Brisbane Festival
Jonah Bokaer: “Rules of the Game”
The Powerhouse, 14 September
Dancenorth: Rainbow Vomit
Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts, 21 September
Brisbane Festival delivered slim pickings for lovers of dance again this year. Apart from the QPAC initiative, Ballet Preljocaj, only two dance performance programs were on offer. The first, “Rules of the Game”, comprising three short works by American independent dance artist, Jonah Bokaer, was promoted as “dance as visual art”, and saw inanimate objects and their combative relationship to the dancers become perhaps, a metaphor for life.
RECESS (2010) features Bokaer, formerly a dancer with Merce Cunningham, as soloist. With a beguiling stage presence, finely built, and barefoot in black pants and shirt, he manipulates a wide roll of paper – unrolling it across the space, folding it, unfolding, rerolling and tearing off sections that are left in crumpled heaps, which then amusingly take on a life of their own. Tiny movements of the toes and feet, as Bokaer navigates the paper’s perimeter, and jerky movements of the head, resonate of obsessive compulsion, which intrigued.
Why Patterns (2011) has four dancers in grey shorts and shirts within a large square marked out by clear tubes of ping-pong balls, while side and overhead lighting (by Aaron Copp) add texture to an otherwise monochromatic palette. The movement, although competently executed to the chiming beat of an electronic soundscape, has however, little variety in its dynamic, resonating of the postmodern.
The inanimate become animated as hundreds more balls cascade into the space, while the dancers frantically try to toss them back. There are other interesting moments as the dancers manoeuvre the long tubes across the space with their feet to form different configurations. However, the work is overly long and finishes inconclusively.
The eponymous work of the program’s title is the largest in scale of the three, and also the most recently created, having premiered in Dallas in May. It has eight dancers in layers of pinkish orange clothing, that are gradually peeled off to reveal buttoned up ‘onesies’. The space is open to the wings and a back projection by collaborator Daniel Arsham, has huge rolling images of basketballs and Grecian plaster heads sequentially disassembling and then reassembling. Although initially captivating, the visual impact withers with the relentless repetition of the sequence.
Bokaer enigmatically states that Rules of the Game is about ‘tagging’ “deeply creative minds into … the very fluid medium of choreography,” but the work also loosely references the 1918 Luigi Pirandello play of the same name. More prosaically, references to basketball dominate, with the dancers in one section playing ‘catch’.
The movement construct is again fluid, with many attitude spirals, contact and floor work, but as with the previous works, it varies little in its dynamic, with the dancers rarely leaving the ground. While rhythmically in time with the orchestrated score by multi Grammy-Award winner Pharrell Williams, the movement, like the score, suffers from unwarranted repetition.
As one of the key programs in the Brisbane Festival, “Rules of the Game”, delivered on its promise of visual innovation with some interesting moments. However, the dance component, left largely under explored, was disappointing.
Dancenorth’s Rainbow Vomit is a short work for children of all ages. Choreographed by Kyle Page and Amber Haines, it also features balls – large clear exercise balls, ping pong balls and balls of other colours and sizes. All are incorporated into this exploration of the effects of digital media on young brains, with playful wit and ingenuity.
The five Dancenorth dancers infused the work with energy and enthusiasm, embracing the idea of play, where fantasy takes over from reality in a 3-D psychedelic wonderland of dancing lights and infinite possibilities. Voice, light, and movement bounce both off each other, and off Alistair McIndoe’s fantastical soundscape.
The movement is at times loose and airborne, delivered with a boneless abandonment; at other times it shows a controlled fluidity. The opening sequence, as the dancers zoom across the space, over, under and across the exercise balls, is imaginatively conceived and seamlessly executed.
Rainbow Vomit is a neatly crafted promotion of creative play – without an iPad in sight.
DENISE RICHARDSON
