Things disappear and reappear- as they would in the making of a painting- creating a constantly changing painterly triptych.  The three frames consist of a large glass box, in which two live performers slowly move; and two screens, onto which videos are projected.  The images in the three frames compliment each other, adding to the close attention to detail.  In a midst of smoke we watch a performer slowly remove a bright red jumper, as if it were a stroke of red paint.  Close ups of this act are projected onto the two screens, the red being carefully moved across each of the canvases in subtly different ways.

Sound dramatically affects the atmosphere, further encompassing us into this world of moving images.  It creates a collective fear amongst us; as soon as we begin to relax, the intensity of the sound suddenly increases, causing the whole space to vibrate, so much that we jump in fright.  The music is never mere accompaniment to the images: the performers do not move to its rhythm.  It exists very much as its own element in the space, and usually in juxtaposition to what we see.  It is only in the moments of extreme intensity that the sound corresponds to the images: light moves as if it is beating in rhythm to the music; fans spin and sounds exaggerate their whirr; films show trees and hair blowing in the wind and loud whooshing sounds emphasise the winds effect.  We also literally feel this wind, created by a large fan in the space.

This Italian theatre is refreshing, alluring and memorable.  It provides a truly unique experience which cannot be properly described in words.  I urge you to see it!

http://www.mimefest.co.uk/anagoor-2011.html

Words: Harriet Piper

Les Corbeaux, Josef Nadj and Akosh Szelevenyi

Les Corbeaux (The Crows), Josef Nadj and Akosh Szelevényi, Lindbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House 24th Jan 2011 

 London International Mime Festival is taking over many of the capital’s theatre venues this week, but I have to admit that despite all my seeded interests in other areas of theatre and contemporary performance, I am still a bit of a philistine when it comes to mime. My only live experience of the ancient and esteemed form is through a two hour workshop at a drama week taught in a seminary in rural Ireland when I was around thirteen years old. Needless to say, the prelude to Les Corbeaux, which was first performed in Switzerland in 2010, smashed my preconceptions of mime as a dainty and rather meek mode, and similarly, despite my previous concerns, the contemporary black box within the Royal Opera House provides the perfect arena to display this craft; the Opera House itself home to a type of performance which like mime, and like Nadj and others in his field, has both reacted to and informed its own contemporary performance zeitgeist. For me, sixty minutes is almost the ideal performance time; time Nadj uses to so cleverly choreograph sixty minutes of work which draws us in and leaves us mesmerised. From the first fine pillar of warm light bathing his saxophone, Szelevényi takes us carefully by the hand and lead us into the narrative of Les Corbeaux. The performance is beautifully choreographed both with regard to Nadj’s movement, but also in structure; the time frame used extremely economically to take us on a journey of transformation.

Nadj and Szelevényi make attempts to form a strong performance relationship, but only at the moments when these long time collaborators reach this intuitive and crucial step is reached, Nadj and Szelevényi’s audience are treated to warm and delightful feats. The use of pigment and ink is innovative,  diegetic with the musically powerful metallic tubes.

Toward the end of the piece Nadj finally submerges himself in ink. Perhaps we were a hard audience, but there were only one or two stifled giggles, and even those broke what felt like a rather tense atmosphere. It is a piece I feel could have been laden with a lot more humour throughout. Rémi Nicolas’s simple and minimalist style of lighting brings delicacy.  But although the theatrical elements of the piece are strong, Nadj’s narrative does not do justice to the emblematic nature of the crow; at times it feels like we are only at the precipice of  potential.

Les Corbeaux , 24 January 7.45pm London International Mime Festival continues in venues across London until 30th January.

words: Alice Malseed

CIE 111

“I try to get mankind to meet head-on with something that is totally unfamiliar by using a specific space or an object placed on stage to which I add the capacity of movement and action.” – Aurelien Bory, Director

A regular high-roller at London’s annual International Mime Festival, Compagnie 111 is not unfamiliar with success.  Recognised for their expertise in corporeal mime (and let’s just acknowledge briefly that the father of corporeal mime, Etienne Decroux, was a Frenchman), circus, object manipulation, innovation, and stunning imagery, it is no surprise that their latest piece, “Sans Objet,” is a hit among festival-goers this year.

I consider myself lucky to see such an extraordinary piece of art, not only because it is highly stimulating, but because of it’s hypnotic effect on the entire audience, artists and non-artists alike.  The awe in the theatre is tangible, breathes held, eyes wide as the Machine, a 1970’s industrial assembly-line robotic arm, begins to move beneath a massive plastic sheet, dancing through space as if by magic.  

