Author Archives: Dorothy Max Prior

About Dorothy Max Prior

Dorothy Max Prior is the editor of Total Theatre Magazine, and is also a performer, writer, dramaturg and choreographer/director working in theatre, dance, installation and outdoor arts. Much of her work is sited in public spaces or in venues other than regular theatres. She also writes essays and stories, some of which are published and some of which languish in bottom drawers – and she teaches drama, dance and creative non-fiction writing. www.dorothymaxprior.com

Victoria Thierrée Chaplin with Aurélia Thierrée & Jaime Martinez : Bells and Spells

A footloose and fancy free woman is seen in a succession of dreamscape settings. She climbs the walls of abandoned buildings, enters empty apartments, and finds herself immersed in other people’s stories – acting out snippets of lives that are not her own. She is a kleptomaniac time traveller, moving through time and space with gay abandon, at the mercy of the objects she steals…

Victoria Thierrée Chaplin is the creator of Bells and Spells, receiving its UK premiere at the Norwich Theatre Royal, for one night only, as part of the Norfolk and Norwich Festival 2019 (following on from a work-in-progress showing at Coronet Theatre in Notting Hill in 2018). Victoria is the daughter of the legendary clown and acrobat Charlie Chaplin; wife and accomplice of new circus pioneer Jean-Baptiste Thierrée; mother of circus-theatre makers James and Aurélia Thierrée – and a renowned artist in her own right, creating design-led work in which scenography and dramaturgy are inextricably linked. Here, she teams up once again with a family member – this time daughter Aurélia. The two had previously worked together on Aurélia’s Oratoria, but on this show, Victoria gets the main billing as the lead artist/creator of the concept and mise-en-scene.

There are some extraordinary visual images, as you would expect from Victoria Thierrée Chaplin. Glorious costume and set design, superb quick-change skills, and some deft magical illusions combine beautifully to give an ever-evolving visual landscape. Walls of all sorts – static, encroaching, morphing from one thing to another – are a recurring motif, as are doors (revolving or otherwise). Pictures come to life, mirrors reflect distorted images. The woman merges into the wallpaper or magically disappears from behind a flapping sheet, and dresses on mannequins are somehow switched to a differently coloured dress before our astonished eyes. Tablecloths are whipped away leaving table-settings intact. In more surreal sequences (surreal in the general sense, and in the sense of directly referencing key surrealist images): a dog’s head finds itself moving across the stage to land on a person’s body, white nightdresses become sheep, and fur coats become wild beasts. A bunch of hatstands morph into a a fabulous creature, and shining chandeliers become heads nodding in the darkness.

And there is more! Aurélia is not alone onstage! Dancer Jaime Martinez is a wonderful foil – he tangos with her, and this then morphs exquisitely into a louche solo tap number. The two dance (literally and metaphorically) around each other throughout the whole show, playing a cat-and-mouse game of absence and presence.

It is slightly odd that the original French title of the show, Murmures des Murs, has been changed to Bells and Spells, as this show is so much about murmuring walls! The sound design is another wonderful element of the production, with ‘noises off’ and the heard-through-walls music adding to the dream-like quality of the piece. Everything is off-centre, off-kilter, and the notion of onstage-offstage is played with throughout. Offstage, out of sight, behind the door, beyond reach… Who is on the inside looking out, and who is on the outside looking in?

A truly mesmerising show – a feast for the eyes, and a clever conundrum for the brain, as we desperately try to make sense of what we are seeing! Bravo, Victoria and Aurelia – another grand success.

Dead Dogs, Forged Old Masters, and lots of Wild and Witchy Women: Brighton Festival and Fringe 2019

So, that was May. A month spent swapping hats, literally and metaphorically, as I raced from Brighton Festival and Fringe over to Norwich to the Norfolk and Norwich Festival and back again to Brighton, sometimes performing, sometimes facilitating other people’s performances, sometimes reviewing for Total Theatre Magazine. Oh and given that the Brighton Fringe extends into June, the May madness has only, as of 2 June, subsided.

I’m focusing here on Brighton. A quick glance through the recent posts on the Reviews section will reveal that between us, we’ve seen a fair few shows in Brighton Festival! I felt I chose well – the two very different ‘Afrofuturist’ productions, Nwando Ebizie’s Distorted Constellations (Lighthouse) and Jaamil Olawale Kosoko’s Séancers, (Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts) are both continuing to haunt my dreams. Without Walls outdoor arts programme was a little bit stymied by the weather, but I did get to see the fabulous Scalped by Initiative.dkf, so that made it all worthwhile.

