Thursday 25 June 2015

2015: Kelly by Matthew Ryan







Kelly by Matthew Ryan.  Queensland Theatre Company directed by Todd MacDonald; designer – Simone Romaniuk; lighting designer – Ben Hughes; composer/sound designer – Guy Webster.  At Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse, June 25-27, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 25

This variation on the myth of Ned Kelly is an interesting delve into what may have been the relationship between the gang leader Ned and his young brother Dan.  At one level, Matthew Ryan’s ideas about their characters may explain some of the mysteries in the Kelly story, such as the propensity of Dan and Steve Hart to disguise Steve as a woman, and whether Dan was as committed as his brother claimed to be as a revolutionary on behalf of the downtrodden.

But beyond this particular story, the play raises questions about violence and extreme destructive behaviour which we see played out in different ways around the world, including here in Australia today.

First, though, to the quality of the production. 

The set design, representing the Old Melbourne Gaol in 1880, is not a literal reproduction of the cell where Kelly was held.  The play is not a historical documentary.  So the stage floor is an open space with an unadorned bed in the centre; upstage across the whole width is a raised iron walkway, with a narrow iron stairway down at stage left.  The only entrances are at the left and right ends of the walkway.

This simple design places the prisoner at the mercy of the guard, while the clanging of boot and baton on iron steps and rails is all we need to imagine ourselves incarcerated – though at one point we are made aware of the imaginary ‘fourth wall’ between us and them.  Dan looks out at us, but turns and says to his demanding imaginative brother, “I can see a wall, only.”

Surrounding all is highly evocative sound concrĂȘte: hard to describe in words but perfect for locating the drama in our feelings.

Between the actors – Steven Rooke as Ned, Kevin Spink as Dan and Anthony Standish as Guard – there is a strong sense of choreography: of the interplay between them in movement and speech.  They play as if in a dance of changing positions – of power and weakness; of winning and losing.

We are aware that we are watching a play, a theatrical construct, and so we have no problem with Ned making Dan act out events in their violent story (though Dan intensely dislikes having to do so); or even with the Guard briefly becoming a character in their story, then switching into his Guard role.

For me, this approach made the work engaging, and I began to wonder if I should not see the play as a fantasy entirely in Ned’s head as he faces the reality of his execution, just hours away – indeed only minutes away as the play ends.  Rather than my having to believe in the theory that Dan survived the fire at Glenrowan, or the obviously fictional story of his meeting Ned in the guise of a priest, I could just as easily see the priest as ‘real’ – since a priest brought in to prepare a person to face his death was the usual thing in the days of capital punishment.  Ned might imagine him to be his ‘baby’ brother as he goes through the question of his own guilt in causing Dan’s death.

It’s at this point that I come to the broader ramifications of the Ned Kelly story.  Why do certain people turn to cause such chaos and destruction of others, often in the belief that they are creating a better world.  From the leaders of IS in Iraq and Syria, to the Bonds and Skases, or George Alex and his series of phoenix labour hire companies, and even to Dylann Roof’s racist killings in South Carolina, can we come to some understanding of how they do what they do?  Why do these people become mythic in stature, as if other lesser mortals admire them even while they revile them?

I think Ned Kelly has this status because people like him arise generation after generation.  And this play allows us to accept his desire to defend his family, protect his brother and rescue his sister – especially in a society where violence is normal (including the killing of people convicted of crimes, by the state) and where weapons are commonly available (such as in the US, where Dylann Roof’s father could buy him a pistol for his 21st birthday) – and that these morally good intentions can lead to massive evils.  We hear politicians call such people ‘evil’, ‘inhuman’, and we shake our heads as we say we can’t understand them.  But they are human, they do evil things, and perhaps, like Matthew Ryan’s idea of Ned Kelly, they want to control their world – and therefore the world – to make everything right.

Kelly, then, is worth watching for both its production quality and for stimulating such thinking.


In costume but out of gaol:
L-R Kevin Spink as Dan, Steven Rooke as Ned, Anthony Standish as Guard
Photo: Stephen Henry
©Frank McKone, Canberra


Monday 22 June 2015

2015: Elizabeth Cameron Dalman

The Silk Moth 2014
Photo by Barbie Robinson
Sapling to Silver 2011
Photo by Barbie Robinson


Elizabeth Cameron Dalman June 22, 2015
Photo by Helen Musa
Elizabeth Cameron Dalman OAM – In Conversation with the Canberra Critics’ Circle.  Canberra Museum and Gallery, June 22, 2015.

A Sort-of Report by Frank McKone

At the first of four Winter Conversations planned for this year, chaired by our founder Helen Musa OAM, a baker’s dozen of Canberra’s critics across the arts of dance, literature, visual art and theatre interrogated a doyenne of modern dance in Australia, Liz Dalman.