The magic is in the manipulation, of course.  And that’s something Bory is quite clear on: “[The machine] is, of course, programmed because it is precise, very, very precise. I want it to work that way because a machine can be precise [in a way that a human cannot].  So precise, in fact, it’s incredible – within one-tenth of a millimetre” (Discussions with Aurelien Bory, CIE 111, Southbank Centre, 22 January 2011).  And it truly is magnificent to behold, this dichotomy between Man and Machine, punctuated by the Machine’s inexhaustible capacities for movement in contrast to the two men, sweat-drenched and worn-out by the end of the two-hour show.  But that’s part of what Bory is going for here: examining the ever-complex relationship between mankind and technology.  Well, it shows.

As the two men are introduced into this robot’s world (because it is the Machine’s domain, here), we see a tickling, harmonious relationship evolve.  It is symbiotic at first: Man and Machine move gracefully in tandem, dancing a surreal tango through space and time.  It is seamless, fluid, almost unreal.  I feel lightheaded and realise I haven’t blinked in a few minutes.  This is what a trance must feel like, I muse.  Then, before we can begin to register that something has gone amiss, the men have lost their power in this world, and the Machine’s full force dominates the space.  It is dehumanising, almost tragic, to watch these men struggle to hold themselves together here.  And yet we somehow feel for the Machine, such a lonely, beautiful beast.  

So then, actually, the question for me becomes, “Why do we feel for this… thing?”  Surely, we can be most appreciative and properly awed by the incredible feats of strength these two men, Olivier Alenda and Olivier Boyer, are performing before our eyes, defying the rules of gravity and using space like a plaything.  They execute their physicality with the same precision of the Machine, it seems; they are like gods.  But this beauty and strength of form, the shapes of their bodies against the architecture of the robot, fades as they weaken.  The Machine never weakens.  But we have endowed it with feeling, we have given it a life and a purpose and a meaning.  Like the locket your grandmother gave you as a child, the Machine is special to us, and we care about its fate.

This is a phenomenon that Bory is familiar with.  In fact, he counts on it.  When he uses objects on stage, he is hoping that we, the audience, will endow it with feelings, thoughts, associations, and characteristics simply by watching it.  This is not an entirely conscious process, but it’s very real.  Anyone who’s hoarded their baby blanket for more than twenty-three years knows it is, anyway.  Bory likes to facilitate a bit of that in his work.  He also likes to open doors for his audience.  Perhaps he is not the doorman, perhaps we do not walk through – but he opens them for us, and we enter at our own risk.  Hint: it’s always worth taking these risks.

“In my productions I try to leave spectators a lot of leeway.  They themselves complete the work through an association of ideas, through their own references, through recognition and experience and through everything that influences the way they appropriate what they are seeing…  Our view of [the robot] changes [when taken out of context].  It becomes the receptacle and mirror of our projections.  I see theatre a bit like that.” -Aurelien Bory, Director

CIE 111, Performed at The Southbank Centre, 22 January 2010

Words: Anne Hightower Wareing

Performance Night/Physical Center at Guest Projects, Sunbury House, 1 Andrews Road, London, E8 4QL

Áine O’ Dwyer
Eloise Fornieles & Kate Hawkins
Ian Giles
Liam Newnham
Mark Wayman

http://www.guestprojects.com/current/first-exhibition/

The Old Police Station is an open-ended curatorial proposal. The ‘do-it-yourself art centre’ is an infrastructure sustained by studio rentals. It is a charitable social hub for an emerging location in a potential new economy, encoraging participation in all media.

http://www.roundhouse.org.uk/whats-on/productions/carl-einar-hackner-big-in-sweden

Well, he now has his own one-hour long show, which is in much the same vein.

Wearing a dashing flared white trouser suit, covered in jewels, with a cheap plastic hand dangling from the back of it, Carl-Einar Hackner clumsily performs several magic tricks, occasionally one of which goes right.  This is just enough to show that his clumsiness is an act.  It is clear that he is in fact an incredibly skilled magician.  But when a trick goes wrong it is actually all the funnier; expect musical instruments becoming stuck in his mouth, teeth disappearing, things setting on fire, and much more.

He constantly plays on his being Swedish, effectively emphasising the sense of him as an outsider. He is quick to explain IKEA sponsors him.  In fact, apparently he was screwed together there!

His exaggerated accent is somehow both humorous and endearing, inclining us to warm to him.  One of his tricks seems to be learnt live, using a pre-recorded teach-yourself tape.  He misunderstands the lady on the tape, taking the word ‘bandana’ for ‘banana’.  This, inevitably, turns wonderfully messy.

Later on the show becomes strangely moving as he arbitrarily muses on the life of Bob Dylan.  He begins interacting with the audience, playing on the slightly uncomfortable relationship between him and us; there is awkward humour as he asks questions about life and loneliness.  You can look forward to a brilliantly bizarre love song played on a wooden IKEA grand piano.

