A queer feminist anthropologist exploring the realities of culture, gender, and sexuality in contemporary Asia
Reviews of books, live theatre and dance shows.
Weighty, abstract and astounding: Tao Dance Theatre’s 4 and 5 Hypnotic, enthralling and undeniably special: bodies ebb and flow with the tide of change in Chinese choreographer Tao Ye’s 4 and 5. These are just two parts in a series of abstract works that “explore the potential of the human body as a visual element, [...]
Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's challenging Vortex Temporum Dancers whirl through dark space, crossing paths, each following their own axes as they run at full speed along pre-drawn lines like ebullient planets. A deconstruction of the relationship between dance and music, Vortex Temporum is an engaging work, both powerfully engaging and lightly playful. This week saw [...]
"How relevant is Shakespeare?" is one of those questions that crops up a lot. Particularly during a Theatre degree. The majority of contemporary Shakespeare productions I've seen have made the story, the characters, the language somehow relevant to modern life. From Baz Luhrmann's 1996 Romeo + Juliet to Ong Keng Sen's intercultural Asian Shakespeare series [...]
Puffball really got me thinking. Here's why: CircusFest 2014: Puffball at The Roundhouse Contorted, standing on a trapeze and wrapped entirely in cling film, a scantily-clad male figure tears his way out of his plastic chrysalis with a rush of red fluid. This womb-like, visceral allusion to ‘coming out of the closet’, to forging a [...]
Seeing Headspace Dance for the first time, I was in two minds about how much I liked them. As performers, they were wonderful. But I wasn't fully convinced by some of the artistic choices made. Before The Interval made some interesting post-modernist observations about dance, and it had some entertaining moments, but I wasn't enthralled [...]
When I requested tickets for Circusfest 2014 at London's Roundhouse, I was working on the basis that I'd reviewed some circus in the Mime Festival earlier in the year, and though not strictly dance, circus seems physical and choreographed enough that it might just fit in... In my opinion, circus is just on the brink [...]
I found the uncontrollable, indescribable madness of James Thierrée’s Compagnie du Hanneton absolutely, bafflingly inspiring. I couldn't put my finger on why chaos would make me want to create, but perhaps Thierrée’s ability to acknowledge the chaos, to let it flourish without reigning in the madness and put that on stage with some semblance of [...]
Who gives us the right to an opinion? However informed we are (there's quite a range of knowledge levels on the spectrum from no prior awareness at all to "I've got a PhD and written several books on the subject"), we are entitled to our individual opinions. One can always claim to be an authority [...]
The ephemeral world of Pilobolus: Shadowland in London In Shadowland, Pilobolus create a vast and varied imaginative landscape, through which we follow a young girl on the brink of growing up. On a rare visit to London, this American dance theatre group stunned audiences at the Peacock Theatre on their opening nights earlier this week. [...]
Everything in Charlotte Vincent's Motherland seems deliberately challenging, to the point it is almost stubbornly confrontational. Women of the World: Vincent Dance Theatre's Motherland Aggressively sexual, full-frontally experimental and self-consciously provocative, Vincent Dance Theatre’s Motherland dirtied the stage at the Southbank Centre on 9th March 2014 as part of the WOW (Women of the World) [...]
