After a rather stressful couple of weeks, I found myself really enjoying this Friday night performance of music, dance, and interactive media. While the 2-person (2.5?) show had its ups and downs, the ups were much more frequent, and after hearing the artists speak for a short time about how they create their pieces, I’m excited to see more shows of theirs in the future.
The performance space was rather bare: an electric keyboard, a grand piano, a bare wall for projection, and an open space for the dancer. The musician began playing sparse notes on his keyboard, notes that manifested themselves on the wall as what looked to me like snowflakes. When the dancer came out and began interacting with these “snowflakes” through her shadow (projected on the wall through a Kinect-type system), I finally understood what the Chinese show description meant when it wrote 「三方藝術元素」 (it wasn’t translated to English, but I think it could just be written as “a third artistic element” after dance and music). Depending on the keyboard note, some images came from above, some from below, some were heavy, or large, and some were smaller, or lighter or bouncier…it all depended on what the musician played. As the performance continued, more computerized elements were added to the filter between music and image, and the dancer reacted accordingly.
All in all, the music, the images, and the dance succeeded in conveying a wide variety of emotions that left me, at least, identifying with the pressures as well as the joys that the world sent towards the performers. The performers did a good job of blending the three art forms in interesting ways that were neither self-conscious nor show-offy, and it made me curious to see how they’ll interact with other “third artistic elements” in the future.
I only have two criticisms. One is that while the musician and dancer interacted on stage, they never really visually acknowledged each other. I would have liked to see occasional eye contact between them, because the lack of acknowledgement caused a sense of loneliness that conflicted with the close connection the performers established during the piece, particularly in the beginning. The other is that the dancer’s costume was subtle yet unique, while the musician’s costume looked like he just got out of bed. It was a small thing that we laughed about after, but I thought I’d mention it because the piece really is very visual.
Thank you to Filmadance Environmental Theatre for this contribution to the 2014 Fringe. I’m looking forward to seeing your future shows!
演出場地:雷克雅維克實驗室