Kneehigh are always a Festival fave, and Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs) didn’t disappoint, although for me it wasn’t quite as strong as shows previously seen in Brighton Festival, mostly because I struggled to love Charles Hazlewood’s music – and in a musical, that’s pretty key. I know that as an adaptation of The Beggar’s Opera that wasn’t The Threpenny Opera, the composer and director were keen to avoid any suggestion of Brecht and Weil, but it was hard not to long for a rendition of Mack the Knife. That said, the direction (by Mike Shepherd), writing (by Carl Grose), and design (Michael Vale) were spot-on. There are very many snazzy dance sequences by choroegrapher Etta Murfitt, and the staging of the piece is excellent. Performances were astonishingly strong from the whole cast – with a special shout-out to gangster-puppeteer Sarah Wright, whose Punch and Judy creations – there to echo, mirror and mimic the story throughout – are beyond good, they are magnificent.The show was previously seen by TT at Shoreditch Town Hall in 2015, when it was reviewed very thoroughly by Rebecca Nice, so I will defer to her as she captured the show very well!

Another returning company were Berlin (from Belgium), who brought True Copy to Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts, an exploration of the work of famous art forger (and then later painter in his own right) Geert Jan Jansen, who in a previous show by the same company (Perhaps All The Dragons, seen at Brighton Festival in 2014) said, ‘The only one who never gets any recognition is the forger. Unless he is unmasked’. Geert Jan was eventually unmasked – and this is his story. I haven’t given this one a ‘proper’ review because text is vital to the show, and I just couldn’t read the inadequate surtitles (I asked to be moved forward and was allocated a seat a little further forward, but was still squinting to make out the words – which were in white on black, a complete no-no for any of us with visual disabilities, to add to the problems). There were a number of walk-outs from the back of the auditorium – perhaps others were struggling to see too! So as I missed a lot of key twists and turns in the story, I didn’t feel I could give it a proper critical assessment, but to say here that it is as clever, complex and beautiful as the company’s other shows. The art gallery set, with its panels that shift from reproduction paintings to screens showing video and then documentary footage from the artist’s studio, is the perfect setting for the action; and the choice of music from mock-Satie to mellow saxophones, is perfect. And although what was to be the denouement, the central twist in the tale, was apparent from the beginning (to my eyes, anyway – not-so-sharp in some ways but sharp in others!) it was an enjoyable moment when it came. I went to see the show with painter/sculptor friends, and they particularly appreciated the thorough investigation of what we mean by ‘real’ and ‘fake’; the challenging of who actually is the expert (major art collectors, galleries and auction houses across the globe have failed to spot Geert Jan Jansen’s Picasso and Kappel forgeries). It was wonderful to discover that in his castle (yes, he has a castle) Geert Jan has a room for each of the painters he mostly mimics, around 18 in total I believe. A fascinating exploration of the line between fiction and reality. Another show with visual design at the core of its dramturgy: I also very much enjoyed Vox Motus: Flight, which will be the subject of a feature article (coming soon, watch this space!) on non-naturalistic shows about migration and refugees.

Also high on the visuals was the new Gravity and other Myths show, Backbone, which had a clever and funny show-within-the-show structure of game-playing; some lovely visual images, including a great use of buckets on the head as masks; and wonderful live music (mixing violin, percussion and electronics most adeptly). There was an onslaught of extraordinary acrobatics and hand-to-hand sequences from its cast of ten. I enjoyed a lot about it, but I also struggled with some aspects. So much high-octane energy, so many evolving and dissolving human towers and swing-the-girl sequences! I became desperate for something quiet and slow – which we eventually had moments of, for example when all the cast balanced long wooden poles on their heads and walked slowly with them. There was also one very nice, calm scene between three women performers, gently nudging and edging each other over into handstand walkovers, then creating interesting acro-balances. I also longed for something, anything, that challenged the traditional male base/ female flyer dynamic. I stated to feel that if I saw one more girl swing up and over I would scream. This is an Australian company, with many ex-Circa performers in the cast list. Perhaps they feel that gender role reversal is Circa’s thing and they don’t want to go there? Who knows… At 80 minutes, the show feels too long – it could easily lose 15 minutes and be stronger for it. But top marks for exuberance, stamina and extraordinarily skilled acrobatics! And to be fair, the packed audience at Brighton Dome absolutely loved it.