Of course, I use the term ‘interrogated’ in the purely academic sense.  The conversation was conducted in an atmosphere of warmth and great respect for a dancer, choreographer and artistic director of such long-standing originality and drive.  Now an octogenarian, Liz Dalman still performs while even Martha Graham’s last performance was when she was a mere 76.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Martha_Graham)

Mention of Martha Graham was significant, as Dalman recalled that Graham had been strongly influenced by her study of Asian, particularly Chinese, dance forms; and now Dalman is directing Taiwanese performers for whom the Graham Technique is taken as essential in their training in Taiwan.

Cultural change away from the European ballet tradition, in which Dalman was first trained, was the key to her setting up the Australian Dance Theatre (ADT) in her home town, Adelaide, in 1965 after her lengthy overseas experience, especially in Holland.

To fill in with a little local colour, I rang Anton Witsel CAL, OAM, who was a solo character dancer in the Nederlands Dance Theatre (NDT) from 1948 and later taught mime and movement at NIDA and lectured in Theatre Practice for the erstwhile Goulburn College of Advanced Education (including teaching Critics’ Circle members Bill Stephens and myself, and Canberra Theatre Education Impresario Tony Martin).

Ton recalled Liz Dalman performing and teaching in the Scapino Ballet and Scapino Dance Academy directed by Hans Snoek.  Witsel explained that at that time it was a small coterie of dancers world-wide who were involved in the changes in modern ballet and modern dance, and Australia, with the encouragement of Dalman’s parents – Sir Keith Cameron Wilson and Lady Wilson – received not only Witsel himself, but Liz and her husband Jan Dalman (famous for photographing Marcel Marceau), and also Jaap Flier (founding member of NDT) who worked with Liz at the ADT and was guest artist for The Dance Company (NSW), which had been founded by Sue Musitz in 1969. Graeme Murphy became director in 1976 and renamed it the Sydney Dance Company in 1979.

Google Jan Dalman, Elizabeth Cameron Dalman and Jaap Flier for much much more, showing how important was the connection between the Netherlands and Adelaide in the early 1960s for the development of modern dance in Australia.  Though Liz Dalman worked with and was taught by many people, she made special reference to Eleo Pomare, described in Wikipedia as “a Colombian-American modern dance choreographer known for his politically charged productions.”  As a mentor, he passed on to Liz three themes for her work:

1. Intention – in any work, there must be an intention to communicate something through the dance.  I took this to suggest that even though, as Liz said when we spoke one-on-one, pure dance for the sake of dancing is a legitimate form, for her it was necessary for her dances to convey meaning about something of importance to society.

2. Breaking from convention – to have intention means that rigid conventions need to be broken.  An example which arose in the Conversation concerns body shape.  Where traditional ballet required women and men of the ‘correct’ size and shape, modern dance – not for the sake of being unconventional – needed to have a wide variety of bodies on stage to represent social themes.  A recent example, in the 2015 Sydney Festival, was Force Majeure’s Nothing to Lose, performed by fat dancers as an exposĂ© of how fat people are treated and, in the process, showing how common assumptions were challenged by fat people creating powerful expressive dance.

3. Dancing the Environment – this is the term I have coined  to describe not just Dalman’s works about environment issues, but her working in places (such as Weereewa, Lake George) or on stage with dancers from different cultures in such a way that the dance incorporates the physical, historical, social and cultural setting, and in doing so illuminates the past and the present and becomes the expression of intention.

In the Conversation it seemed to me that this third element in Dalman’s work had especially developed as she created dance with Indigenous people, beginning with meeting the poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker) and particularly after a productive stay in a Western Desert Pitjantjatjara community; as well as through a study on location of the Darling River from Wilcannia, Broken Hill and down to the junction with the Murray.  Bride of the Desert and River were works of cultural and environmental issues which resulted.  Their value may have been questioned at the time, but their significance is clear today.

Being a Conversation, and therefore with no formal speech, a number of points of interest were raised.   About the relationship between music and dance, Dalman explained she had no regular approach.  Music may create a feeling which she may express in the dance; an image and movement may be the starting point and music found or composed to fit; or dance may happen without music – sparking memories from people of Merce Cunningham’s silent dance in his 1976 tour of Australia.  “Dancers must be able to count!” was an amusing aside at this point.

The key for Dalman, she said, was not to respond to music at a superficial level, but to “go into the layers underneath the music.”

This need for total integration of all the elements of a work reappeared in discussion of the use of multimedia.  The issue for Dalman was that projection and live video could too easily have the effect of diminishing the dancer’s work, and, again in one-on-one conversation, she agreed that there is a learning process needed to find the “balance between technology and choreography”.  This year’s Sydney Theatre Company production of Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer was a good example of successfully finding that balance in theatre, for a play where live video might not be expected to be appropriate.

