ABOVE GROUND played recently at Riverside Theatres and what a stunning evening of dance it was.  The two pieces presented took to the air and, despite their differences, each experience caught the breath as aerial practice deepened our corporeal understandings.

SOFT PROSTHETICS AND METAL GODS from Kathryn Puie and Lux Eterna began as we entered the theatre. 

The two artists, in earth coloured clothing are in motion on the floor and the audio simulates insects and trees co-mingled with industrial metal-hit echoes.  The dancers, lying and rolling on the black floor, are being caught by a stationary camera and projected onto the screen behind.   Surrounded by metal in stilts and dolly and tripod, it was evident that the camera was to be a third participant.  There were static holds in the visuals from the dancers as pulse and rhythm, throbbing bass and percussion with electronica, began to pervade just as the corpuscular blood images beat behind them.  The images of the bodies are often sepia in feel but this blood will return occasionally.

When the artist engages with the camera what do we watch?  Is it the detail of limbs or faces projected or the expansive opening out of the human person.  Often, previously, she had looked out to the audience but the camera disrupts and segments when we watch the watcher whose projected face looms over her tiny self.  The angle of the image oblique and unnervingly unfamiliar.

When the manipulation of the metal begins both artists are caught by a force bigger than they and the arresting visuals of tripod creation and stilts, prone and pulled, clearly elucidate the theme of the work.   The stilts are not reliant on legs before the rise.  There are a dizzying series of spins with the metal held by arms and filmed from below and there is a sharing weight between the two dancers before the precisely controlled clearing of the space .   This kind of precision will also influence the ‘up’ as the camera images disappear to herald the body in space.

Again we ask ourselves what do we watch and why, as the camera is steadicamed in a shoulder mount and the stilt dancer interacts with the camera, both with reality and with shadow.  Nature sounds once more creep in, chimes echoing an ending.  The rubber on rubber of stilt feet on Tarkett in mechanical silence as the dancers meet in a downward light circle that shrinks to enfold them.  Leaving the viewer to contemplate floor and sky and bodies expressed in light.  A wonderful, engrossing performance.

CAT’S CRADLE from Joshua Thompson and Legs On The Wall is performed by Angie Diaz and Macarena Bravi.

Much more conceptually narrative, this piece is named for the sculptural apparatus which “looms overhead with over a hundred ropes hanging in the space below.”  It is a thrilling work which composites beauty and brutality with no judgement, merely expression.  Opening with a figure in the ropes, a diaphanous embodiment of weightlessness, of a body in space, this work will challenge an audience.  Both by content and the endangerment redolent imagery as expressed in a sudden, superbly executed light cue assailing us with shock and sudden darkness.

When the lushness of the audio track, a windrush and open air echo, brings our attention back we see longing and loving as the duo meet and part and touch again and travel towards the cat’s cradle.  But there is grasping here too, passion and possession and power shifts of fracture and heavy fluidity.  They will barge and pant and the audio pounds until sanity is restored and the story moves forward.

The cat’s cradle can suspend one or the two in the light from above but its mass of rope can also serve to obfuscate, submerge and hide.  As this relationship unfolds before us, one will be borne and one will be the bearer as they leave the apparatus, the sticky wetness of the audio at odds with the images of oppression and inequality.  It is dark, hard to watch, and we fear for the less powerful, the riven, the manipulated as the perpetrator never touches ground.

As the piece reaches climax, the physical risk intensifies and the breath is caught by the danger in which these artists place themselves.   It is a stunning achievement of height and emotions heightened by vicarious risk.  CAT’S CRADLE is raw and bold, a breathtaking achievement.

ABOVE GROUND, presented by FORM Dance Projects, Riverside Theatres and Legs On The Wall played a short season at Riverside Theatres.