The one Brighton Festival show I wish I’d seen is Birds of Paradise/National Theatre of Scotland’s My Left Right Foot: The Musical, an irreverent look at disability and inclusion, reviewed very ably by Matt Rudkin. It is still touring, so perhaps I’ll catch it somewhere else. Oh and I failed to catch anything at all by guest artistic director Rokia Traore – although I did get to here her sing and play at the press launch (and very lovely it was too). I was intrigued to read what Miriam King made of the latest Ultima Vez production to come to Brighton, TrapTown. Mim has been a longterm aficionado of Wim Vandekeybus’ work, so I very much value her opinion. Read her review here.

Meanwhile, at the Fringe, I saw two great shows by fabulously feisty women, both at The Warren: A&E Comedy’s Witch Hunt, the follow up to the enormously successful Enter the Dragons is fresh out of the rehearsal studio (where the the company have been working with Cal McCrystal) and still in the early stages as a touring show, but already great. Klein Blue’s Are There Female Gorillas? is also a female two-hander, in this case two much younger women, and it is also a sure winner. I was also pleased to see Cock Cock Who’s There, which won a Total Theatre Award for Emerging Artist for creator Samira Elagoz at Ed Fringe 2018, coming with the tagline ‘’Not your average show about rape, female bodies, feminism, and the male gaze’. I wasn’t wowed, but I was interested… Also a solo female show, by someone who has come a long way since she won the Emerging Artist accolade at the TT Awards: Bryony Kimmings kicked off the Fringe in style at ACCA with I’m a Phoenix, Bitch, enjoyed greatly and reviewed here. Her opening night was also the celebration event for the Total Theatre Magazine Print Archive project, the culmination of a year’s work digitising the entire 25 years worth of the magazine in print, a project made possible by a National Heritage Lottery grant. If you haven’t already, please do dip in totaltheatre.org.uk/archive

So there we have it: Brighton, May – Festival and Fringe – done and dusted. Next?

Featured image (top): Kneehigh: Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs)

Klein Blue: Are There Female Gorillas?

As we enter the space we see a girl and a gorilla sitting on the floor, on one of those compact circular dancefloors that are like a little circus ring. They are sat there a fair while, on display. The audience mostly chatter, although some of us sit silently, staring. There’s a lot of noise pollution coming into this shipping container venue at the heart of the Warren’s pop-up festival complex – the sound of laughter, loud conversations, and clinking bottles seeping in from the courtyard and bar. Somehow, it adds to the pathos of the scene.

The gorilla is just sitting, looking a bit downcast. The girl is grooming herself. Not picking out fleas – although it looks like that at first, but picking at and teasing out ingrowing hairs on her legs. She has porcelain pale skin, sleek dark hair pulled back in a neat dancer’s bun, wide awake eyes, and a smear of red lipstick extending clown-like over her full lips. She has smooth bare legs, and is wearing an old-fashioned, sweetly sexy white corset with straps and lacy bits. She’s a pretty girl. Pretty, slim, smooth, clean, shaved. The gorilla is – hairy. They are handcuffed together. There is no key. Or at least, no one knows where the key might be…

Also inside the ring: a bowl of fruit, and a whole assortment of depilatory materials. Razors, tweezers, scissors. Hot wax is bubbling away. The girl spoons some on to her leg, gets a little white strip, sticks it to the wax and – rip. The man sitting next to me in the front row flinches. The girl isn’t quite satisfied with the result, and starts in with the tweezers. Then, she stares at the gorilla, recoils, gets the pair of scissors and starts to trim the gorilla’s arm hair. There’s a tussle.

When the gorilla’s mask comes off (left to sit at the front of the circle, staring out at us – a nice touch), we see that inside is a girl. Are there female gorillas? Apparently this is a genuine Google search question. There is a name for male gorillas – silverbacks – but no name for female gorillas. We learn all sorts of interesting facts about gorillas from Gorilla: they are an endangered species. Their name comes from the Ancient Greek ‘gorillai’ meaning ‘tribe of hairy women’. They are one of the closest relatives to human beings and share most of the same DNA (95–99%) and many of the same attributes and abilities. Gorillas can be taught English Sign Language. Female gorillas have been known to engage in homosexual behaviour. Human scientists thought at first that this was something to do with attracting males – Gorilla lesbian porn – until they realised (shock, horror!) that it was all about pure sex and personal pleasure.

