Kage: Flesh and Bone -
Fortyfivedownstairs, Melbourne, 24 March -
The Melbourne based company Kage has collaborated with some high profile artists of late, such as actor Helen Morse and cartoonist Michael Leunig. For Flesh and Bone, however, the company has created an intimate and personal piece with a duet performed by its two founding directors, Kate Denborough and Gerard Van Dyke.
Flesh and Bone opens strikingly with a figure sitting on the stage who appears to have four legs. It is a telling sight, encapsulating the main theme of the work – the couple’s physical and emotional closeness, developed over their 16 years of working together. Eventually the legs sort themselves into two separate people, but the man is a woman and the woman is a man – with the aid of rather grotesque body suits. Gender is another theme – as the couple dances, they swap sex, swap body parts, and swap choreography, demonstrating how our perceptions of gender inform choreography and influence the way we read movement.
This almost dreamlike section of the work gives way to a lighter mood with the introduction of some large, black, helium-filled balloons and a more circus-like style – the latter being often a charming characteristic of Kage’s work. The balloons overhead invoke images of threatening clouds until they are popped and shower the pair with red confetti. The mirrored backdrop and black balloons are replaced by a white paper backdrop and red balls. Van Dyke splatters a can of tomatoes over Denborough – a puzzling but visceral moment. Eventually the pair scoops up the tomatoes, produces a spaghetti maker and makes a meal of napolitana, which they eat (raw!). The piece ends on a bucolic note with the pair snoozing and eating fruit on an artificial lawn.
The first and second parts of Flesh and Bone don’t seem to relate thematically, but as a whole the work has considerable absurdist charm. The set is small and square, the design simple – various back drops pulled down in large sheets from what looks like a photographer’s roller. The movement is, consequently, mostly restricted to the spot, but the performers squeeze many imaginative possibilities from the set. The colours are vivid and striking – black, white, red, green. I wonder, however, if the circus-like elements of the work might have been more effective in a less intimate venue, such as a proscenium arch stage, which would allow distance to enhance the illusion.
-- KAREN VAN ULZEN