#contemporaryperformance

First live show after Hong Kong’s Covid fifth wave, and third show I’ve seen by this company, Unlock Dancing Plaza. Just ahead of its opening, I wrote about Unlock here, mainly based around conversations and an interview with its associate artistic director, Joseph Lee. I ought to have talked to the show’s director, KT Yau, and probably Unlock’s founder, Ong Yong Lock, too. But time was limited.

I’m glad to be able to say that piece – “Six Mouths” – justified my article: six temporary rooms put up in a large space at Cattle Depot Artist Village. Each room had with a performer inside, with three hours to perform. The audience – 50 or so people – wandered from room to room in whatever order they liked, staying as short or as long as they liked. Taking a rest if necessary in one or another of the seating areas around the venue.

I managed two circuits, a long one and a short one. I don’t think the details of the six items matter so much. I liked the variety – six parallel worlds, six different worlds. Three I found disturbing, three I found comforting. A space and an idea. Very little dance. Maybe too much talking and not enough movement? Contemporary performance, I think, has to be a little wary of abandoning movement; there is, after all, a long tradition of spoken performance.

Over to Freespace to watch Yuri Ng.

Liked the piece a lot, mainly seeing it as a story of his life/reflections of an older man looking back on his life. Love was one theme - its joys, but also its aftermath. Others I guess at - the fading of memories? An acceptance of ageing? An acceptance of one's body? (Especially the ageing body - surely a major issue for a dancer?)

But why the Dream of Red Mansion references? Perhaps that would have been clearer if I understood more of the talking. Or perhaps it's that theme of the book that however rich our lives are, they are in the end nothing.

A lot of biographical stuff I presume, but also some masterly acting, especially at the end when the lights come up and you can see all of him, from all angles, and finally - after maybe 80 minutes when all he does is walk - some dancing. A few steps, a caper, a prance. Worth waiting for.

UNRAVEL

Whilst watching Kayleigh brush her teeth during her unravel piece, ‘What do you desire?’, I was reminded of Traci Kelly’s one-to-one performance, ‘The Mirror Pool’. During this piece, Kelly squirts wine from her mouth into her participant’s mouth and vice versa. To use Kelly’s words during her Bunker Talk for Manchester School of Art, she creates “a slippery place that takes place at the boundaries of skin”. It is this description which, for me, is reminiscent of the act of teeth-brushing – both, taking place at the “boundaries of skin” and being “slippery”. Whilst Kelly’s performative act and teeth-brushing are both literally slippery, in terms of their incorporation of fluid substances – Kelly’s performative act is also slippery in terms of her evasive, elusive and unpredictable encounter with her participant. Kelly transforms the typically solo activity of wine-drinking into a duo activity. After watching Kayleigh’s piece, we talked about the nature of teeth-brushing, being a private, solo act. Moreover, we revealed to each other that we both experience embarrassment if our teeth-brushing is witnessed because of our shared struggle to keep the toothpaste contained inside our mouths. This imagery of trying to keep toothpaste contained inside our mouths allegorically visualises peoples’ attempt to keep certain words inside their mouths. In her Bunker Talk, Kelly also said that ‘The Mirror Pool’ “undermines the orality of the mouth in relation to its cultural adherence to language by reattaching it to more primal muscular functions such as spurt, sucking and blowing”. Therefore, Kayleigh and I also decided to undermine the orality of the mouth by transforming the act of teeth-brushing into a one-to-one performative act – Kayleigh watched me brush my teeth and vice-versa. If a person can become comfortable with witnessing (as well as performing) a physically abject leakage, then maybe we can begin to normalise verbally abject leakages as well.

UNRAVEL

During a previous workshop, Kayleigh and I discussed female desire and how that could be perceived as abject. Kayleigh decided to unravel this discussion through a video piece. Within this piece, Kayleigh attempts to tell her viewer what she desires. However, Kayleigh never finishes her sentences – instead, she pulls out words (written on small pieces paper) from her mouth. These words, such as “choke” and “tease”, tell the viewer what Kayleigh’s spoken words fail to express – they tell the viewer what she desires. The way in which Kayleigh extracts the saliva-covered words from her mouth effectively presents her words as abject – the reason why Kayleigh cannot finish her sentences.

The abject nature of female desire is also explored throughout the work of video and performance artist, Louise Orwin. In her essay, ‘On Identity: Survivor vs Victim’, which explores the making process of her show ‘Oh Yes Oh No’, Orwin references one of her interviewees saying: “people don’t want to hear you’ve been raped and still enjoy sex. They want to keep you in a box”. The analogy of a being kept in a box makes me think of Kayleigh’s mouth, in her video piece, as a box – feeling that she needs to keep the truth locked inside. However, in this video, Kayleigh does unlock her box – she does extract the contents within her mouth. Through the exposure of Kayleigh’s internal fluids mixing with her words, Kayleigh presents the visceral feelings of disgust that are engendered within her beholders when her box is opened. Orwin, on the other hand, presents what happens within herself when her box remains unopened – a loss of identity. When talking about her desires, in ‘Oh Yes Oh No’, Orwin either speaks through a microphone which distorts her voice or she speaks with the stage lights turned off so that her audience cannot see the body from which the abject words are leaking from.