Though many other topics arose, including discussing to what degree there is an onus placed on artists to deal with “issues”, perhaps I should finish on a political note.  At one point, when ADT was setting up a grand tour to completely new places – Papua New Guinea, South-East Asia and India in 1971 – Liz Dalman was on the point of mortgaging her home to provide the necessary funds.  Fortunately the Elizabethan Theatre Trust and Qantas came to the party on that occasion.  Yet still today she is having to self-fund her Mirramu Dance Company’s tour to Adelaide.  I just wondered where our grandstanding Arts Minister / Attorney-General George Brandis fits in.  Will the Australia Council have the funds to come to this party?  Or Brandis’ new National Program for Excellence in the Arts?

It was sad that all Elizabeth Cameron Dalman OAM, at 81, could do in response to my question, after a career which she says began at the age of three, was a gentle shake of the head.

Liz Dalman 1967
Photo by Jan Dalman


Addendum

If you have read the first version of this article, you will notice a reference to Isadora Duncan's brother.  I thought I heard that Elizabeth had been taught by him, but here's an update in which she clarifies my misconception:

The story was that Margaret Morris, an English pioneer of modern dance studied with Raymond Duncan just after Raymond and Isadora came back from their ground breaking trip to Greece. Margaret then incorporated some of these new variations, that Isadora had developed, into her Margaret Morris (MMM) technique. My first dance teacher Nora Stewart travelled regularly in the 1920's to London. There she studied with Margaret Morris and learnt this MMM technique. As well as teaching the Russian style of classical Ballet Nora also taught Margaret Morris dancing. This is where as a young school girl, I first studied it. Looking back now I do appreciate the lineage and connection to Isadora even though it was not a direct one.

By email 28 June 2015


© Frank McKone, Canberra

Sunday 21 June 2015

2015: Free the Arts from Politicisation

NATIONAL ARTS GATHERING CALLS FOR IMMEDIATE HALT TO NPEA
MEDIA RELEASE
Please click on this link:
https://gallery.mailchimp.com/a34575c9cbdc8e3c854d2f853/files/Media_Release_NATIONAL_ARTS_GATHERING_CALLS_FOR_IMMEDIATE_HALT_TO_NPEA.pdf?utm_source=BAC+Subscribers&utm_campaign=e28eebbecb-Free+the+Arts&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fd1e646edb-e28eebbecb-26970529
Email received from Daniel Ballantyne

Subject: Free the Arts






Dear supporter of the arts,


The May Federal Budget saw $105 million removed from the Australia Council for the Arts. We are now asking for your support to reverse this decision made by the Minister for the Arts, Senator George Brandis.

This decision will have a profound effect on the future of small to medium arts companies, independent artists, the community cultural development sector and wider Australia, especially at the community and grass roots level.

This decision was made without warning, and certainly not following consultation, it jeopardises the 40 year consensus built around the principle of independent, arms-length and peer based decision making when allocating arts funding. The effect of this decision is divisive, pitching our major arts companies who have their funding quarantined against the small to medium and independent sector through the establishment of a new ministerially overseen bureaucracy, the so called National Programme for Excellence in the Arts, to which all can apply. In fact all of the arts and cultural organisations and independent artists need each other in our highly inter connected industry.

The impact of Senator George Brandis’s decision has been immediate in that the Australia Council has had its discretionary funding capacity cut by over a quarter and that major funding programs to which Belconnen Arts Centre amongst many other arts and cultural organisations have applied, have now, been stopped.

Please read the attached Media Release arising from a peak meeting at Parliament House of arts organisations and independent artists from across Australia.

We have a simple but vital request of you as a supporter. We need you to write letters couched in your own words asking for the Minister for the Arts decision to be reversed and why you think it is essential. We recommend you keep it short and direct, we have been advised that templates are to be avoided and for impact it is important that you post a hard copy.

Please write and post your hard copy letters to the following:

The Prime Minister the Hon. Tony Abbott, MP
The Minister for Arts the Hon. George Brandis, Senator
The Minister Representing the Minister for the Arts in the House of Representatives, the Hon. Julie Bishop MP
Any further members of the Liberal National Party Coalition Government

For a complete list of Senators and Members please click here

Address your letters to
Parliament House
CANBERRA ACT 2600

To follow the campaign, see the Free the Arts Facebook page. You can also hear a radio interview with Fran Kelly and Jade Lillie (Footscray Community Arts Centre).

I thank you for your important work and please let me know by return e-mail what letters you have sent.

Kind regards,


Daniel Ballantyne
CEO
Belconnen Arts Centre

118 Emu Bank BELCONNEN ACT
PO Box 183 BELCONNEN ACT 2616
p. 02 6173 3302
m. 0407 289 604
w. belconnenartscentre.com.au 
w. ccinclusion.com
 




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Belconnen Arts Centre, 118 Emu Bank, Belconnen, ACT
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info@belconnenartscentre.com.au, 6173 3300
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Posted to Canberra Critics' Circle by Frank McKone, 21 June 2015