Gareth Hart. The Edments Building. 3 March 2015
One of the things I love about the Fringe is novel venues. This one is a zinger. The audience meets front-of-house staff in Fisher Place. This back lane would be at home in New York. We are led to the front of The Edments Building, are ushered into the elevator and subsequently debouched onto the rooftop. Here we faced east and the final reflections of the setting sun decorated the hills for the forty minutes of dance performance. The audience removed shoes and followed a thin line of dirty mulch to form a semi-circle round the dancer who was lying on a large mound of mulch resembling a turkey nest.
Edward Willoughby's haunting soundtrack of samples, sounds and chords would be at home in a horror movie and turned out to be the most pleasurable aspect of the production. Gareth Hart's choreography and performance did not live up to the "Superb" comment in the Fringe guide - which I suspect was applied to one of Hart's previous creations - or even to the accompanying picture.
Hart's dance motif reminded me of a chicken, scratching away the mulch for grubs and worms. Angular movements and tableaus repeated in variation without respite, change of pace, or progression for the entire show. His objective "to acknowledge, dredge up and pay attention to the past" was incoherent and not realised. Instead of conjuring up some semblance of human experience, I saw an alien in unsuitable shorts.
The irony of having a show called 'Excavate' on a rooftop was not lost. Your hard-earned Fringe dough is better spent elsewhere.
David Grybowski
When: 3 to 7 Mar
Where: The Edments Building
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