When Gorilla speaks, it is prosaic, conversational. When Girl speaks, it is poetic: she plays with the sound of letters and words, using assonance, consonance and alliteration. She gives us rhetoric in rhyming couplets – giving Hamlet a run for his money in her soul-searching, questioning, conflicted, coming-of-age musings. To be or not to be – a girl. What is it to be a girl? As opposed to being a gorilla. Sometimes Girl and Gorilla play a game whilst walking in a circle, around the circle. It’s a storytelling game. ‘Once upon a time there was a girl who…’ Round and round they go, handcuffed together forever, a kind of Godot Girl and Gorilla.

Then, there’s the fruit bowl. Juicy strawberries squeezed through the fingers graphically illustrate a story of female shame at the onset of menstruation. A banana strangled into a pulp demonstrates the anger and desire for revenge induced by a memory of male harassment on the streets of Shoreditch. Oh, and there’s also an old-school portable music centre and set of disco lights at the back of the circle – which are put into action for a very lovely dance section set to the Spice Girls’ ‘Two Become One’. But will two become one? Or is it more that two were one, but now have to go their separate ways? Can Girl ever embrace Gorilla’s hairiness? Will Gorilla ever understand Girl’s need to groom herself to a hair-free ideal?

Girl is played by spoken word artist and writer Sophie Ablett. Gorilla is played by theatre-maker and founder of Klein Blue, Grace Strickland de Souza. The show has been devised and co-written by both, with direction by Tamar Saphra – and it is a cleverly crafted and beautifully enacted piece. At 50 minutes it is the perfect length for a two-person show: every word, action and visual image is thought through and has a purpose; the timing is precise; and the onstage rapport between the two actors is great. It is satisfying to see a young company with such a sound grasp of dramaturgy.

What I particularly like is the acknowledgement of ambiguity – yes, yes we know that we have been conditioned by patriarchy, but we do enjoy grooming ourselves. How on earth can we really know what is patriarchal oppression and what is doing what we genuinely want to with our own bodies? Klein Blue have, in the split identity of Girl and Gorilla, found a fabulous metaphor for the inner conflict many women feel about their bodies. They’ve created a clever, funny and artistically robust framework to interrogate questions around the female beauty myth, and to explore agency over our own bodies. Most importantly of all, it is entertaining. Yes, feminism can be fun!

As they raise their arms to take their bow at the end, both now stripped down to matching neutral bodysuits, we note that one woman has shaved armpits, and one doesn’t. That feels good and right.

A&E Comedy: Witch Hunt

Watch out, there are wild women on the loose: where there were crones, now there are witches…

Fans of A&E Comedy’s Enter the Dragons will be delighted to learn that the new show Witch Hunt also features dreadful false teeth, wacky wigs, ludicrous arm extensions (gnarly nails growing down to the ground, this time round), frantically fast costume changes, knicker-wettingly funny sketches, perky sing-a-long songs, and totally gratuitous nudity (‘no one wants to see the hanging gardens of Babylon’). In Witch Hunt, these two wild, wild women continue their quest to expose misogyny and sexism in the funniest and most irreverent ways imaginable with great aplomb, armed with an excellent script and solid clowning skills. No territory is too dangerous, no woods too dark for these brave women to venture in to – there’s even a paedophile joke (Wicked Wolf to Little Red Riding Hood: ‘I like my women as I like my whiskey: 12-years-old and lying locked in the cellar’.)

In some ways, Witch Hunt (which is directed by Cal McCrystal) is a continuation and extension of the format of the first show – a series of comic sketches tied together by a narrative theme that has an anarchically feminist slant, the two actor-clowns stepping in and out of narrator/character roles, playing out their clown personae of master (Emma Edwards) and servant (Abigail Dooley) – although those given roles are allowed to be challenged and usurped in the cleverly written scenes.

Where Enter the Dragons stayed firmly focused on the menopause, and what ‘the change of life’ really means – which I’m sure nobody thought could be the stuff of comedy until they saw that show, but my goodness it really worked – Witch Hunt takes a broader theme, merging together all sorts of takes on witches and witchiness, from the persecuted wise women of Salem, to wicked witches in fairy tales, to the wizard-and-witch territory of magic tricks.

