Guild Theatre, Melbourne.
October 9, 2024.
We know that everything is temporary, even though we mostly live in the illusion of eternity. In the world of art, we cherish both. On one end are paintings, statues, etc. and on the other are live performances. For the former, we have museums and pedestals, but for the latter – smartphones notwithstanding – we have immediate experiences and ever-changing, imprecise archives of memory.
Unlike a scripted play or an annotated symphony, dance is notoriously difficult to pin down. Maybe harder to repeat. Arabella Frahn-Starkey’s Pictures and Ghosts Consider this conundrum, shifting between the concreteness of an artifact and the smoothness of a moving object. We wonder, is this an attempt to capture, or to show that there is no such thing, that nothing is really held?
She begins in the past, with photos and text projected onto two screens. It’s not just a slide show, however, as she animates them with her hands, slides them around, and scribbles on them. Around her, music played on what sounded like shaky tapes. It’s all very similar, sometimes like the page-turning cartoon sequences kids create with pencil and paper. Or like the austere and subtle visual arts of pre-modern Japan.
It’s a clever take on the concept of choreography. Things are still moving and seem to merge into a dance. Until, with another switch, static becomes movement, the old becomes new, the recorded becomes live. We are mesmerized by Frahn-Starkie’s deft photo montages, which she brings to life as if re-enacting the past by enacting previous 2D animations in 3D. The recorded dance is happening right in front of us now.
In addition to weird thoughts about time, Pictures and Ghosts It’s also a deep dive into dance mechanics and recognizable vocabulary. These “moves” are familiar, like sequences from class or early rehearsals. We know these lines, these gestures. Somehow, despite the ephemerality of the dance, the choreography have be preserved. Not just etched in standard practice, but in our shared physiology.
Pictures and Ghosts It’s more of a survey than an ode, more thoughtful than emotional. It is dry, often silent, and thoughtful. Sometimes it looks like a paper being discussed. Fans of princess narratives and pyrotechnics may be lost. Yet as Frahn-Starkey slowly worked her way toward the core of her idea, we were rewarded for our patience and attention to detail.
If you look closely, those old photos and ghosts come to life.
PS: Anyone old enough to remember projectors (which were almost ubiquitous in schools and colleges in the 70s and 80s) will be delighted to see such a relic being redeployed so creatively.
Author: Paul Ransom Dance information.
