Theo Clinkard’s intimate and sensational double-bill - ‘Of Land and
Tongue’
As
I walked into the main hall of Greenwich Dance Agency, which I so often
frequent of a morning for professional technique class, I was stunned by this
familiar space’s transformation from stark floor-boarded expanse to invitingly
cosy sharing capsule formed by a diamond of bright white dance floor encircled
by tall stage lights and rows of seating on two sides. As I took to my
cushioned seat I examined the two figures in one corner of the floor, one of
whom I instantly recognised as Theo himself – having taken his class in this
very room before. Both were balancing precariously on uneven pieces of white
stone that I assumed must be natural chalk, considering the title of the first
performance ‘Chalk’.
The
second performer, James Keane, reminding me of a mad scientist in glasses and a
blue boiler suit, left the floor and headed for the technical desk behind to
begin his aural experimentation, leaving Theo, dressed all in cream, balancing
on his rock. He upended a white table and placed a tiny plasticine figure on
top of it, like a man on top of a cliff, as I automatically linked the word
chalk with the iconic white cliffs of Dover. As Theo began to move I related
his effortless yet precise motion to the clarity within nature and man’s place
within it. It was a joy to watch as he spiraled, rolled and directed his limbs
with such controlled power in such close proximity to the audience. He stood
the table before a section of audience, stood on it, pulled his shirt over his
head and repeatedly tripped over his hands until he lay across it. He laid on
his back and explained that he lived in sight of the tallest chalk cliffs in
England.
All
the while, the second performer was creating a live sound score recording the
noise as he manipulated objects such as a Sainsbury’s bag (which we were later
told was in fact 10% chalk), the white rocks they had initially balanced on
and, most disturbingly, a bulb of celery which he had cracked and twisted to
accompany Theo’s back and arm contortions which together produced an image of
breaking bones, especially as we had just heard that chalk is effectively made
of ancient marine life skeletons. Just in case you hadn’t quite got this
connection between chalk and bone – man and his environment, Theo donned a
fetching black cat-suit with a life size skeleton printed on the front, at
which point the lights were dimmed and the glow in the dark bones danced along
the two rows of audience, ending in a furious breakdown close to my feet.
Chinese whispers were then sent along the rows of audience regarding the
records of people jumping of the aforementioned cliffs and the chemical make-up
of the Sainsbury’s bag, giving the audience a moment to enjoy each other’s
presence and a feeling of being in the loop with this researchful duo.
For
me, ‘Chalk’ conjured an image of purity and physical reality, not only through
the precision of the movement and the texture within the live sound but in the
stark yet beautiful lighting which shifted around the room like the sun in the
sky at different times of day. At one moment a light would shine across my view
– lighting one side of the performers, then it would jump in front of me and I
would see only silhouettes, or it would come from behind and every detail of
the figure moving before me would be illuminated. This simple yet influential
lighting design, by none other than Guy Hoare, defined and epitomized this
piece as a display of nature’s unobtrusive yet powerful character and man’s
small part within it.
If
‘Chalk’ was a whisper of a work then ‘Of Land and Tongue’, the second
performance in the evening of the same name, was a chatter between friends as
five vibrant performers played host to the affable audience with their joyous
dancing, amusing skits, sensorial props and intriguingly intimate interactions
with its members. At moments I felt as if I was watching the piece as one
listens to a conversation without knowing what it is about – but as I sat
patiently for it all to become clear I was eventually let in on the secret.
To
begin, a performer presented the four lucky audience members seated adjacent to
me with a table laden with wine, cheese, biscuits and grapes. She introduced
herself as Camilla and poured each of them a drink whilst asking their names. Meanwhile,
in other parts of the stage, a couple were holding a fan and spraying a water
bottle in front of it – misting the performer who had instructed them to do so,
another audience member was competing against a performer – both cutting out
shapes from black pieces of card, like making a paper snowflake, which would
later be used as a light filter to produce a pattern of shadows over a
performer. At some point each performer came over to the refreshment table and
was awkwardly introduced to the lucky wine drinkers by Camilla – although she
kept forgetting their names. A strip of turf was rolled out as one performer
stood in her swimming costume, being misted by the fan and water bottle. A duet
of effortless lifts occurred between her and a male performer who, later, in
contrast, performed a comical pas de deux of mishaps in which the male kept
trying to aid the female’s movement but continually just got in her way,
resulting in a myriad of colliding body parts.
The
piece continued to fluctuate between scenes of comical value, touching solos
and moments of task-orientated audience participation and I began to wonder
what it all meant. I had been informed by one of the performers, at the
beginning of the piece, that they had been researching words from different
languages that are untranslatable but as of yet I hadn’t heard any. I began to
get frustrated as the theatrical snippets occurred without any obvious thread
between them. Camilla asked an audience member to rub Vix under her eyes to
make it look like she had been crying, a male performer allowed two audience
members to stick cocktail sticks into his full beard, every performer
simultaneously found music on audience members’
phones to play into each of their headphones and sing along to with
abundant gusto. I briefly forgot my confusion when the group performed a staccato
sequence of delicately placed gestures that drew me in and calmed my frantic
mind as it searched for answers to the rest of the action.
The
answers finally came, after an explosion of bouncy almost disco-like dancing
the group split and whilst two girls created a web of string between another
performer and members of the audience cards were distributed to the rest of the
audience. It was an anthology of all the untranslatable words that had been
used in the performance along with an approximation of their meaning. As the
performers and an assortment of audience members manipulated the web of string
and sang in a foreign language we were finally able to link all that we had
just seen with the words they had been depicting. It was a fabulous moment of
realisation that extended well past the end of the performance as I read down
the card and remembered how I had seen that word brought to life. I won’t try
to explain any of them now but here is a photo of the card, from which you
might be able to make sense of some of the action I described above. But as the last word on the list proposes, beauty does not lie in explanation but in suggestion of things 'beyond what can be said' as this work demonstrates so well.
