Footscray Community Arts Centre
May 19 – 27
VCA alum Natalie Abbott’s Physical Fractals is a dance work for two, created through Next Wave's Kickstart program and Arts Victoria for the Next Wave Festival 2012. The aim of the work, according to Abbot, “is to heighten senses by warping the other senses we rely upon when we see performance”.
The work is performed in a large space at the Footscray Community Arts Centre, and incorporates sound and technology as main features of the performance. The audience is seated in a large circle, with the performance taking place in the middle. Says Abbot: “the space is designed to generate a kind of intimacy with what is going on in the performance… We play with proximity to the audience; we want to create an environment, rather than a stage.”
Physical Fractals begins in complete blackness, then the lights are switched on and we see Abbott and fellow VCA alum Rebecca Jensen, in baggy denim shorts and T-Shirts, barefoot and with loose hair. The movement begins, without any accompanying sound or music. Instead, the dancers create the soundtrack. They move in perfect syncopation, sliding their feet, frantically swinging their arms and swishing their hair, in movements obviously chosen for their ability to create noise. The performers swing microphones above their heads, helicopter-like, changing the angle and speed to create more and more interesting sounds, before dropping and dragging the microphones on the floor, creating different sounds again. There is lots of running, heavy breathing, marching, sliding and falling, the sounds of which are looped through the speakers and echoed, magnified and hushed, to create a surround-sound style of audio. The sound manipulator is sitting in full view of the audience, working his laptop to arrange the sound.
The marketing collateral promised “audience interactivity” and there wasn’t any that I could obviously make out. But looking around the circle of faces, the audience were completely transfixed, almost in a trance, watching the repetitive movements, so from an audience engagement point of view, the work was a success.
Abbott must certainly be applauded for pushing the boundaries of dance as sound, and both dancers impressed with their athletic fitness and ability to move for 50 minutes continuously, but for me the work was too repetitious, to the point of tedium, and I was looking forward to the end.
- ASTRID LAWTON