And yes, it all fits together in thematic terms, and every single element works well in its own right, although it sometimes feels like there is some odd ricocheting from one idea to the next, with so much complicated stage action as props and costumes hurtle on and off. Although there are times in which we get both of our wonderful women onstage together – including the hilarious ‘refined poetry versus filthy limericks’ scene – there is less of this than I’d like, as each scurries out in turn to get into the next elaborate costume.

But my goodness, what magnificent costumes (designed by Holly Murray) and what fantastic solo skits, with a special mention for Emma Edward’s red-rubber clad robotic Red Riding Hood squirting water from her pneumatic breasts; and Abigail’s horribly horny and vulgar wolf with fabulous furry legs and behind.

Design wise: a giant pop-up book that forms the centrepiece of the stage is OK, but not as beautifully painted as it could be – although it serves well for the fairy tale aspects of the show, and provides a stage-within-the-stage for the puppetry sections, featuring some rather wonderful creations by Annie Brooks. The Cabinet of Swords that is the site for a magnificent finale is a fabulous thing of beauty.

The soundtrack is suitably spooky, the songs are saucy, and a special mention goes to Abigail for her musical saw playing!

There is, perhaps, a little work to do on the dramaturgy and structure of the piece – I remind myself, though, that I am seeing what is only the third ever performance of this new show, and already it is a rip-roaring success, receiving standing ovations.

Nwando Ebizie: Distorted Constellations

‘You are entering an Afrofuturist, mythical landscape that explores what it’s like to see the world through someone else’s eyes.’

We are at Lighthouse, a film and multimedia centre specialising in ‘connecting new developments in art, technology, science and society’. It’s the first weekend of the Brighton Festival, and we’re here to mark the opening of Distorted Constellations, the new exhibition-installation by Nwando Ebizie. At the far end of this large, open-plan, ground-floor space is a bar, and a DJ station where Nwando is behind the decks (or behind her laptop, more precisely), resplendent in a pleated silver jumpsuit, enormous lashes, and a fabulously wild and woolly Afro – channelling her alter-ego, Lady Vendredi, I assume at the time – although I later learn that this particular alter-alter-ego is called Nwa-Kpa-Kpa-Ndo.

At the street end of the room there are sofas and a coffee table heaving with books. Titles include The Nature of Mind, Haitian Vodou – Spirit, Myth and Reality, Neuroscience – Exploring the Brain, Women Who Run with the Wolves, A Short History of Myth. There’s Maya Deren and at least two Angela Carters. I grab a glass of wine at the bar and settle down with Roberto Strongman’s Queering Black Atlantic Religions – Transcorporeality in Candomblé, Santeria and Vodou. Yeah I know – a bit of light reading for a Saturday night…

Actually, it’s far more of an accessible read than the title implies. I speed-read the introduction, which reflects on similarities in African diaspora or ‘creolised’ religious practices that have their origins in Nigeria or other parts of West Africa; transposed to Haiti (Vodou), Brazil (Candomblé), and Cuba and other Spanish speaking islands in the Caribbean (Santeria). I read about the role the Initiation Chamber plays in the rituals; and the importance of moving through levels, working from entrance space to ante chamber to the inner sanctum.

Although – as Nwando would be the first to say – what we encounter tonight is not a Vodou ritual, it honours those traditions, and builds on them to create a new, personal form of ritual as interactive performing arts practice. Nwando and her collaborators have created a sacred space in which, working through from ‘outer’ to ‘inner’ levels, a ritual is enacted to usher in her new installation work. Distorted Constellations explores ideas of perception and neuro-divergence – inspired by Nwando’s rare neurological disorder ‘visual snow’, which causes visual distortions such as flickering dots, auras and glowing lines. The main installation is sited in the downstairs gallery, but we are not ready yet to go there…

The Initiation Chamber

So, upstairs in this Initiation Chamber, we are invited to make a large circle, and are welcomed in by Nwando and her companions, two women dressed in white (the traditional colour for Vodou/Candomblé/Santeria initiates). One of these women is the guardian of the Sensory Ante Chamber – which we will get to in a while. The other is ritual practitioner and Haitian dancer Karine Label. A white circle is marked with what I take to be salt (although it could be powdered chalk) and Karine Label takes the space. Her movement work is elegant and engaging, referencing the healing practice of Vodou dance, which aims to draw together the elements of fire, earth air and water; and to provide a conduit for the ‘loa’ or lesser gods, thus uniting the physical and spiritual worlds. Karine’s dance, moving as it does through a cycle of gently flowing, undulating movements evoking the purification of water, then into energised fiery staccato and chaotic movements, reminds me that many contemporary ‘free dance’ practices such as 5 Rhythms and Chakradance owe a lot to traditional ritualistic dance. Nwando joins her in the circle, with the third woman, placed in the doorway to the Ante Chamber, supporting from afar in a three-way movement and voice call-and-response.

