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H2 Dance and Donald Hutera — Choreographus Interruptus

This work focussed upon the intersubjectivity inherent in performance and the exploration of the relationship between performer and audience. The audience was placed around the outside of the space with their shoes removed. The performers were three dancers and a dance writer. The audience was encouraged to interject with suggestions for the movement, have dialogues with the performers or request changes to the sound and the lighting. Observers could decide to enter the performance arena to lie down among the dancers and in some cases even elected to participate in the movement. The dance writer — Donald Hutera — for the most part remained (in his own words) “the disembodied voice in the background”, guiding the interjections and keeping things moving. After the performance, Hutera led a discussion about what had taken place.

The dancers — Hanna Gillgren, Heidi Rustgaard and Dimitri Papakyriazis — were all proficient, with Gillgren in particular having an attractive open fluidity to her movement. Papakyriazis was much more introspective in style and indeed was challenged upon the “interior” quality of his work by the audience. Unlike Rustgaard and Gillgren, he did not seem particularly comfortable at engaging with the audience, which was ironic given the nature of this piece. Papakyriazis also stood out from the two women when working in duet, retaining a more spiky, aloof quality in comparison with the more natural and familiar feel of Rustgaard and Gillgren’s interaction.

The idea of using audience–guided improvisation around a pre–set choreographed theme was interesting but in practice the attempt to create something meaningful by responding to random audience interjections such as, for example, “dance that bit again as if you were 3 inches high and very long” was not always successful. The danger here was that the exercise became a kind of dance “Whose Line is it Anyway?” with the dancers attempting to show off their technical proficiency and creative ability with clever responses to silly audience interjections. This had the potential to be interesting if the dancers were very good or the suggestions particularly apt but could also hamper real communication and connection with the audience. Some of the improvised changes to the movement either lacked impact or alternatively were over–the–top. Also, a danger of inviting the audience to participate in a more or less free–form way was that a few extroverts ended up doing most of the participating. As these participants’ confidence grew and their contributions became more forceful, the performers were at risk of losing control and their opportunity to communicate with the rest of the audience was again in danger of slipping away.

So this was an unusual idea which, in this setting, worked well up to a point. It was clear that most of the audience were “dance people” and some of them clearly knew each other and/or some of the performers. This was unsurprising — contemporary dance tends to be quite a participants’ art–form, with audience members often also being practitioners. This kind of “workshop–cum–performance” is a logical extension of that audience demographic. In the discussion afterwards, it was suggested that it was self–indulgent to show this kind of work in a dance venue in front of dance people. It was submitted that more would be gained by taking it outside of that environment. However, this would not be without difficulty. A more mainstream audience would initially expect a finished article, not a collaborative process. The challenge in taking this to a wider audience would be educating the audience at the outset in the different mode of thinking necessary to participate fully in the work.

In summary, this was an interesting piece that raised some unusual questions about the nature of the art and the relationship between audience and performer. It may not immediately appeal outside of a fairly practitioner–based audience, although I hope I’m wrong about that, because it certainly has the potential to grab the attention and get an audience thinking and I sense that, on the right night, it could develop into something very good.

15 June 2005
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