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| Ben Woodman, Ben Hurley, Leah Landau City Baths Melbourne 2018 |
I was Invited to observe a work in progress by Leah Landau with dancers Thomas Woodman and Ben Hurley. With camera.
I walked into a squash court with a very brief introduction and no conversation about what’s about to happen, or even, why I am there. Three dancers including Leah shared some brief ideas about how to proceed with their work and then began to move about the space taking their choreographic cues from laptops placed on the floor.
I enjoyed the ease of which I was granted to walk into this project and observe. A small smile shared with Ben Hurly was permission granted to start filming.
I sometimes lament how artists can speak too much before doing anything, perhaps from fear that any action will be misunderstood or cause offense and provoke judgment. People generally spend a lot of time deflecting judgment before anything worth judging has even happened. So, it was a pleasure just to watch a work unfold before my eyes, feeling the history of Leah’s process in the work but not necessarily understanding what brought the dancers to this point.
I know that in my own work there can be a tendency to over explain, facilitate and inform cast and crew, for fear that they will feel lost or judge what’s going on.
This moment with Leah reminded me of films where the audience is thrown into a ritual without understanding the rules. A type of logic is discernible, but it appears completely abstract to the un initiated. Part of the pleasure is figuring it out.
Of course, once the intentions and parameters of the ritual to become known, that judgment so feared, soon follows, is this ritual of value? Does it serve and nourish all the participants? Or is it just indulging the leader. Are the participants just serving the leaders wishes?
When after the run through Leah spoke of feeling “ excited,” It felt like it was a personal experience she was sharing with a cast unsure of their own feelings. But often this is the case with a leader, and sometimes it’s enough for an actor or dancer to excite their director without knowing exactly how they did it. Or perhaps, they are spurred on by the director’s excitement because it does present as a mystery to be uncovered. Surely a splendid moment will arise when you have the same insight as the director, the same excited feeling. Maybe that’s when they become a real leader, they have shown you a path, and you have arrived.
So what is Leah’s work about. In a brief conversation while she got on her bike and had to rush away, still maintaining a sense of mystery, she said, it’s about, “ Trying to recreate moments from the past,” Hence the dancers watching the screens trying to recreate the choreography in the moment.
People responding to screens is such a relatable image on the stage, it’s immediately speaking to how we are all trapped by the screens that dominate our lives and inform our movements, language and thoughts. I wonder if this understanding will add to the work or steer peoples understanding, does it matter.
I love Leah’s dance work, her movements and actions always strike me as vital, as if performed in order to survive.
In this enclosed space of a squash court and further trapping the dancers in my gaze looking down on them, the choreography felt like a survival instinct, reaching for something beyond the space, the vision on the laptops perhaps, outside of time, they were grasping for a bit of freedom recreated within this captivity.
