spinning sun dance company

Reviews - Left and Right

Leigh Hall, Leigh 10 - 13 June 2009
TAPAC, Western Springs 17 - 21 June 2009

I love the fact that Ann's whole medium is movement. nothing more or less. I love how her works are bursting with movement and that at some point when you are watching  you have to surrender to the movement and let it completely overwhelm you. To me,and this may seem odd, but Left and Right was like an opera. A huge work where meaning becomes irrelevant and yet there is beauty and intelligence and integrity, where every single movement, from a look, an angle of a finger, a flick of a leg to an  incredibly intricate and detailed phrases all contribute to a work that is truly using choreography -writing movement- to reflect life AND become its own language of human corporeality.  I love how Ann can be playful and intelligent at the same time.  The music for Left and Right also added to the pureness of the message. Rhythm dominated without adding any sentimental feelings. In fact  for me, the part of the work that was the weakest element were the words.  For me they were a distraction and totally unnecessary.

Maybe Ann is a dancer's choreographer like some film directors are actor's directors.  She gives her dancers movement that is fulfilling. Though I have never worked with Ann I can image that dancing in her works would be immensely satisfying- like  eating a lovely, big, HEALTHY meal.  That she is able to be humorous without being 'funny' also signals an ability to use movement to communicate. Sitting in the audience I could feel what the dancers must be feeling as they looked upwards or rippled their spine even though I didn't know what I was supposed to understand.

I love her dancers. Liz Kirk is beautiful and articulate and the movement is so natural that it is like she is having a conversation with you.  I really believe that she is one of New Zealand's best  dancers- ever!

I  wish  that here in Auckland we could go out to see high calibre dance performances every month so that a dialogue about dance was present and so that dance becomes something that  was a common performance experience. With so few good performances and works out there  it becomes really difficult to  become comfortable  with dance.'

For what it's worth, thats what I think.

--Marianne Schultz

Left and Right is a non-linear work that addresses the order of things both tangible and intangible with an abstract, hieroglyphic grace. A tableau vivant quietly in action is already in progress as we enter the theatre. 

Seated against a screen arranged to one side of the stage, a dark-haired woman (Lucy Marinkovich) moves her arms in quiet conversation with music tinkling in from an earlier era.  Both dancer and set are clothed in white, giving the scene an archival, cinematic feel.  

Passing lengths of white fabric over her arms in a meditative motion, the dancer's movement unfolds in an embodied act of knitting.  Using her arms as needles, the construction closely resembles the large, loosely woven fabric that hangs immediately behind her; its bleached open weave a magnified detail of her own clothing. 

This strongly aesthetic opening presents a tactile work founded on the idea that the dance of life is inextricably bound to its material manifestation.  A collaboration between choreographer Ann Dewey, composer Charlotte Rose and writer Jo Randerson, I found Left and Right a beautifully crafted work and Dewey's translation of handcraft to dance most interesting in its play on scale and the extent to which she has interwoven the set design with the choreography.

The primary element of the set - a tripartite screen that glides across the stage and spins upon its axis - acts as both a frame and magnifying glass, reflecting and showcasing the detail of the dance as it unfolds.

The work comes to life with the appearance of dancers (Liz Kirk, Julie van Renen, Geoff Gilson and Sarah Baron) from behind the screen, clad in permutations of colourful knits that change in shape and colour over the course of the work.  Drawing on a lively blend of intersecting solo, duet, trio, quartet and quintet forms, the theme of the mechanics of knitting is playfully explored.  Criss-crossing dynamics, interloping shifts and glimpses of aligned unison slide, erupt and dissolve, seamlessly bridging into other compositional figures.

Favourite moments within this work would have to include the universal sliding-sock dance, complete with cumulative entry and intersecting stop /start /rewind dynamics in reference to knitting machinery.  Dance tributes in particular go to the pliant, sphinxy Julie Van Renen, who at times appears to be either a runaway stitch or the iconic cat lost in an opiate of yarn. 

The merry-go-round nature of the set is also a high point, turning in time to reveal three distinct faces.  With these faces, the set traverses a telescopic mile, drawing the audience from the micro- to the macro-scale. 

At the beginning of the work we encounter the opening face which consists of draped lengths of a super-sized open-weave knit made from the machinations of the human body. 

