Vessel.
Choreographed by Damien Jalet in collaboration with designer Kohei Nawa. Dunstan Playhouse. Adelaide Festival Centre. OzAsia Festival October 26-27 2019.
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins
Extraordinary! There can be no other way to
describe Damien Jalet and Kohei Nawa’s abstract sculptural dance in which bodies and
landscape merge in an extraterrestrial, primordial fusion of dance and
dream-like imagery of the human form.
The low haunting tone of the wind sounds over
an alien landscape. Yukiko Yoshimoto’s lighting creation slowlY illuminates a
floating moonscape upon a stage covered with water. Gradually conjoined
physical forms are detected around the edge of the large structure in the
centre of the stage. The light brightens and Marihiko Haka’s musical
composition with the participation of Ryuichi Sakamoto introduces the sound of
bubbling water, accompanying amounting percussion. Mystery fills the air and
the shapes emerge into the light, stretching and contorting in a slowly
writhing symphony of intertwined limbs
From within a sculptured structure of limbs a
headless torso and heaving form slides through the water to the edge of the
stage. The lighting spots more strange and indefinable shapes as the solid form
fragments in a display of limbs and shifting poses. Shoulder stands shape a
landscape of denuded vegetation before transforming into extraterrestrial
creatures or distant aliens. The seven dancers from Greece, Japan and Australia
gyrate, rotate, intertwine, morphing from indefinable living creatures to a
chorus line of piano hammers comically creating their musical composition.
Vessel is
noted as “the background that is subsumed by life and death, and the cycles of
earth and life” The imagery of dance in non-human entity, captured by the
anonymity of concealed heads and indistinct gender fires the imaginary forces
as a concept of evolutionary cycle ferments in the imagination. The human species
has evolved from the water, eventually surfacing upon the land and transforming
into a new species of human beings. In the process of contortion, writhing,
conjoining and fragmenting images transmute into interpretative possibilities.
Dark pits in the collarbones appear as sunken eyes on strange creatures. Another
form suggests a praying mantis. Another a tree trunk, Another a Venus flytrap or
the dilated cervix giving birth to new life. A white liquid, drawn from the landscape
emerges, gliding across the back of a dancer. Birth is imminent as the vernix
covers the slowly emerging human, who
sinks back into the earth at the completion of life’s cycle
.
What is so extraordinary about Julet and Nawa’s
dance performance is its unique imagining and creative individuality. Concept
and dance combine with design and music to conjure a mesmerizing and
transformative experience. The physical versatility and synchronization of a
closely knitted ensemble provides a fresh insight into the imaginative
expression of contemporary dance.
Vessel overflows with the wonderment of imagination and
the brilliance of its artists. It lingers in the memory like an eerie, unforgettable
dream.
