DANZ QUARTERLY No 7 April 2007

Reviews

INK, Choreographed by Maria Dabrowska
Dance Your Socks Off Festival, Bats Theatre, Wellington, 21-23 Sept 2006

Reviewed by Jack Gray

An inaugural graduate of the Unitec Bachelor of Performing and Screen Arts Degree in 1998, Wellington-based Maria Dabrowska has quietly made the windy capital her creative niche since then, steadily compiling a wacky collection of avant-garde dance productions which (although seemingly overlooked by the funding powers that be) never fail to rate highly on a scale of 'urban underground coolness' by all those in the know.

INK, her newest work, was made in collaboration with lighting designer Martyn Roberts, with sound design by Stephen Gallagher. The pre-show mood was created within Bat's crowded box-office corridor, where peering into a mirrored floor tile installation (reminiscent of 'Alice through the Looking Glass') you could see perspectives of various Dabrowska dance doubles projected onto the staircase above…or was it below? Clever visual trickery, it was an introduction to the experimental European design aesthetic that was to come.

INK began as a black pit filled to the brim with haze, solid light beams slowly inching their way through the submerged atmosphere and staining the darkness with its spatial ambiguity. Expectations of seeing dancing limbs jump out like a bad Jaws movie never materialised, as Dabrowska's prone black clothed body was very minutely and ever so slowly revealed. Her first solo displayed typical quick-as-a-flash hand gestures and contorted spinal poses that make up her trademark movement vocabulary, but developed further with leg splits that knocked the side of her head in a dazzling and virtuosic way.

The next scene of Dabrowska on a table (that seemed to be in an alcove) in bondage style garb with black gaffa-taped breasts, dog ears and the distant sounds of neighbourhood dogs barking caught the viewer unawares and located us, or her, trapped in some seedy suburban dungeon.

She was surprisingly joined by a sexy minx in a red outfit (the fabulous Mel Hamilton in a guest appearance) in a sequence that featured two lounge chairs and a nostalgic tune that seemed reminiscent of an old boudoir somewhere. Using minimal sitting poses performed in exact synchronicity also highlighted another facet of Dabrowska’s crafting, showing a keen sense of timing and absorbing performance focus that went beyond predictable musicality.

The final dance was scattered amongst the shifting passages of light to a track of operatic music that was serene and uplifting. Manipulating their solo movement separately yet coming together at certain points, opened up a world of interplay between light, shade and movement that lay at the crux of the concept. The light was fantastically designed and a close friend to the dance on this occasion.

Dabrowska is an unconventional and totally idiosyncratic dance artist whose dark sensuality tinged with razor-sharp comic wit slips in the places of our psyche and imagination we are usually not allowed to go. Like eating the last chocolate in your parent's special truffle box, watching her dance is always a naughty but wicked pleasure. Consume at your own peril!  

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