danse (1) - a review

---

We parked in Gladstone St opposite the Craigo Mills home to the Omeo dance studio started by Roslyn Crisp. We were after the best Turkish pizza in Sydney at Saray on Enmore Rd.

“I thought she looked like spastic puppet pulling her own strings or like she was doing some kind of epileptic tai chi.” Brett searched for words to express how he hated Ros’ performance in a kind of conversational way. He knew that Paul was on his side as the beer was passed his way.
“I don’t class that as dance, it was more like mime. I think of dance as having some sort of grace, but that was just ugly.”

Though my response to Danse (1) was different, I could not disagree with the descriptions of Paul and Brett. I first came in contact, quite literally with Ros Crisp in 1997 at Omeo studios, where she was holding contact improvisation classes. It was at this time that I also rediscovered my friend Anastasia whom I had gone to high school with in Wollongong. After all this time Anastasia had blossomed into an accomplished dancer and yoga teacher and I was a struggling performance artist finding it hard to scrape the cash together for the class. We were both discovering the rich physical language of contact improvisation at Omeo with Ros. At that time my general sense of Ros’ movement was that of “casting out”. Like how a fisherman casts out a line or a net, Ros would cast out her limbs and delineate a space far off in the horizon.

In Danse (1) she does not allow her movement such élan. Ideas and gestures are cut off and interrupted, contradicted and whipped back before any landscape can form around it. Because of this, there is a certain sense of whiplash and dissolution - disillusion. Indeed she holds back on the illusion - don’t expect to be swept away, transported to another dimension. The pastoral becomes labyrinthine as she climbs, contracts, burns, loses interest, flutters, punches whatever…..in a schizophrenic stream of consciousness.

Like an agitated mind, her movement ideas jump from one proposition to its opposition to a wacky tangent and gathers no moss.

The space in the studio is gapingly huge in breadth width and height. Especially height. The ceiling only seen if searched for. Perhaps a raked bank of seating for 200 might help the audience member feel like there were safely on the edge of the abyss looking down at the performer, but not tonight. In typical Roslyn Crisp style there were randomly placed benches scattered like a game of pick-up-sticks and 2 raised dance areas only a foot above the ground: one huge and the other small. This already in a big concession to the “conventional idea” of performance. But stronger than in the past, I felt the challenge go out to the audience - “why am I doing all the dancing?” “What are you all doing there? Standing around gawking at me?” “Don’t you have anything better to do?” Again and again she challenged the audience, sometimes in mirth, sometimes in mockery and sometimes in exasperation, or was that disgust? - I’m not too sure what throwing your shoes into the audience was supposed to mean. But eroding meaning seemed to be the meaning of this work.

Was it successful? Well if you ask Brett and Paul I’m sure they’d say yes - it was a totally meaningless performance.

Roslyn Crisp has an audience, or perhaps I should say coterie. It takes time to develop a language and it takes time to learn one too. Danse (1) seen in the context of Roslyn Crisp’s journey as an artist does have meaning, as it is another small piece that makes up the entire mosaic. Danse (1) alienates, challenges and bullies the audience. “What the fuck are you doing just standing there?!!!” But there is no invitation to interact. So why am I just standing there watching another person hog this huge space? And what if I were to move my body in the space too? Like really move, like dance. Does it no longer become a performance? Is it officially the moment it becomes a blue light disco? A master class?

Ros says, “This is what I’m working on right now in my dance practice…take it or leave it”
And I say, “….this is my response…take it or leave it.”

---

Comments

[christoph]

looking for numbers
saw bazzi the other night said i'd pass on his phone number to you 9362 1036 0424 449 359 love all the cooking pickles and such you little cuisine adventure munger i have been doing a rabbit and juniper berry dish served with polenta and saffron mmmm lamb mince casserole and just about to try a chicken rendang which came out of the weekend herald also notice your ossi bocci dish looked d'lish love ya christoph

[anonymous]

yeah its easy to be underwhelmed by a performance space performance, and takes time to get into the language. but now i respond to it in umpteenth ways, just appreciating the chance to be in that giant space with subtle cool lighting, everything from the dawn of time to interstellar ruins on dr who, every try hard cool music video or fashion shoot of a model poseuring over a light box, I APPRECIATE the room to drink it all in, have this almost passive spectral figure 'being' more than 'performing' for us, then again maybe the boys should have been left at a pub gig up the road! funny considering the kind of somatic performances I have witnessed by brett late smoky nights in melbourne, remind me to reenact the night he and his twin...!! anyway luvved your take on the show. it was a fun night on the edge xx ()even if it was a touch blunt)