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| James Welsby |
Director and
Choreographer: James Welsby
Street
Theatre 1st March 2015
Reviewed by
Bill Stephens
For anyone
born after the 1980’s it must be hard to comprehend the pall that the spectre
of AIDS cast over humanity. A time when the very diagnosis of AIDS was
tantamount to a death sentence.
Born in
1987, the year in which the greatest number of people died in Australia and the
U.S. as the result of AIDS related illness, and after learning that a number of
his friends had become HIV positive, dancer/choreographer James Welsby created
his dance work, “HEX”, in an attempt to make sense of the epidemic, and to
hopefully better understand the present rise of apathy towards HIV/AIDS amongst
his peers.
Utilising
three dancers, himself, Chafia Brooks and James Andrews, together with a
dramatic soundscape by Claudio Tosco, sensitive
lighting design by Rose Connors Dance, a dance vocabulary drawing primarily on
popular club dance moves, together with a good deal of chutzpah and imagination, Welsby
has created an intriguing work, which, even if it does not provide answers, will
certainly go a long way towards achieving his secondary aim of creating an
inter-generational conversation about AIDS history.
The work
commences with a recording of Peter Allen singing “Everything Old is New Again”.
Towards the end of the song the recording grinds to a halt, as Brooks and
Andrews take the stage, separated from each other by two corridors of light.
Welsby, wearing a Grim Reaper costume and mask, appears and menaces the others.
After a few minutes, Welsby discards the costume with the exception of the
mask, which remains a constant through-out the work, suspended centre stage.
The three
perform a long series of complicated disco moves, moving in unison. Then
follows several intriguing sections, which, although the significance of what
they attempt to convey was not always clear,
were none-the-less interesting for their theatricality and staging.
In one
section, two male dancers growled into each other’s faces.
In another, perhaps
the most successful section of the work, the two male dancers stood either side
of Brooks and together the three performed a series of lovely, intertwining arm
movements to the music of “I’ll be Seeing You”.
Another
section, performed to an electronic version of “Another One Bites the Dust”
involved scattering dozens of red rubber gloves around the stage to signify
souls lost to the epidemic.In the final
startling moments of the work, the choreographer exposed his anus to the
audience in a gesture, perhaps of insult, invitation or maybe a reference to
the source of the epidemic.
Although, not all the
ideas in “HEX” work, it is an admirable attempt to address a difficult
topic through dance. One looks forward to seeing more of Welsby’s creations.
This review also appears on the Australian Arts Review website : www.artsreview.com.au