And Then

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.

- Alison Croggon

CREATIVE TEAM

Choreography: Alice Dixon

Performance: Caroline Meaden
Sound Composition: Ashley Dyer

DOCUMENTATION

Photography: Gregory Lorenzutti
Video: NON Studio

PERFORMANCE HISTORY

Commissioned by Lucy Guerin Inc. for Pieces for Small Spaces 2014

Link to video

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.

- Rebecca Hilton