WHEN: 13-17 November 2024
WHERE: Arts House (Warehouse)
CREATED BY: Holly Childs and Angela Goh
PERFORMED BY: Angela Goh
COMPOSED BY: Gediminas Žygus
COSTUME BY: Verity Mackey
 |
| Angela Goh - photo by Gregory Lorenzutti |
Cliffhanger is the latest new work offering presented at Arts House. Performed in the Warehouse, this show is advertised as being an examination of the 'Sisyphean task of climbing beyond the interface layer of reality'. Combining stream of consciousness style text with contemporary physical movement/dance, the show addresses doom scrolling, attention competition, and fruitless endeavour.
Holly Childs is a writer whose practice lies in fiction, poetry and text for art projects. Angela Goh is a contemporary dance artist. The two have been working collaboratively since 2015. Cliffhanger has apparently been in development since 2019 and I think there is still a lot of COVID angst underlying the work despite the amount of time which has passed.
I say that because despite the driving idea of the show being the tension of the classic cliffhanger mechanism to build suspense and drama, this show seems to be mired to deeply in the suspension phase, so we never get to feel the catalytic energy which makes the release of falling off the cliff so powerful. Goh bases her movements in a slow dramaturgy which doesn't help this. There is only one real moment where this works as a 'cliffhanger' which is when she suddenly rolls along the floor into the wall and then is suspended in the glare of headlights. For the rest of the time, we are (quite literally in one section) perpetually pushing the rock up the hill yet never reaching the top.
In some respects, I feel as if Childs and Goh have created two different works of art and then just brought them together. There is little to no consistency in what they address in their artforms beyond the loosest of themes. Childs has created a random thought generator which moves a bit backwards and forwards in time but doesn't really address anything discussed in blurb such as doom scrolling or algorithms or the weaponisation of information. To be honest though, I think I enjoyed her components the most because they were non-literal. Goh's dissociated performance of the text was excellent too and did speak to a societal disconnect which is linked to spending too much time in front of our computers.
This becomes echoed in Goh's performance and hits home strongly towards the end when she is transformed into a cat quietly waiting for us all to notice it. As abstracted as Child's text is, Goh's choreography is far too literal. Rocks (which move from the floor to the wall) are held as a mouse and a finger scrolls as if doom scrolling. Goh's eyes flick between an array of imagined screens vying for her attention. There is a plank against the wall on which Goh engages in a never-ending climb just like Sisyphus. Luckily for us it does eventually end... Also luckily for us, Gediminas Žygus' composition is fabulous, and the music brings fun and life to the show.
I am going to admit at this point I do not favour slow dramaturgies as a performative style. Whilst I think they are engaging for creatives to explore, I don't think they are engaging for audiences to watch. Within the context of a performance there needs to be consideration of how the act of attention and awareness and redundancy work in the human brain. Slow dramaturgy can be a powerful element of a performance, but it has to be used wisely and in a broader context in the story telling.
I think the ideas underlying this show are great and the music is wonderful! The show would be stronger if technological elements were integrated and I could see how this could develop with lighting and video elements explored and enmeshed (assuming they do actually want to create the show they have advertised).
I do think what is already present in the performance could be much stronger though. The rocks on the white Tarkett immediately reference a climbing wall although they are not spaced quite right. Instead of transferring the rocks to a wall to be a more literal representation, they could be repositioned on the stage during the performance and then Goh could actually interact with them as a referential climbing wall in situ. They don't become functional on the real wall anyway so that just feels like filling in time.
This is the problem with slow dramaturgies too. I always find myself asking whether this is actually trying to say something or is it just filling in time to create a 'full length' show. As soon as I start to wonder about that you have lost me. This is what I mean by incorporating how the brain works with regard to attention.
I guess in the end what I am saying is that there are the seeds of something fascinating here, but this feels like a creative development, not a fully realised performance. Childs and Goh need to work with a dramaturg or director to corral the ideas into a meaningful and satisfying experience for the audience.
The production elements which are there are all very beautiful and precise. The costume is beautiful although I don't think it really speaks to the work. Verity Mackey has made a very nice outfit though. Even though there is no lighting designer credited, for the most part the lighting is quite good too.
2.5 Stars
No comments:
Post a Comment