill has been inherited by Ó Conchúir (he came into post late last year) and it will be interesting to see how the company moves forward under his artistic leadership.