The second face, a permutation on the theme of domestic scale, features a three dimensional wall paper with roses lifting their heads as if to leap any moment from their fictional vines.

The third face is a scalar departure in a different dimension and best summed up as the crazed marriage of rural aerial photography and Joseph's Technicolor dream coat. 

As the set moves to centre stage in the latter part of the work and begins to turn upon its axis the dance changes to a fast-paced series of group photo-friezes.  The friezes eventually dissolve with the increasing speed of the turning set with dancers leaping solo between wall-paper faces, showcasing their individual dance vocabularies in the barking spin of the revolving scenery.

Part existential celebration, part historical reflection, Left and Right is happy perhaps to be called a dance about knitting.  Notably, Dewey's light touch evades obvious interpretation, skipping airily over social tensions, war references and issues of gendered subterfuge.  The soundscape however paints a more dissonant picture, sprinkled with occasional sounds of broken plates, shattered glass, ghostly winds and the odd clang of pots and pans.

While the score is successful to some extent in its evocative mix of vocal, percussive, wind instrument and chime-like exchange, at times it feels too heavy upon the work, like a blanket obscuring in part the finer detail of the dance. Transitions are also awkward in places, with the acoustic contribution at times detracting from, rather than contributing to, the many changes of scene within this essentially episodic work. 

The spoken word, at first a questionably clumsy foil for the cursive articulations of the choreography, ultimately contributes an effective complement to the abstract, multi-layered nuance of the work.

As the work concludes I am left to wonder about the aerial map /Technicolor dream coat, as it is rolled up and the oversized knitted drapes drawn apart to reveal a turning music box dancer unravelling at her centre...

Clad otherwise only in black, she is losing her colour; spun silently and in slow motion by the orchestrated pull of the unravelling yarn.  Framed by the make-shift picture window, her arms raised in a trance-like surrender, she loses her guts in alternate blue-green and red rivers across space.

Time travels in woolly lines as a collective exhale marks the last of the knitting undone. 

Finally laid to rest in glowing, wavy piles upon the prone bodies of darkened others, it's a strangely macabre closing figure; its sombre undoing a stark contrast to the white washed construction of Left and Right's opening moments.

--Celine Sunic, Theatreview
http://www.theatreview.org.nz/reviews/review.php?id=2324

Ann Dewey's latest creation from her idyllic dance nest in Leigh takes the art of knitting as its theme in an intense and abstract exploration of rhythm and pattern. It is a great idea, a topical idea in these times of a home baking renaissance and recessionist fashion trends.

The costumes and significant expanses of set have all been hand-knitted, artfully and lovingly, by a team of volunteers, Dewey and the dancers themselves. The get-ups are quaint, flirty and quirky, and could make a fantastic fashion spread in an alternative publication or two.

The set is simple, a kinetic arrangement that at one point revolves to spill unexpected combinations of dancers from its open portal - reminiscent of the revolving doors at old-fashioned department stores. It is gorgeously decorated.
The dancers are a delight: Julie van Renen a snap-cracking whippet and mistress of isolations; Sarah Baron of the most elegant and sweet epaulement; veteran artist Liz Kirk and her unexpected comic streak; Geoff Gilson, of the uncommonly mobile face; and Lucy Marinkovich, on loan from the NZ School of Dance.

Charlotte Rose's soundtrack intrigues, with sections of dialogue - filched from the knitting circle - a rainbow poem of random words, a spitfire mantra that could be urging the consuming of silverbeet.

Then there is Dewey's choreography of plains and pearls, cables and fair isle, machine knitting and crochet. It is all there, complex and wonderful. Dewey takes pride in creating a new movement vocabulary with each of her works.
But the sum in this case is not greater than all its lovely parts. While the choreography is varied in mood, and does transport us from the tender to knitting catalogue photo-shoot hilarity, from sock-skidding chaos to calm, there is a flatness, a middle section where attention wanders, a lack of bright light and mysterious shade.

Like a scarf of many colours that goes on and shapelessly on, like the unsatisfactory ricketyness of that central revolving set that does not set off its panels to perfection, Left and Right has definite potential for further polishing.

- Bernadette Rae, NZ Herald
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/arts/news/article.cfm?c_id=544&objectid=10579325