Semaphore
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Semaphore

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Beat asks Neal where the inspiration for Semaphore came from. “I learnt sign language when I was quite young,” she answers. I had a deaf friend and I enjoyed communicating with her. It was such a great game – having a secret language,” she answers. “My dad was a signalman in WWII. He didn’t talk about Morse code but he remembered it in his sleep. He would tap on the table at dinner – subconsciously. I liked the idea of a strange language hidden in his subconscious – the integrity of that language endured over all those years after he last used it; it led me to explore it further. But Semaphore is not a piece about my father. These are the genesis of the ideas.”

The work, all in code form itself, uses sound, light, choreography and imagery, including animation, plus interviews from war veterans, to deeply immerse audiences in a world of communication. Three dancers and eight musicians synchronize in a complex coordinated choreography of bodies, music and illumination.

Neal and director Laura Sheedy have been careful to only use the source codes in creating the piece. “We’re really honouring and maintaining the integrity of these languages, and the place they’ve come from,” she explains. “We’re using absolute language with its integrity intact. We’re very careful about staying true to them. We’ve not abstracted anything for art because ‘I’m an artist,’ we don’t change it cos it might suit the music better or anything like that. We can keep this integrity and bring it into the artistic process. We use different art forms, they don’t all come from the same place but we bring them together, connecting art forms and in the here and now, where they are translated into Morse. We’re entwining different art forms but the work comes from within the material, the different elements of the piece are generated from the same source. We don’t have to think about how they collaborate. Artistically, semaphore and Morse code are simple forms. You can relax into the beauty of simple form, make it beautiful. It’s been exciting to pull it all together. And the (semaphore) flags themselves make beautiful noises when they move,” she adds. This purity of form, Neal says, brings with it a relaxation of another kind. “We have had such a clear context. We don’t have to make it up! Semaphore hasn’t been difficult to work on; it hasn’t felt self-indulgent at all. There’s never been an issue of ‘what’s it all about?’ ‘Is this useful?’”

Communicating in code isn’t restricted to formal systems, notes Neal. “We all signal to each other, we are constantly communicating hidden meanings, the outstretched arm, the raised eyebrow… We are all communicating underneath our words, and it’s always fascinating.” Some of the actual composition in Semaphore uses movement rather than musical notation, Neal adds. “Instead of writing in a note, I might write in a gesture: the musicians will have a movement: they might move their heads in unison, or they might walk on every 16th note in very tightly executed steps. Audiences see movement and the gestures look like they have a sound. It’s a sound world where we have notes as movements.”

Although she spent many hours speaking to veterans of WWII about their experiences as signalmen, Neal is quick to point out that Semaphore is not a ‘period piece.’ “Semaphore isn’t a documentary, although we do use archival WWII stories. We talked to people who did these things, interesting old signal veterans. They internalised these languages, so much so that 70 years on they can still do it, and they are very elderly men. We’re all suffering a bit of ANZAC fatigue. The chosen stories in Semaphore are not warlike. These old men talk about the things they did in the war apart from combat, things like fishing in the middle of the Pacific. We’ve been getting in touch with navy people and talking to people who have nothing to do with my work. These old guys don’t care about art or theatre or dance.  It’s been great talking to these old people – there should be more of it – we should have more to do with them in every respect. It’s been a humbling experience. I hope some of them come to the show.”

BY LIZA DEZFOULI