Photos - Jeff BusbyHow to say love me? There is an infinite array of possibilities. Where would love be without the foreboding presence of the big and little screens? Guerin’s lithe ensemble Stephanie Lake, Kyle Kremerskothen, Kirstie McCracken and Byron Perry orbit the dark and light cosmos of pixelated love speak. It’s commands, it’s cries, pleas, uncertainties, it’s nobility, and it’s wantonness. Slowly, gracefully, desperately. Always mannered, cinematic, televisual.
From the understated and erratic self talk in Reservoir of Giving I and II, the lean simple machinic stylisations in On, and the fluid white hot secret women’s business illuminated in Melt.
This triple bill of duets reprises works by Lucy Guerin Inc that have struck a chord with audiences in recent times, audiences who love their contemporary dance performance transposed with the now dated post-modern screen culture. Love Me is collaboration with visual artists David Rosetzky (Reservoir of Giving I and II) and Michaela French (On, Melt) who help to conjoin the abstractions of dance into today’s impersonal hyperreal information matrix.
In Reservoir of Giving I and II, Paul Healy’s soundscape evokes a lo-fi world of cool loungey jazz, martinis and Astrid Gilberto. A man and woman (Kyle Kremerskothen and Kirstie McCracken) dissect their cool self-talk, with small gestures, modest mannered sleights of hand, feet and limbs. Meanwhile, their significant other appears on the life scale screen behind- a digital likeness immersed in contemplation. The design of this piece parodies a tear sheet from an issue of Wallpaper magazine. He likes Kylie Minogue. She likes J Lo. She says Minogue is manufactured pop, J Lo hasn’t had any body reassignment surgery. Dancer Kyle Kremerskothen performs a duet with a chair, an ode to Bob Fosse perhaps, entangling and enchanting a chair with the same passion he imagines with his lover, so close but so far.
On (Byron Perry and Kirstie McCracken) immerses another couple deeper into the screeny textual matrix, the white noisy ether of information, code, html, data, language multiplicity and Internet connectivity. Presented as a series of stages within stages, this is a complex work that challenges the constraints of staging in theatrical space. A coalescence of bright white squares and dark screens, encoded with code and austere motion graphics are inhabited by the exactitude of carefully placed body parts.
Guerin’s work On seems to acquiesce to a digital gothic world, filled with dread. An interplay of positive and negative spaces. Bodies become screens, ignoble, obfuscated from a feeling world. In the darkness that surrounds the gentle undulations of the dancers limbs and appendages, illuminated and white, we are allowed a space to inhabit and revel in our own imagination, our own fantasy lost world beyond the distractions of matrix musac.
In Melt, temperatures are rising, two women in tandem, duelling or constellating love. Fighting or feigning love, its uncertain, fraught. Love speak in Melt is less cool, nearer to white-hot. A montage of ice melts, silhouettes of exacting performances, a pastiche of shadow puppetry, butoh, dance club, Hindi, tribal and jazz gestures. Two bodies dancing at one point in an alchemy of love, precision and fluidity. This immaculate duet was transcendent, eclipsing the tendency to mannered cool sleek choreography with a grace that emanates from the nature of embodiment not cultural pretense. It felt effortless, intuitive, instinctual, ceremonious and heartfelt. Love Me is a portrait of Love in a black minimal Melbourne climate. Wherever love resides, it seems the screen projection is always nearby, lurking.
Arts House in association with Mobile States present
LOVE ME
Lucy Guerin Inc
Reservoir Of Giving I And II (12 mins)
Choreography: Lucy Guerin
Visual Artist: David Rosetzky
Music: Paul Healy
Dancers: Kyle Kremerskothan, Kirstie McCracken
Stylist: Moira Rogers
Melt (22 mins)
Choreography: Lucy Guerin
Motion Graphics: Michaela French
Sound Score: Franc Tetaz
Dancers: Stephanie Lake, Kirstie McCracken
On (21 mins)
Choreography: Lucy Guerin
Motion Graphics: Michaela French
Dancers: Byron Perry, Kirstie McCracken
Sound Design: Darrin Verhagen
Lighting: Keith Tucker
Venue: Arts House, Meat Market | 5 Blackwood St, North Melbourne
Dates: Wed 25 July - Sat 28 July
Time: 7:30pm
Tickets: Full $20, Conc $15
Bookings: easytix.com.au/artshouse or (03) 9639 0096
