Motus Collective. Space Theatre. 3 Oct 2024
Motus Collective’s spellbinding dance work, The Leftovers, combines passionate, highly skilled and finely wrought contemporary dance with an enigmatic sculptural installation.
As the audience enters, four performers are already moving about, slowly, as if in a latent state. The performance space, a white floor, is set out as a long rectangle, with the audience on either side, as if observing the action in a narrow arena. There are two white plaster, human-like statues at one end of this space — a very tall figure with elongated arms and a blob-like figure with three hands cupped in supplication. A third figure at the other end lies on its back with legs vertical.
The dancers — Felicity Boyd, Tayla Hoadley, Sophie Hollingworth and Isobel Stolinski — are clad in white, with whitened hair and skin, as if they are statues brought to life. Above the performance space are dozens of disembodied, white plaster hands and feet suspended in rows to demarcate the performance space’s third dimension and outline the universe within which the action takes place.
As the performance begins, a guttural, distorted voice from above delivers a long reflective statement beginning with, “Where did you go and why did you leave?”, suggesting the absence of a person who was close. Alix Kuijpers’s gripping electronic soundtrack creates the feel of an epic sci-fi narrative and Kobe Donaldson’s lighting varies from intensely bright white light to forbiddingly dim light and there are occasional stroboscopic effects. The overall design creates a highly charged atmosphere.
As the performance progresses, the four dancers move about as if encountering themselves, the space, each other and, ultimately, the statues. At times the dance is agitated, chaotic, as if the dancers are undergoing a turbulent transformation. Sometimes the dancers form pairs whose synchronised movements suggest fleeting relationships. Passages of movement are repeated as if the dancers are reengaging with themselves, all the while searching for something. Zoe Gay’s expressive choreography is mesmerising, as the dancers push the boundaries of human movement.
Motus Collective, The Leftovers, Image supplied
The statue of the tall figure is a central character in the drama, perhaps representing a god or a totem. At one point, a dancer perches on the shoulders of another dancer, raising her to the same height as the tall figure so as to confront it. The dancers sometimes lie on their backs on the floor with legs raised as if mimicking the statue of the supine figure.
In the final moments of the performance, a stream of white liquid trickles down from between the suspended plaster hands and feet onto one of the dancers, as if this individual is being remade from the primal substance from which all life is created.
The statues also recall the plaster casts of bodies retrieved from the ruins of Pompei, but they are distorted, with misshapen bodies and elongated limbs as if they are caricatures. They were made by visual artist Nick Hanisch four years ago as independent artworks, and evidently they inspired the creation of The Leftovers and were incorporated into Hanisch’s design for it. He states, “The sculptures for The Leftovers were created while contemplating the exoskeletons left behind by our past selves.”
In the program note, the Motus Collective directors, Felicity Boyd and Zoe Gay, reveal that the theme of the performance is the question of what makes us who or what we are. They remind us that the cells in the human body are replaced every seven years, cyclically re-creating our bodies. This biological re-creation becomes a metaphor for the re-creation or evolution of our selves. And yet we do not notice this perpetual evolutionary and rediscovery process.
The Leftovers is an engrossing dance-work, and the performances and the production are outstanding. Most of all, The Leftovers invites us to reflect on who we are: if our physical bodies do not define us, then what does? And what is the nature of the choreography of life that we must learn in order to navigate our universe?
Chris Reid
When: 3 to 5 October
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: Closed
Motus Collective, The Leftovers, Image supplied
