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DANZ QUARTERLY Issue No 12
No 12 – July, August September 2008
Flicker
Ann Dewey
TAPAC, Western Springs, Auckland
6 – 9 March 2008
Reviewed by Francesca Horsley
Whimsy, humour and effervescence were the abiding themes in ‘Flicker’, the latest work by north Auckland, Leigh-based choreographer Ann Dewey. These elements are hallmarks of her works, which include light spirited and lyrical dancing – you can’t help but feel good after watching her performances.
Three women, Julie van Renen, Zoe Watkins and Sophie Ryan, clad in ballooning white bloomers, had mini torches strapped on their heads and limbs. These lights gradually lit up their bodies creating a sense of magic, like evening stars coming out in the dusk or fairy lights on a Christmas tree. The dancers turned slowly over each other while another dancer, Liz Kirk, in a white dress, sat immobile with a lamp positioned on her head.
The backdrop was a giant parchment map of New Zealand, complete with an upside down South Island. This seemed apt as much of the choreography poked fun at the serious; it was floating, disengaged from harsh reality – almost like fragments of a home movie of childhood – but through a very lyrical lens.
In the following sequences, the four dancers moved together as one, carried or mirrored each other, rolled, tumbled, rocked. They slipped in and out of the light, sometimes half hidden, other times confronting the audience, stretching their mouths and pulling faces, or speeding around in energetic carefree fury, swinging their limbs. Always the partnering was fluid, assured – body knowing body. Humour was never far away, with teasing movements, slightly mocking.
Sustained throughout the work was the link to childhood; innocent frolicking, the delight of playing pranks provoking a kinaesthetic memory of a carefree tumbling world. These were disrupted by darker, more elusive, unsettling moments as dancers cast in semi-darkness were distorted by convoluted movement that suspended time and place, suggesting unwelcome disturbances drawn from memory.
Music by John Gibson, together with David Kilgour, created the nuances and connections for the work, idiosyncratic yet embedded into the essential fabric of the dance. It was both complementary and juxtaposed, aligned to the distinctive episodic sequences.
There were numerous layers to the work aside from youthful remembrance. Imaginings, ethereal dreamscapes, hinted locations, hidden truths glimpsed in the dancers’ bodies - quintessential Dewey.
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