Watching Caroline dance Alice’s dance I became aware of the framing

devices, conscious and unconscious, that we use to make and to watch. So,

for me, Alice was the frame through which I experienced her friend Caroline,

through whom I experienced the dance. But what if you don’t know Alice?

What would you see? You’d see a slender blonde woman on a box in a yellow

dress. Watching, welcoming, warning, she’s a little wary of you as you enter

the space. I was really aware of how much simpler it would be for her to

communicate whatever it was she had to communicate, if she spoke to, or

with us. She did say that crazy “Hello” but it didn’t seem like it meant to be

“Hello”. It seemed to be communicating something else, more like “Help” or

“What?” But simple communication clearly isn’t the thing here. The wild

gesticulating, the constant acts of balancing, the accumulation of masses of

detail, the suddenly occurring extended moment with the sole of Caroline’s

foot wavering, or maybe waving slightly at us. There is a self-conscious

kookiness here, in the stop and start rhythm, in the purposeful disorder of the

gestures and postures, in the non-communicative communications with the

audience. Stay on the box Caroline. Don’t get off. It situates you and us, and it

specifically frames Alice’s dance in relation to the four other dances in our

near future. You’ve created the smallest of small spaces, which is a very

coherent concept inside the larger context of this Pieces For Small Spaces.

Caroline on a plinth, she’s plinthed; a living statue of womanhood at the tail

end of 2014, wild, delicate, needy, stoic, frail, encumbered, free. Did Alice put

you there or did we? Sometimes a dance generates a desire for something to

happen and its power, its affect, is in in the fact that it doesn’t happen.

So, the first performance, And Then. The woman in the yellow dress is Caroline

Meadan, who performs a solo choreographed by Alice Dixon. Its minimal score

begins with in silence. For some time I am convinced the birds outside, who

become very loud in the quiet, are a deliberate part of the recorded sound

design. (Maybe it is? I’m still unsure.) I like the air of happenstance this

generates.

Meaden is confined on the box, like a statue on a pedestal. Her movements are

neurotic, stuttering, clusters of anxiety and gathering and released tension. I think

of psychic imprisonment, of the throttling impositions of femininity. She moves off

the box, and Ashley Dyer’s sound design begins to register. Now the whole room

is open to her, and her movements are more free, more sensual. It’s a simple

dramaturgy, but expressed with complexity: the echoes of the previous tensions

are still present in her body, and the freedom of the room is not simple. There’s a

satisfying sense of completion about this dance that’s hard to trace.