The Indifference Engine

Another column from the series first published in The Age in the dying years of the 20th century The Bodyspace International Dance Festival April In Berlin : The Beryl Beavis Dance Company "Dance" is a multivalent categorisation, incorporating (as it must) a heterogeneous plethora of expressive modes. This multiplicity encompasses everything from classical ballet to folk-dance, and informs various hybrid idioms such as butoh and physical theatre. This diversity has not been lost on the curators of the Bodyspace International Dance Festival, the very title of which embodies the commonality underpinning the 27 items on the programme. The link between the sublime stylization of a 17th century gavotte and the horror of jazz ballet is the dialogue between body and space. In deconstructing this rich series of colloquies, it is necessary to take cultural specificity into account. While bodily movement is in itself a lingua franca, the Bodyspace programme presents...

Number three of the series. This time, it's opera's turn. OPERA CON GUTSO La Bella Decapitata by Gaetano Involtini Die Schraubenschlüssels by Hans-Dieter Zwiebel The Perforation of St. Phyllida by Orlando Botts In viewing opera, the informed observer runs the risk of being pinned by the horns of a bifurcated peril. Firstly, both the very spectacle of opera and its association with privilege suggest that participation, even as a passive voyeur, is a tacit assent to outmoded social structures. Such an analysis stems from a Marxist perspective of course, but one need not be a Marxist to perceive a display of conspicuous consumption in a first-night opera crowd. Secondly, opera requires us to suspend our disbelief to such a degree that we will happily accept the ludicrous premise of an overweight, middle-aged woman portraying a 14-year-old Druid princess. To trifurcate an already sufficiently pointy ideological dilemma, consider also that opera regularly receives ...

The second in the old series of Age columns, in which theatre gets the treatment.... The Aesphyxiad by Orchitus of Mytilene The Rascally Beekeeper by Wilmott Spandrell For the new director, a production of a period text gives ample opportunity to make bold new theatrical statements or to come spectacularly unstuck. Sadly, Julien Grebe ( The Aesphyxiad ) has done the latter, to an extent that suggests he may have run his promising career aground on the rocks of a production that should not have been floated in the first place. Completely overshadowed by the great Greek dramatists of the 5th century BC, Orchitus of Mytilene was not popular in his day, and on the basis of this performance, there is no reason why he should be now. The text is actually Grebe's own translation of a 19th century Dutch reconstruction of the surviving fragments - and a poor one at that. It would have been a great act of charity to endow Mr. Grebe with a decent bilingual dictionary. Th...