Image: Performers in Faye Driscoll’s Thank You For Coming: Attendance. Image by Maria Baranova.
After a prolonged and rigorous sequence in Faye Driscoll’s Thank You For Coming: Attendance, one of the performers reaches themselves out into the audience and places their head in an audience member’s lap. The audience member responds almost instinctively, not by flinching away, but by taking his head in her hands and cradling him there.
Of all the art-forms I write about, I find dance the hardest. Perhaps the dearth of written or spoken language in this form makes it hard to form words in response. The conversation between the audience and the artwork is entirely non-verbal. I do not have much to write about Faye Driscoll’s Thank You For Coming: Attendance, even though – or because – it was so brilliant. What happened between this work and us, the audience, was inexpressible.
This piece is: ‘a journey of heightened exploration uncovering how we experience ourselves in relationship to others.’ So read the program notes, and though it may seem like a wide net to cast, the piece explores this territory in myriad inventive, delightful and rich ways. Driscoll’s choreography shifts between degrees of abstraction, but never loses touch with its guiding principle – that all of us, performers and audience, are sharing a moment in space and time. How wonderful it was to feel live, present, for the entire duration of a performance. Driscoll is rigorous with her engagement with audiences, purportedly hosting many test performances and incorporating audience feedback as early in the process as possible – it shows. Hardly a moment passed when I didn’t feel blissfully aware of my body, the other bodies in the room, and our collective experience. Each performer was captivating, and the discipline of their performance became clearer as the scope of the piece grew ever-wider, shifting their bodies through a range of stylistic forms.
Michael Kiley’s sound design is seamlessly integrated with the performance, responding dynamically to the bodies and movements of the performers, and lending a heightened drama to the piece’s ecstatic climax. What had begun with a sense of play and humour became a ritual loaded with significance, which if we didn’t fully comprehend, we all felt deeply.
Thank You For Coming: Attendance is the first piece in a trilogy by Driscoll. Its season at Melbourne Festival is already sold out (but keep an eye on the festival facebook page for last minute tickets!) Let’s hope that we’re lucky enough to have other installments of the trilogy visit Melbourne in the future.
Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5
Thank You For Coming: Attendance
Arts House
Performers: Giulia Carotenuto, Sean Donovan, Alicia Ohs, Toni Melaas, Brandon Washington
Original Composition: Michael Kiley
Lighting Design and Production Management: Amanda K. Ringger
Tour Manager/Stage Manager: Alessandra Calabi
Artistic Advisor: Jesse Zaritt
Choreographic Assistant: Nadia Tykulsker
Costume Construction and Alteration: Sarah Thea Swafford
On-site Production Manager: Randi Rivera
Original Cast: Nikki Zialcita
Presented as part of Melbourne Festival 2016
October 7-10 2016​
