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A weather board house, a Giant Queen and five dancers

Author: Sue Cheesman

Publication: DANZnet

Publication Date: 25 August 2003

Subject: Review of Queen Camel by Ann Dewey

A huge Queen promenades in front of us and I immediately have associations to an early jazz dance called the Cake Walk, the billowing giant white skirt in stark contrast to the bodice comprising of a small singled vest. Ann’s idiosyncrasies and quirky peculiarities are to the fore in the opening section of this piece. These attributes in my opinion are signatures of Ann’s work. The everyday mundane, the extraordinary, the familiar and the foreign were all present in varying guises in Queen Camel, performed at Auckland Town Hall by Megan Adams, Lynne Keary, Elizabeth Kirk, Kelly Nash, Paora Taurima and Nicholas Watt during the month of May 2003. Combined with very accomplished dancing Queen Camel provided a vehicle to explore the questions around identity and belonging.

The rich gestural sequences of movement were well crafted and it was a joy to watch the articulation of twist, turn and rotate in space from one dancer to another and from one body part to another within the same dancer. Each dancer had solos throughout the piece. Paora’s was particularly beautiful to watch with subtleties and range of dynamics skillfully maximized, bringing an engaging aesthetic to this solo.

An amusing take on domesticity raised itself on several occasions during the piece in the form of pegs, broom, aprons, spoon and the inevitable washing line. Gingham aprons and material dolls transformed in a hilarious very clever sequence to be babies, washing and telephones. The transformation at one point journeyed into the world of the East, veiled and riding camels. The music by John Gibson skilfully matched the dance like a patchwork quilt with all the rich variety of textures, colours, tones and styles from bagpipes to music boxes to rock guitars. The score was compelling.

The many twists and turns and changes in this piece meant that the links, in terms of meaning between the more abstract gestural movement sequences and the somewhat narrative prop orientated sections, were at times obscure and the underlying threads in my opinion got lost. However the sections in themselves were strong, forming individual entities of their own and perhaps like the immigrant we are left with the puzzle of making sense of the several worlds we viewed.

The closing image evolved into the bright green synthetic grass surrounding a weatherboard house with a white picket fence, capturing a sense of place in kiwi land. (In fact I live in just such a house with all the trappings and I suspect Ann does too). Will Ann find more answers to identity in further dances and is this weather board home a new New Zealand citizen’s home for a while longer?

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