Myriam Gourfink is a leading figure in the dance world in France; her current Australian tour marks the first time we in Australia have had the chance to see her perform her solo work. She is best known for her minute choreographic scores often based on extreme stillness and supported by intricate soundscapes.
A strange, rather unsettling work, Breathing Monster – the Performance Space’s ‘Switched On’ season and presented in conjunction with the National Arts School and ISEA – is powerful and hypnotic, almost trancelike. With Gourfink’s use of stretchy yoga positions, perhaps one could suggest the use of dance as meditation or dance as prayer?
In Sydney, Breathing Monster was performed ‘in the round’ with the audience mostly awkwardly standing (although there were a very few seats) around three sides of the atmospheric Cell Block Theatre at the National Art School. A musician, Kasper Toeplitz, sat on the raised stage with his computer and electric bass; clad in a sort of casual, futuristic grey/black outfit distinguished with a white stripe, Gourfink is sitting as we enter at one end of the almost blinding, brightly lit metal catwalk that is the cold, dominating set.
The performance demands incredible control by Gourfink. There are off-kilter balances (e.g. utilising from the heel of the palm of the hand to the elbow). Long tense fingers are delicately yet strongly used, the same for Gourfink’s toes. Her choreography is heavily influenced by yoga. Most interestingly she combines this with Laban-based computer regeneration of pre-written scores and a hypnotic, mesmerizing ssssllllloooowwwnnnesss.
Her work features some very gymnastic, twisted, feline-like poses as well as angular arms, as if a bird with an injured wing (shades of Fokine/Pavolva’s ‘Dying Swan’?). I also noticed a possible Butoh influence at times; elsewhere, she seemed to be pushing against (or pulling?) a heavy invisible weight. Gourfink’s choreography – very slow, very revealing and challenging – was mostly rectangular or oval in shaping space but there were also some triangular sculptural sections, contrasted at some points with a distorted twisted use of the body.
Toeplitz’s heavy, rather overpowering electronic score seeks to dominate rather than compliment. It rumbles, pulses, throbs, beeps, roars. Sometimes it sounds like water or wind, at other points like a saw or an aeroplane taking off, or a heartbeat. Toeplitz is in ‘muso’ black, with a mohawk hairdo and glasses, and uses his equipment coldly and elegantly.
Though for diehard contemporary dance fans rather than casual viewers, this is a terrific chance to see a striking, most unusual work on the cutting edge of current dance practise.
Rating: 3 ½ stars out of 5
Breathing Monster
Presented by Performance Space and the National Art School for ISEA 2013
Myriam Gourfink: choreographer and dancer
Kasper Toeplitz: composer and electric bass player
Running time: one hour (approx) no interval
Cell Block Theatre, National Art School, Darlinghurst
14 – 16 June
Additional performances:
Dancehouse, Carlton
28 – 29 June