We are then invited to make our mark – drawing our responses, or reflecting on ideas and images conjured – using white chalk. The circle on the floor becomes a teeming canvas of symbols: simple arrows, stars, and triangles or more complex spirals, snowflakes and labyrinths.

The Sensory Ante Chamber

There is now an open invitation to come into the Sensory Ante Chamber, its guardian stepping aside from the door with a welcoming smile. Inside, there are two spaces, one dedicated to fire and one to earth. Always intrigued by the lure of a hidden space behind a black curtain, I first go into the smaller room where I find tiny peat pots, compost and an assortment of seeds ready for planting and watering. In the ‘fire’ space, there is more opportunity for drawing: this time with charcoal, onto a brown paper ‘carpet’ that leads off from a whole-wall video of a raging fire. Tiny night-lights line the walkway, and in the corner is an egg: a tent that becomes the site for shadow theatre when bodies enter. Part of me is disappointed that there is no real fire – but once I’ve got over that, I end up sitting in this room for a long time, enjoying the flickering of the filmed fire, and listening to the audio installation of ambient music available through headphones propped up on big cushions in the corner. (Nwando is also the composer of the music and soundscapes used in the installations.)

Meanwhile, groups (we had all been issued with a coloured dot on arrival) are being called down to the main installation, in the room which is dubbed Install.

This downstairs gallery space sees a maze of panels dressed with white gauze. We are free to move through the paths between the semi-see-through walls, which become the site for projections, as do the white walls of the room. There is no attempt to disguise the architecture of the room, so speakers, switches, light fittings, and wooden doors are all visible through the gauze. Which I muse on for quite a while, and don’t reach a conclusion on. It is obviously a deliberate decision not to neutralise the space with white plasterboard walls or whatever galleries usually do, and I respect that, even though I find this defiance of the usual ‘white cube’ rules a little odd at first.

As we move through the space, we inevitably become part of the installation, casting shadows or becoming silhouetted figures viewed from outside of the labyrinth. The multi-layered projections animating the space are mostly monochrome. Sometimes the effect is the visual equivalent of white noise – a blur of fuzzy dots and lines, like the tuning-in static of an old TV set. Then, there are the more distinct, repetitive abstract patterns, with columns and rows of white dashes intersecting and interlacing. But there are also figurative images – a kind of deconstructed dancing figure appears in many places all at once, sometimes losing her edges, blurring out as if dissolving into her own aura, and at other times a clearly delineated reverse-silhouette image. The cultural values and associations of ‘black’ and ‘white’, ‘light’ and ‘shadow’, are there to reflect on. As the speed at which the projections shift and change increases, it becomes harder to distinguish between image seen and after-image perceived – one of the many clever plays on perception in the piece. Another is the Alice in Wonderland feeling, as you walk through the space, of pursuing an image that doesn’t seem to be there when you arrive. Sometimes you turn your head to be dazzled by a light or projection, causing a moment of sympathetic ‘white snow’ experience as white dazzle-dots appear in front of your eyes to echo the projected dots in the installation. What is inside and what is outside? The two merge after a while.

Distorted Constellations: Install

Back upstairs, we find the room arranged so that sofas and chairs face the DJ desk and screen above it. Then comes the only section of the evening I don’t enjoy – a lecture on the psychology of perception. The lecturer (a guest scientist whose name I didn’t catch) lacks performance presence – yes, she’s a scientist not an artist, but still! Her technology fails (there’s a kind of interactive online quiz that we are asked to engage with, but the link doesn’t work and she spends a lot of time obviously thrown and irked by this); and her tone is jolly GCSE teacher, as she (unnecessarily, surely? We’ve all been to school) explains the difference between rods and cones, and muses on those tired old visual perception conundrums (Is it a vase? Is it a face?). I struggle to understand why we have to sit through this.

