An improvised piece influenced by cutlery, a soundscape made entirely of sounds created live, a few guiding principles and a whole lot of possibility
An improvised piece influenced by cutlery, a soundscape made entirely of sounds created live, a few guiding principles and a whole lot of possibility – that’s the always original creation of The Weight Of The Thing Left Its Mark . Created by Shaun McLeod in 2009 this return season promises to be edgy, taught and confronting.
Cutlery seems an unusual choice for a dance piece. McLeod explains, "I was looking for something to contextualise what we did, without dictating the terms of the dancing too much. I knew that as soon as you put cutlery in the space it’s going to say something about domesticity. It’s going to say something about the way we use tools and it’s going to say something about the way that we use our hands. It doesn’t predetermine anything else, you can move in many ways holding cutlery or having cutlery in the space.
"We made the work by improvising with the cutlery, without knowing where it would go, so we developed kind of a sense of the work. It has shades of a rural farmhouse with people negotiating how they get on together inside this house, without wanting to tie that down too heavily. I didn’t think about that before we brought the cutlery into the space it just kind of emerged I guess I was really interested in having a process that could let things just emerge as we worked in the studio and see how that went."
The name, The Weight Of The Thing Left Its Mark, was informed by the form and function of the piece. "The name came from a reference to a couple of things. One is the structure itself, because to an improviser having a structure can be a difficult thing. It provides full stops and boundaries where you might not actually want any and so there’s a challenge to work within this structure. It leaves a mark: the weight of that structure actually leaves a mark on what you can do. I suppose the other reference is actually to the cutlery themselves and the psychological negotiations that seem to take place in the space. The interactions leave an impact on us."
Not only is the dance movement improvised, but so is the sound. "The musicians Tim and Maddie [Madeleine Flynn, Tim Humphrey] are both improvising as well," says McLeod. "They have a system set up so that they’ve mic’d the space and they’re taking in the sound that occurs in the space and it’s really alive with sound with al that cutlery. They feed it back into their computer and they modulate and play that sound through the sound system so they’re able to take those sounds and morph them into really interesting kind of configurations. It’s not traditionally musical, but it’s very much a sound score and it’s very attuned to the improvisation of the dancers."
The sounds of dancers thumping around a room crashing through cutlery don’t sound particularly comforting. "It is quite a harsh sound and certainly they’re able to tone things down, so it’s not like they’re using the cutlery all of the time," says McLeod. "There are peaks and troughs within it, but certainly when that cutlery hits the floor it’s a very hard sound; it’s quite a relentless quality I suppose, but it’s that kind of a piece I think the quality is quite stark. They are very skilled at taking a sound and adapting it in the computer – I mean it’s like a sample a sample can be changed to sound like many, many different things even though the source of the sample might be quite concrete."
The Weight Of The Thing Left Its Mark isn’t a piece to sit back and relax to, the soundscape, and the nature of improvisation mean that you’ll be brought to attention, that resolutions may not be clean and (almost) anything can happen. If you’re ready to be intrigued, entertained and challenged just a little, see if the weight of this thing leaves a mark.
MDC’s The Weight Of The Thing Left Its Mark happens at Dancehouse, 150 Princes St, Carlton North between March 15-17 for $15-$25. Book at dancemassive.com.au or 9347 2860.
