Dance like no one’s watchingâ€, reads the proverbial sugar packet. But, of course, everyone’s always watching when you’re dancing.
Whether you’re hotshot French performer Sophiatou Kossoko, employed by choreographer Robyn Orlin for her latest work, the top-dog Swiss choreographer Nicole Seiler or just a humble audience member, all eyes are on you.
The FNB Dance Umbrella has roused an audience that ranges from legendary stage names such as Greta Fox and David Minaar to fellow dancers and choreographers, appreciators, students and even the uninitiated. In her performance, which is an interrogation of womanhood across cultures, Kossoko dragged unsuspecting audience members on to the stage with her.
Apparently, dance is the theatrical medium that can forge a united cultural identity because it spans ethnicities and languages. Yet, people stay away out of a fear of not understanding it. This despite the claim that everyone can, supposedly, appreciate a body interacting with music.
By pulling the silent observer on-stage, Orlin questions the power of the performer versus the passive audience member in her piece Although I Live Inside… My Hair Will Always Reach Towards The Sun…
In true Orlin style in this piece, we were hit early on with a Woody Allen-like diatribe. The flamboyant Kossoko claimed she wanted to do a serious solo, not this Orlin hodge-podge. Kossoko was dressed like a diva with a caramel coloured afro that outsized Pitch Black’s. She invited the audience into the centre ring, to dance like no one’s watching.
The audience was reluctant to take up Kossoko’s offer to sit on-stage — that is, until she hauled out an inflatable swimming pool and hosepipe, rigging them up right where members thought they had chosen choice viewing spots. Then, prancing about brandishing striped teapots, she demanded that the audience get up, wash their feet and dance. ‘Dance!†she commanded with a Seventies American twang that matched her Jackie Brown countenance.
Slowly a crowd accumulated around Kossoko. Did they dance like no one was watching? Well, they tried, but they still wore congealed smiles as though concentrating on not letting the public gaze freeze them over.
Then a toddler got up on-stage and danced. The toddler seemed unaware of the gaze. In fact, she seemed to have the most quizzical stare of all: ‘Why are these adults acting foolishly? Best join in.â€
Orlin’s piece seemed to prod onlookers into asking questions about everyday performances we do: what is the look of beauty, success, virility, fine style, finesse, sex appeal?
It is at this point that Orlin and Swiss choreographer and multi-media specialist Seiler’s work find common ground. Seiler has come to the country to present her double bill Madame K and Lui care of the Pro Helvetia Swiss arts council. In her manifesto, she says: ‘The world is full of appearances: publicity, videogames, Barbie Dolls, business and marketing strategies. Society refuses to be confronted with ugliness.â€
Madame K (performed by Kylie Waters) is about women — the pressure on the so-called ‘fairer sexâ€. Lui (performed by Mike Winter) in turn is about pressures facing men. Both sexes are continually being watched, both are expected to perform. The pieces present the stereotypes.
Madame K seems straight out of Naomi Wolf’s book The Beauty Myth (1991) about men brainwashing women into thinking that to be successful, they have to juggle family, career and beauty. The leggy Walters enacts the plight of the real woman trying to make her body look like Barbie — there’s even a visual reference to the pulp fiction Attack of the 50-Foot Woman.
Lui is a man running the rat race and seeking sexual prowess. Winter runs throughout the performance, suit flapping behind him.
Seiler, like Orlin, deploys a refreshingly light-hearted approach, even though it points to a darker underbelly. But Seiler’s power lies in her use of digital technology — projections of the performers appear on stage, dancing alongside the performers themselves. When Lui is running in the rat race, there are about 10 of him running with him — he is racing with himself. When Madame K goes for a job interview, she is multiplied on the screen behind her, each copy of herself repeating a different gesture.
At a certain stage of the ordeal Lui actually wrestles his digital self-image. Madame K, in turn, tries to give herself plastic surgery with masking tape. Eventually the duplicates are projected directly onto the dancers. Man and woman succumb to what is painted on to them. As the manifesto says: ‘Our existence is a mixture of being and pretending.â€
Digital dance seems to be the perfect medium for showing these boundaries blurred.
The FNB Dance Umbrella continues until March 18. Tel: (011) 482 4140. Visit www.artslink.co.za/arts. Madame K and Lui will show at the Artscape Theatre in Cape Town on March 7 and 8. Tel: (021) 425 470