Photo – Natalie AytonPrime: Orderly is the latest work by dancer-choreographer, Dean Walsh, based on two years' research into marine environments, a luxury afforded by his tenure as Dance Fellow with the Australia Council. The interdisciplinary approach is hardly new to Walsh, but this time he takes it further, with an address by a veteran dive instructor wedged between two choreographed interrogations of the subject.
(A caveat, though: due to the necessity for me to attend a funeral on the only day it was possible for me to attend 'P:O', I was unable to see the second work, so this review is based purely on the strength of the first and the talk that followed.)
Much has been said about the convergence of art and science with regard to these pieces but, while they may be well-informed by science, it's a little hard to discern where two years' research is implicated. The research involved scuba diving (I wish someone would give me a grant to take the plunge) and interviews with marine ecologists and seems to have been worthwhile insofar as enriching aquatic evocations and in its heightened approach to the subject, which serves to reawaken the audience to the fragile balance of life in the ocean.
In AnEnemy, Walsh is clad head-to-toe, in a kind of electric blue velour burka. He lurks in half-shadow, as though deep below the surface, moving stealthily. He is, it seems, a different kind of predatory male; fully masked, his anonymity making us wary and prone to attributing sinister characteristics, or motives. Like a woman in a burka, or a shark, we tend to ascribe less-than-benign points of difference, rather than seeing them as warm-blooded, living, breathing beings, as sensitive and vulnerable as ourselves. Inasmuch, Walsh not only sensitises us to the damage we wreak below the waterline, but well above.
Strung up, centre stage, is another creature, perhaps a hapless victim of trawling, that the man-shark frees. As a 'man-shark', Walsh conflates the psyches of two animals pitted, in modern urban mythology, against one another, as, perhaps, a way of imploring our re-evaluation of the relationship.
Lighting (Mikey Rice) and sound, along with set and costume design, contribute significantly to the deep-sea effect. Aurally, it's as if we've suddenly been endowed with the ultrasonic gifts common to whales, or are submerged in murky depths. Movement in this piece is minimal, culminating in Walsh, the pseudo-shark, standing upright, trying to communicate with us at a lectern. He breathes heavily, ventures one or two sounds, but slinks away. It's a close encounter urging us, again, to make more effort to understand these maligned creatures, caught in a cult of fear-mongering.
This full mind-and-body immersion was, for mine, somewhat rudely interrupted by a veritable word from a sponsor: a woman who spoke engagingly of swimming in absolute safety with sharks including those reputed to be the most dangerous. The trouble was, for all her gentle and instructive storytelling, it did, indeed, seem like something of an ad break, jolting us out of our sobering underwater reverie.
My only reference point for Under Pressure, the second of the two dance works, is a recommendation from someone I trust and a short preview posted on Vimeo, on which I'll rely. To a not dissimilar soundscape (Alva Noto) and again in dim, shadowy light, a hoodie-clad Walsh emulates the dancelike movements of diving, in a structured improvisation. It is quite representational and mimic, with a fluidity apropos of it subject.
My inclination is to put to one side the abstruse verbosity of Walsh's academic proclivities (embodied in outpourings like 'working chronologically through a preset schematic of a selection of choreographic modalities from my new scoring system') and, instead, saturate yourself in his elemental aesthetica. Those alone are likely to refresh and reinvigorate you in the self-same way as plunging into the sea in the emerging light of a mild spring day. Don't worry about the sharks.
Prime: Orderly
Dean Walsh
Venue: Lennox Theatre, Riverside Theatres | cnr Church and Market Streets, Parramatta, NSW
Date: 25 - 27 October 2012
Tickets: $28 – $25
Bookings: www.riversideparramatta.com.au
