So. The Keir Choreographic Award.
Half has happened, and another half is to come. I wait with trepidation and joy! Out of program one, I have seen a light in questions being asked, while also I have slowly began to succumb to glaucomic deadening of the eyes as these vital organs have strained to see in the mist of disarticulation. Ok, maybe not so hyperbolic, but…
Let’s get this ugly stuff out of the way first. Bad things: terrible production values being mostly awful lighting, and clunky seating arrangements. The usually beautiful upstairs studio-space at Dancehouse suffered particularly badly, swallowed by seating capacities and an ugly white psych poorly draped (creased, unevenly spread) at the back of the room. Note: buy an iron, find more time.Ah, isn’t that better? Bad blood OUT. See? I’m kind of living by mantra.
As for the work,well, all the works save perhaps Jane McKernan’s, struck me as beginnings. Jane’s work felt more complete, but that was perhaps a result of the looser improvisational content and rigid structure: it could really have started and finished anywhere. In a way, it’s a shame that the the KCA is a competition; exciting, yes, but a shame; for all that anyone can possibly offer with such a small time to work (Five months? Less?) is going to be a beginning, and for a beginning to be judged as a final, worthy and whole production, as it must be in competition, seems misplaced. Then again, I don’t have access to a rubric, nor the wealth of experience held by the panel of judges.
So perhaps, all I can offer in response is a tidbit of my impressions, couched in the hope that I will see these works again in the future.
Tim Darbyshire: There is a book, an academic tome, called ‘Journey To Confusion’. It has no relationship to Tim’s piece. I might finish now.
Brooke Stamp: A ravishing solo work, performed by two of the loosest and most engaging ankles I’ve yet had the pleasure of viewing.
Jane McKernan: Does True Blue Shoes give you a discount if you buy four pairs of the same white keds at once?
Matthew Day: I walked out of Fabulous Beast Theatre doing ‘Rite of Spring’, but I didn’t walk out of Matthew’s show. Either I’ve changed or it was the fact he is a total babe. Not sure.
What were the questions made available throughout program one of the Keir Choreographic Award? Or, given this is dance, what were the artists doing throughout program one of the Keir Choreographic Award? As they acted, carried out a range of ridiculous movements, this program set-forth something fresh and unfinished with a tone of excitement and energy rarely afforded any dance gathering in Melbourne. There was a simple buzz to the venue, an unpretentious happy expectation of something valuable. It was not a GP event – it was definitely a dance community event: what a gift! And kvetches about shitty production values aside, I can’t express enough my feeling of happiness that a rich and cultured man has donated such a generous event to Melbourne and Sydney with as few bourgeois aspirations as possible in the realisation. These kinds of events are simple and celebratory; they are full of potential, and it’s such an inspiration to watch. I almost forgot there was a prize…
I also have reservations. It can be frustrating to watch unfinished work in the context of an event that proposes reward for completion. Perhaps the true tone of the award part of the Keir Choreographic Award is ‘most complete’, or ‘most captivating’. Or like I’ve heard it suggested of other things, the tone might just be ‘most’.
I looked hard at these works, and I couldn’t always see – it wasn’t obscurity, it was mostly just darkness. Does that matter? Yes! It does to me! But on the whole? For an inaugural event that was energising if unpolished? No, it does not matter.
My friend Cam is in advertising and talks all the time about a ‘take away’, a usefully reductive concept at an ending. I don’t feel as excited about these works as I feel about the artists that have made them. But if I have a takeaway from this event, it would be the energy that has propelled me to write about it. And surely that’s a good residual effect.
Program One of the Keir Choreographic Award ran 3/7 to 10/7
Artists were Brooke Stamp, Tim Darbyshire, Jane McKernan and Matthew Day
Program Two of the Keir Choreographic Award runs 10/7 to 13/7
Artists are Atlanta Eke, Shaun Gladwell, Sarah Aiken and James Batchelor
Book online at http://www.dancehouse.com.
