Daniel Jaber: “Reassessment—a Double Bill” -
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre, 9 August, 2014 -
With “Reassessment”, Daniel Jaber presents a thought-provoking double bill that explores issues of identity, sexuality and gender. Jaber’s interest in using critical theory and text as a springboard for dance that draws heavily on the balletic vocabulary, as he did in last year’s Nought, is in evidence in both pieces, but with markedly different effects. His forty-minute solo Too Far Again, Not Far Enough... is the more provocative, and to my mind, memorable, whereas the ensemble piece Agile is witty and lighter of heart.
The first work, Too Far Again, Not Far Enough..., was awarded Best Dance and the Adelaide Festival Centre’s Inspace award at the 2010 Adelaide Fringe. Since that time it’s been reworked as an ensemble piece, but has now been re-crafted as a stronger solo that explores different aspects of an individual’s notion of self-worth. On a red-lit stage the bare-chested Jaber, upstage with his back to the audience, flagellates himself with a whip. The imagery seems as much religious as sexual though, and this is born out in the next section, which is performed to an American evangelical voice over that equates an individual’s value with being a "worthy vessel of God". Clad next in track pants and T-shirt and standing downstage, Jaber assumes an anxious and awkward persona, crossing and uncrossing his arms, sticking his hands in and out of his pockets. This escalates into a frantic series of gestural tics from which he falls backwards, slapping his body into the floor from various angles. What follows is an extraordinary fluid and graceful sequence, with high extensions and jumps: the impression is of breaking free from angst and self-loathing.
Another section explores the idea of self-worth in relation to material possessions, with a female voice relating the increasingly mercenary nature of gender relations in contemporary China, whilst Jaber clutches greedily at a series of blocks and counters. The final section begins with a voice over retelling the murder of a young man for swishing his hips too much—not conforming to masculine norms, in other words. Washed discreetly in red light, a naked Jaber rises on to demi-pointe, and sways his from hips to side to side as if taking the place of the murdered boy. In his final solo, Jaber seems to be probing the distinctions of gender, interspersing stereotypically feminine and masculine movements. The piece ends with him back to the self-flagellation, whilst slides project Judith Butler’s essay on the difficulty of giving a coherent account of yourself—even to your self. This is a powerfully moving work that stays in the mind.
Agile is a work for four dancers, in this performance Kimball Wong, Kialea-Nadine Williams, Madeleine Edwards and Alexander Baden-Bryce, set to Susan Leigh Foster’s amusing essay, "The Ballerina’s Phallic Point". Dressed by Ruby & Prankstar in an intriguing mix of black tights with violet drapes and leather straps, the dancers work in concert, and in a variety of duets, using the ballet vocabulary as a counterpoint to Foster’s argument about the fetishization of the ballerina. The different shapes and sizes of the dancers here also work to call into question ballet’s privileging of a specific body type; the result is entertaining and stylish.
“Reassessment” gives ample reason for Leigh Warren’s decision to hand his company over to Jaber; the two works on offer demonstrate Jaber’s facility with step making coupled with a keen intelligence and a strongly individual voice.
- Maggie Tonkin