A much better presentation follows, as Nwando treats us to some Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) inspired storytelling. We sit in dim light, and are asked to close our eyes. Nwando’s lovely voice, with her soft Brummy accent, tells us the tale of the Skeleton Woman, hauled from the bottom of the sea by a sailor, who takes her home to his bed. (The story is featured in Women Who Run with the Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, and has become a feminist classic in recent years – a story of female empowerment, of love conquering fear and death, and of the merging of the male and female spirits in order to become whole.) As Nwando speaks, Karine moves through the space with scented water in a bowl and soft brushes, giving a moment of massage here, an anointment there.

After, follows the ritual feast: the serving of tapioca pancakes, a dish popular in the Caribbean and Brazil, which sadly has to be abandoned after a short while due to another technical failure, this time with the portable electric stove, which seems to be short-circuiting the system. Never mind, we’ll stick to crisps…

The evening ends joyously with a last dance, in which all, performers and audience, are invited into the circle to shake off or integrate (whatever way you want to view it) what we’ve absorbed over this long evening. There is much laughter and hugging before a parting of the ways.

A week later, I return to Lighthouse for Nwando’s 20 Minutes of Action which takes place within her Distorted Constellations installation. The music has been composed using analogue digital instruments/equipment. Nwando draws on a dance practice that has embraced Haitian Vodou, Vogueing, Ballet and Contemporary Dance. It’s a performance that balances opposites adroitly. At times, she is still for long periods, lying low in the installation to the sound of a low-level drone, another object in the space to be projected upon. In another moment, she is up and dancing with full energy, the music matching her physical action, making for a ritualistic and repetitive trance-dance that needs no audience. Then at other points, relationship with audience become paramount – she looks through the gauze at us, making eye contact, or seems to mirror the actions of the projected dancing figures to us. She draws on her interest in a contemporary feminist exploration of folklore (Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Angela Carter et al), and traditional African mythology to create archetypical images of womanhood: I see (or think I see) many voduns (orixás.): a proud and womanly mother-figure moving with slow steps through the space, a personification of night-time moonlight energy; a younger woman who shows off her own virility, beauty and sensuality in a series of Vogue poses; an earth-creature, drawn down to the ground with increasing heaviness; a light and lyrical air creature who spins and turns with child-like abandon.

After about fifteen minutes the monochrome images made of white light and shadow shift into a brightly coloured palette, and in its final five minutes, the installation-performance starts to resemble something from the heyday of psychedelia – Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable, say. The colours are a shock – I can’t remember them from the week before. Did I experience them on that previous occasion? Could I have forgotten? Ah, memories, dreams, reflections! What do we really see? What do we think we’ve seen? What do we remember seeing?

Distorted Constellations – the installation and all the associated live actions and related activities – is a thoroughly satisfying experience. There are many artworks out there that pay lip-service to an investigation of the borderline between art and science – in this case, I feel that there has been a genuine engagement with the psychology of perception, and a truly interesting artistic investigation of a new scientific discovery. (‘Visual snow’ was only formerly identified as a syndrome in 2014.) We are invited not only to see the world through someone else’s (Nwando’s) eyes, and to imagine how a particular neuro-diversity alters perception; but also to question our own perceptions.

To see is to believe; but perhaps also, to believe is to see.

Nwando Ebizie

Featured image (top of page}: Nwando Ebizie: 20 Minutes of Action, Distorted Constellations at Lighthouse, 11 May 2019. Photo by Anya Arnold, courtesy of Lighthouse.

For more about Nwando Ebizie’s work see www.nwandoebizie.com

Distorted Constellations ran at Lighthouse 4–19 May 2019, co-presemted by Lighthouse and Brighton Festival

It was supported by Re-Imagine Europe, and co-funded by the Creative Europe project of the EU. The project also received support from Arts Council England.

Distorted Constellations comes from ideas developed originally with MAS productions, Nwando Ebizie working with director Jonathan Grieve, and supported by Arts Admin, Guest Projects and Wellcome Collection.

Movement elements of the piece were created with the support of choreographer and dramaturg Laura Kriefman. Digital Visuals Designer: Coral Manton.

The installation was accompanied by ritual performances, workshops and other activities, including: The Opening Ceremony, Saturday 4 May and 20 Minutes of Action, Saturday 11 May (both of which were attended by Dorothy Max Prior); a Haitian Ritual Dance workshop led by Karine Label; Intimacy/Touch/Tingles, Saturday 18 May; The World of Visual Snow (talk by neuroscientist Dr Francesca Puledda) plus The Closing Salon, also 18 May.