For Dance Massive Phillip Adams BalletLab is presenting Kingdom, a work two years in the making based on the process of collaboration and the business, so to speak, of being queer. In Kingdom, four gay men, choreographers Matthew Day, Luke George and Rennie McDougall and Adams, celebrate their shared experiences of collaboration and of being poofs, fags, homos and queer. “Being queer begins Kingdom but it does not end with that,” says Adams. “Kingdom is about finding utopia, about what it means to be in a process with other artists. We have worked together for over 15 years; we’ve built a practice together.” Kingdom is a performance about the group and about the individual. The artists each articulate how their individual and collective desires intersect with art, life and sexuality as each makes a work, performs in all works and works together on one work.”I ask where does the queen sit, where does the king sit? Who sits next to them?”
As well, elements of Kingdom reference recent queer culture within Australia. “Being queer, by definition, is to be a loose cannon. I elaborate on my queer behavior; I’ve monitored my behavior to explore possibilities,” Adams says. As well, Kingdom examines the notion of the queer male space, looking at alternative cultures that grew out of elements of the gay pride movement. “We’re not harking back to times of the ’60s/’70s uprisings but to the ‘radical fairy’ movement which created male ensembles, male enclaves, that were not hippy, not feral – just men together,” explains Adams. “This was an important moment in creating the first bones of the work, men crafting residential communities, working internationally together – an exciting time. The radical fairy has been moving in different pockets of the performance arts. We’re bringing it back to Melbourne.”
The three dancers/choreographers performing with Adams in Kingdom worked with him when they were recent graduates. Adams is conscious of being the ‘elder statesman’. “I am handing down the tiara. I am asking how to hand down the baton,” he notes. “These choreographers are practitioners in their 20s and 30s. We see each other from across the generational divide in creating a kingdom of choreography. They are each independent artists who have come back to Ballet Lab.” Adams makes it clear he doesn’t occupy any sort of superior or ‘teacherly’ position within the symbiosis between the group, quite the opposite. “Being the elder of the tribe, of my community, I lent my hand out. It doesn’t affect the work other than that. Not being the ‘leader’ means I curate rather than direct work; I surrender. I needed to relearn, to find a better way of being engaged,” he continues. “These three artists work from trust, from vulnerability. I don’t think Kingdom would have happened with other people. Kingdom is formed by our histories together. We make a communal space, kingdom, and this is paramount to the way we work. I’m more enlightened now. I can give my body a lot of knowledge, increase my performance capabilities.”
Although the men are not sexually involved with each other (Beat had to ask!) Adams says that Kingdom by virtue of its creative process creates a particular intimacy. “We kind of are lovers, in that it’s such an intimate experience. The queer exchange brings us closer to each other and to our practice. Our intimacy translates into breath, movements, speech, and language. We made a breathing cycle of practice – tantric breathing, exploring the superlative nature of euphoria. The intimacy in Kingdom may be very personal; we perform with the naked body as well as the clothed.”
Adams is known for bringing in as many different artistic imaginations into his work as possible. Kingdom explores the process of collaboration using much more than movement and crosses over into other disciplines. Design, fashion, architecture, cinema, queer culture, the unorthodox, visual arts, science and sociology and more recently, community-based live arts, all play a part in the work. Adams has called upon visual artists Paul Yore, Mikala Dwyer, Devon Ackermann to create some extraordinary headgear for Kingdom, crowns inspired by both the tiara and the phallus. “It’s performative headwear” he says. The look of Kingdom will reference the colourful outrageousness of the queer and drag aesthetic from the ’80s and ’90s. “Bobby pins, the dance floor, music, pop culture, images taken from cinema, from TV, from Hollywood, queer aesthetics; it’s an absolute parade,” elaborates Adams. “I parade those things within the context of men’s business. The outrageous, the kitsch, the camp, the gender-bender. I walked up Oxford St then, in the Mardi Gras, when these things were experimental and avant garde. Now it’s become mainstream; we watch it on channel 7.”
BY LIZA DEZFOULI
