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This 2007 digitaldance production explores the power of the dancing line and our enduring fascination for Showgirls. TROOP has toured: Junction, Cambridge; Cut Arts Centre, Suffolk; Colchester Arts Centre, Essex; Purcell Room, SBC, London; Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh with a symposium at London Metropolitan University. This full length production penetrates the mechanisms that keep standing the ultimate symbol of femininity who, unhooked from biology, domesticity and social/cultural prescription is an endlessly reinvented archetype. The symmetries of the dancing line foreground the unique differences between the show girls who create it: their physicality, history, race (In Josephine Baker's day, before the homogenised 'ideal' represented by post-McCarthy American film of the 50s, showdancers were of all sizes and skin tones, satisfying all tastes.) The line wields power and dominance, but also binds the dancers to repetition, sameness and exposure. These paradoxes yield interweaving narratives that interrogate identity, desire, expression and representation, played out in complex choreographies of the theatricalised female form. "The debate surrounding the suggested objectification of the showgirl is particularly relevant today amidst a boom in the art of burlesque, which traditionally features dancing girls and striptease, and is a popular feature of the international nightlife scene. Choreographer Jane Turner, who first worked as a showgirl at the Scala Ballet in Barcelona, offers a glimpse into the dynamics of the dancing line via contemporary dance theatre in Troop, which closed a short UK-based tour at London’s Purcell Room in December. Turner’s cast is fronted by seven dancing girls, each distinguished by a personalised costume – Sam Dightham’s deliciously modern combination of frills and flesh – which befits their sexualised caricature. Think Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: X-rated. Bashful bats her eyelids and giggles in the manner of a sexy schoolgirl; grumpy stalks around the stage in S&M-style stockings, brandishing a scowl that’s as frightening as any whip. Turner’s movement material is inspired by “showy” steps and kicks, and the bare-footed dancers overlay a more organic, earthy element until the addition of character shoes transforms them into leggy stereotypes. It also provides the basis for a sequence where each dancer chatters away on a mobile phone (it’s actually a discarded shoe, although it’s so well-acted it may as well be a phone). They gossip and natter while moving around the space – snatches of speech rising up from the hum of voices – seemingly unaware of the audience, who have become voyeuristic witnesses of these private conversations. Highlights like these are plenty..... Turner’s material is often fresh, her cast of leading ladies well chosen, a convincing performance." Katie Gregory, DANCE TODAY Artistic Director/Choreographer: Jane Turner Dancers: Natascha Bisarre, Jo Stobbs, Victoria Chiu, Jessye Parke, Jenny Attwood, Ann Pidcock, Mirjam Gurtner, Tim Taylor, Roland Cox Visual technologies: Nick Rothwell Lighting Designer: Francis Watson Project Manager: Alexis Bradburn Photography: Chris Frazer Smith Artistic Associate: Luke Dixon Dramaturg: Andrea Stuart Visual artist: Sophie Lascelles Costumes: Sam Dightam Musical Director: Daniel Biro Created with support from: Arts Council England, National Lottery, Lucy Richardson and The Facility at London Metropolitan University, the Escalator scheme, The Junction BACKGROUND Whilst much of my independent choreographic work has explored femaleness and its representation: biology, identity and aesthetics (BABY2003/2006) and (Birds, Bodies 2005), I had only brushed on the Showgirl archetype in my solo show Compost (1997) before being asked to lead 'Be a Showgirl in a Day' workshops for the International Workshop Festival Autumn programme in 2003 (which have proved so popular that I have done so for every festival since). Researching for these workshops I drew on my own, until now rather hidden, vaudeville performance experiences: as a teenager in pantomime; as a Showgirl in Barcelona; working on the Bond film Goldeneye, as well as Andrea Stuart's definitive study 'Showgirls' (Jonathon Cape 1996). New possibilities for re-presenting the Showgirl archetype developed in a number of performance commissions for the fashion house Hermes: a Dance Cabaret at Hoxton Hall; and in extensive and ongoing work for the new vaudeville show producers The Whoopee club at; Hackney Empire, Great Eastern Hotel, Atlantic Bar, Birmingham's Fierce Festival.. and for whom I recently choreographed a show involving 20 showgirls round a swimming pool for their new show Nymphaeum that will be presented at The Porchester Baths, Bayswater, September. With the intention of developing this new production Troop, I co-directed a degree show (with theatre director Chris Holt) for London Metropolitan University drawing on new research, the writings of Collette, which was performed at the Oval House Theatre, May 2005 - which enabled us to test out ideas and the new performance technology Isadora in this context. Since 1999 I have been exploring a science-art dialectic in choreography that explores rule systems to generate moving patterns from the 'bottom up' finding similarities between the new scientific theories of Chaos, Complexity and Emergence with postmodern and feminist informed dance/performance making. There have been a wide number of outcomes: experimental performance events emergence 2002 and eMerge 2004 at the ICA and in Europe, seminar papers and choreographic presentations. This research is now forming a PhD submission to University College Chichester. This research has involved extensive investigation of working with new technologies (see www.unsafesound.com) with Nick Rothwell. It was when attending together Essexdance's Digilounge workshop in '04 where we experimented with the Isadora software which has informed our current audio-visual production systems. Exploring simple rules that generate complex results where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts continues to fascinate and for Troop this research focus will concentrate on the possibilities and power of the dancing line. Andrea Stuart, Dramaturg, was raised in the Caribbean and US before moving to London, where she now lives. She has studied in Paris and worked in journallism, publishing and TV production. She has been fiction editor of Critical Quarterly, co-edited the Black Film Bulletin and written for a wide range of publications, from Cosmopolitan to the New Statesman. Her first book Showgirls, was published by Jonathan Cape in 1996 and it was made into a two part series for the Discovery Channel. Her most recent book, a biography of Napoleon's Empress Josephine was published in Britain in 2003. It has subsequently been reprinted in France, Germany, Sweden and the US. As an academic she has been published in numerous collections and she has worked as a lecturer at the University of the Arts for several years. Her academic interests are focused around race, gender and sexuality particularly as they intersect with literature, film and performance. MEDIA The production integrates new technologies that enable real time action to be manipulated and projected back onto the performance matrix simultaneously. Single images multiply, fractal moving patterns oscillate with the dance enabling the audience to become part of the flow of deconstruction and reinvention of our ideal ShowGirlLineUp. Through these dancetech possibilities we can combine illusion and reality by magic-making the splendid luxury of 50 dancers dancing on a bed of palm leaves or a plethora of isolated limbs dancing to the tune of diverse narratives. It will enable us to film guest performers and dancers who speak from past eras to be integrated into the work. Turner and Rothwell have worked together on a number of dance technology projects where the dance and audiovisual methodologies respond to each other during performance creating a mercurial world of intelligent performance experiences. Most recently they have integrated rule systems, network agents and non-linear processes into a contemporary art-science dialectic (e-Merge 2004, Birds, Bodies 2005). Tools and methodologies include confession, Java, burlesque, Max MSP, ritual, film, postgres, technical trickery, choreographic craft. |
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