30 Bird Productions, Plastic

Review in Issue 20-4 | Winter 2008

I wasn't expecting to see this. I was on my way to someone's house for dinner. I had a bunch of lilies in my arms. The garage door went up, and I was taken into whitewashed underground tunnels. The garage door closed with a bang. The men were led to another room. After a while, a man came and told us how to pickle onions, and then announced his intention to have his penis removed.

The beauty in this promenade performance is the fine balance of the performers' relationship to their audience. You are led around, sometimes given permission to peep at dancers through an archway, or sometimes allowed to roam more freely. The subject-matter – gender realignment laws in Iran – may be a little inaccessible, and body politics may be a standard topic for live art, but the tension and suspension, the care with which the performer/dancers handle teacups, shoes, look at you and move, makes it a dreamlike experience.

Downstairs, there is a matrix of roller blinds. I go round the back of it. A couple are peeping at each other, opening and closing blinds. One peeps at me. I'm surprised. I move behind another blind. The lilies are smelling so strongly! His fingers touch the edge of the blind – he is behind it, and I am right there! It's full of sexual fizz.

It's poetic, full of angles and images and ambiguity to digest later. It is delicate and deliberate and dangerous, like surgery.

Presenting Artists
Presenting Festival
Presenting Venue
Date Seen
  1. Aug 2008

This article in the magazine

Issue 20-4
p. 33