Choreographed
by: James Batchelor.
Sound
Design: Morgan Hickinbotham.
Produced by:
James Tighe
Performers:
James Batchelor, Chloe Chignell, Luigi Vescio
Presented by
The Canberra Theatre Centre
Courtyard
Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre until April 10th.
World
Premiere on April 6th reviewed by Bill Stephens
One of the
more interesting young choreographers on the current Australian dance scene,
James Batchelor demands as much from his audience as he does his dancers. His
works are invariably intense, complex and challenging.
For his
latest work, “Faces”, Batchelor has drawn inspiration from letters that his
great grandfather wrote to his family while serving in France in the First
World War. The work veers more towards performance art than pure dance as
Batchelor incorporates elements of butoh, dada and surrealism to achieve a
series of compelling images, the intent of which is left to the viewer to
interpret.
The work
commences promisingly with Batchelor standing motionless, facing his audience, at
one end of a strip of long, narrow, shiny plastic sheeting. As he begins to
move in slow, deliberate marching steps, two other figures emerge from behind
him, Chloe Chignell and Luigi Visio, each dressed in identical white
paint-splashed trousers, tee-shirts and sneakers. Slowly, rhythmically, the
three figures advance towards the audience, interweaving and taking turns to
lead the march.
They don
white masks and as they continue to walk the figures begin to distort, their ankles
rolling from side to side as if about to fall to the ground, perhaps struck by
gunfire or land mines. When they reach the other end of the road, they turn
their backs to the audience, revealing faces, their own, emblazoned on their
backs.
The rhythm
of the marching changes, the rat-tatting sound now produced by their feet, suggests
gunfire. The figures face the audience and raise their hands in a
surrender-like gesture, before dropping slowly to the ground. Batchelor then
takes one end of the plastic sheeting and slowly pulls it towards himself,
causing the other figures to roll about suggesting bodies in water.
The three
then turn their attention to a stack of heavy sandbags, which they utilise to
form a series of tableaus suggestive of battleground images, while slowly and
deliberately transferring the sandbags from one side of the performance area to
the other.
The work
continues in this vein with episodes involving the performers binding each
other in string, then using the string to form triangles, and another in which
Batchelor covers himself in a huge bag on which is imprinted a face, which
distorts as Batchelor moves inside the bag.
However as the symbolism of these later images, particularly the figure
who covers her head in a traffic cone, as the other wraps his head in white
plastic, become less decipherable, the potency of the work ultimately drains
away without fulfilling the promise inherent in its opening sequence.
While not as
well resolved as some of his earlier works, “Faces“was never-the-less superbly
performed by the three dancers to a haunting soundscape by Morgan Hickenbotham.
It contains many original and compelling images which will haunt the viewer long after
the performance has finished. This is a quality that is becoming a signature of
Batchelor’s work, and one which stamps him as an original and important
theatre-maker.
This review also appears in Australian Arts Review. www.arts review.com