Just to add to the peculiar nature of the evening, it ends quite randomly with a very dramatic trick, which, you have been warned, involves blood!  The show that began looking like an evening of light entertainment ends looking like a scene from a horror movie.  But its all done in jest, as you are able to have a little chat with blood soaked Carl on your way out as he invites you to shake his hand.

If you are looking for some hilarious and quirky entertainment one evening before Christmas, then Carl-Einar Hackner will serve you well.  This is one not to be missed.

Words: Harriet Piper

NYC Players

 Kane Moore reviews Richard Maxwell’s recent performance Ads at Chelsea Theatre’s Autumn 2010 Sacred Festival.

If you were to reduce Richard Maxwell’s body of work to one word,  the word to settle on would be deadpan. Drained of gesture, intonation and emotion the actors (often non-actors) in his shows do not so much act as impassively, almost robotically, move through the action. Doing away with emotional realism does not however mean the work does not pack an emotional punch, nor that it cannot be remarkably affecting. Indeed the New York Times argues that the ‘uninflected delivery…seems to magnify and dissect what is spoken’. In his 2006 work “The End of Reality” this neutral and monotone acting style is set against scenes of extreme and bloody violence, the jarring detachment and banality generating a very simple metaphor for the disaffection and creeping sense of alienation of modern America.

The dislocation of performer from action is reaches its logical end point in Maxwell’s new piece “Ads” (short for advertisements), shown in the UK for the first time at the Chelsea Theatre as part of their season of work, presented in conjunction with New York’s PS122. In “Ads” the live performers are all but absent. In their place, filling the void left, there stands a pane of glass propped against two wooden soapboxes. Onto the glass are projected the full-length filmed images of a series of New York residents – Maxwell’s friends and friends of friends – talking about who they are and their beliefs or lack of. These digital and crisp ghostly bodies appear to take to the soapbox and speak their monologues, each about five minutes long, which appear unrehearsed, as if they are being read directly from a teleprompt. Maxwell has pooled together 30 of these recordings, of which a different 10 are presented at every performance.

In “Ads” Maxwell challenges notions of liveness in performance, questioning whether the virtual presence of the body is any less present than the body itself. In his accompanying notes to the performance Maxwell identifies that “Ads” investigates ‘What is it about performance that I like? What is it about people that I like?’ And that thing he likes, once everything else has been pared and taken away, seems to be these stories, these opinions, presented raw and without any external interference or direction. What he conveys is that despite the distance between performer and audience – both in terms of geography and time – these stories no less real, sincere or affecting. Yet, and here’s my problem, I found it difficult to connect with these people. Maxwell has assembled a diverse, living document of the different voices that inhabit and make up New York in 2010; from a young Muslim man rapping about the prejudice he experiences every day, of New Yorkers conflating being Muslim with being a terrorist, through to a middle-aged woman from Brooklyn defining her belief in bohemianism and the Brooklyn Dodgers. I can’t work out whether simply the responses they gave weren’t compelling enough or whether, and I know I’m missing the point when I say this, I would have been more engaged if I had experienced the piece outside the theatre, as an installation in an art gallery, as a piece I can choose to move away from and return to as I choose.

The piece ultimately reminded me of “This Progress”, an excellent intervention by artist Tino Sehgal in the Guggenheim Museum in New York, which I saw earlier this year. The work emerges from a similar, simple open-ended question, not about belief but a questioning of ‘What is progress?’ However, in “This Progress”, this question is put directly to me, as a visitor to the gallery, first by a young girl of about 9 or 10 years of age. As I walked up the central rotunda the girl slipped away and the conversation continued, picked up by older and older ‘interpreters’ – the term Sehgal used for the volunteers for the piece. What “This Progress” allowed, which the distance in Maxwell’s piece did not, was for my response to be mixed up with and complicated by the opinions and stories of the people I encountered.

Words: Kane Moore, Dec 2010

Live Traces seeks Reviewers!

If you have an interest in live performance or dance and aren’t afraid of letting people know your opinions then we want to hear from you. We are currently recruiting writers and photographers to contribute the website.

If you would like to write for us please email info@livetraces.com with a… short review (200-300 words) of a show you have seen recently, in the last six months. If you are a photographer and would be interested in photographing artists and events then please send two to three images (max size 2mb) of some of your work.

As a contributor we are unfortunately unable to offer payment but where we can will ensure press tickets to events. Please contact us to be part of contributing to one of the uk’s most vibrant creative fields!

It is well worth checking out this middle class sounds system.  Sly and Reggie are playing in Nunhead on December 17th 2010 .  These guys are amazing- definitely a night not to be missed!