The Body: A Short Season of New Dance Works

Review in Issue 8-1 | Spring 1996

In Breathe, Disco Sister examined the boundaries between masculine and feminine traits. Wearing a man's pinstriped suit, Virginia Farnham was antagonistic. Her gestures – articulate and precise – ranged between aggression to hopelessness and arrogance. Her stooped body unfolded into a series of seamless and energised earth-bound movements. She proceeded to surprise her audience by appearing in a black satin dress complete with a large red flower. Her performance invoked a bizarre sense of frustration and delight. In Bad History, Sean Tuan John uncompromisingly presented a vision of teenage despair and unemployment blues. His movement was comical and angular, at times moving into clowning. Exploiting new technology and physical expression, he created scenarios in which he played the dunce of the class and a space invader. Utilising an array of kitsch icons, from a row of toilets to an Oversized giro, his performance was both comic and distraught. In Françoise Sergy's A Head of Dust, the theme of loss and the effect it has upon the human psyche was explored. In the centre of the stage a pile of wood chips lay on a silver base with spotlights illuminating the outer edge. Mounds of sugar with eggs carefully placed on top were arranged methodically from corner to corner. Françoise took her audience on a personal journey of emotionally charged and symbolic movement. Fear, loss, destruction, anger, hopelessness and despair were creatively and sensitively expressed.

Presenting Venue
Date Seen
  1. Nov 1995

This article in the magazine

Issue 8-1
p. 23