The Body Keeps the Story
An ode to our body through Sigma’s Body History [Dance Review #2]
[Featuring the stunning photos of @midtonegrey]
Earlier in the day, my contact improvisation lab (which was truly experimental as the name suggests) started with a question – what is a performance? When does something become a performance? And when does something as quotidian as moving, walking, sleeping, become a performance?
Performance connotes a sense of artificiality – putting up a show, putting on a mask/costume, something almost exhibitionistic. My untested (and perhaps untestable) theory was this – performance begins when there is a story, an intention embedded in a structure. So there is a degree of artifice. But we dislike pure artifice that lacks sincerity. As audience, we want something to speak to us. We demand authenticity in the artifice. Even in something as stylized as dance.
Sigma’s Body History embodied that authenticity in the realm of artifice. Contemporary dancers just do not move the way ordinary pedestrians move. They throw themselves across the stage, contract, spiral, tumble, roll. The Sigma dancers not only did all of the above to test the limits of their own body, but also explored the very limits of performance itself.
Previously we have seen the site-specific roving dance performance by Sigma – Streams where Deer Drink. Audience travels, quite literally, down the memory lane with the dancers, moving and exploring various sites of the building together. Body History is different, we are back to the traditional theatre set-up. With a twist. The front section of the seats was deliberately left empty. The show started a bit differently as well. We walked into a brightly lit theatre, while dancers took turns to deliver a monologue – again, not your usual “To be or not to be” monologue. But movement combined with fragments of speech, a slice-of-life presentation of each dancer’s story. What I’ve always found amazing is how the Sigma dancers come from completely different walks of life, but shared the stage out of love for dance. This performance is an ode to that. From the pre-show monologue to the end of the performance, each dancer shared with us their journey, their story. Teachers, physiotherapist, research fellow, programme manager, architect, business people. They embody different identities and live through multiple versions of oneself in a day, and find reconciliation in spite of that.
The performance was heartfelt precisely because the performance is not divorced from the reality of who the dancers are outside the studio. It was not hard to connect with the audience when you hear the most common corporate speak in the post-Covid world – “You are on mute”. Or a tired school teacher trying to engage her unengaged Gen-Zs.
So Body History is a story about individual bodies with their idiosyncrasies and unique voices. But it is also about the story of different bodies coming together as one. Does not matter if it is a young body that jumps and tumbles fearlessly, propelling and stretching itself like a rubber band. Or a more mature body that works through its constraints and discovers new pathways like never before.
I enjoyed the ensemble scenes a lot. When each dancer slowly morphed out of their multi-colored costumes and transformed into a beige mass – like a canvas ready for the choreographer’s ideas to take shape. But the act of coming out of our usual masks / costumes is poignant too. It is through the coming out of our individual shell that we see ourselves more clearly. Like having a mirror.
Mirrors. No Sigma performance is complete without some kind of innovative use of props. I stopped trying to figure out what these mirrors meant at each precise moment – the metaphors were obvious. But as a dancer, it prompted some thinking about our relationship with the mirror. I myself had (or have?) a difficult relationship with the mirror. In the most schizophrenic way I’ve had choreographers tell us to look into the mirror for correction / learning. I’ve also had choreographers braying at us for looking into the mirror at all. It makes you self-conscious. There is no mirror on stage! Etc.
We all confront the self we perceive in the mirror. Unless you have an inflated sense of self worth, we see our flaws not just reflected, but magnified. While it forces us to be honest, we have to question that assumption as well. Our perception of ourselves is inherently subjective too. How do we transcend the limits of that?
Body History is about constraints. The constraints of our human body that is ever changing, decaying and regenerating, all at the same time. At some point, dancers had some kind of semi-opaque veil wrapped around their heads. Dancing with a veil is always open to many interpretations. But to me, seeing the dancers put the veil on is a reminder of how our bodies adapt. Sensory deprivation that breeds enhanced proprioception. The beautifully scored soundtrack a rhythmic roadmap for the deprived.
The stage itself can also be a constraint. The physical demarcation of where a performance is supposed to take place. But the performance challenged that too – as dancers move off stage, across the front section seats, bringing the performance to the audience. My favourite moment was probably the last scene – when the dancers moved together like a mountain of pillows rolling off the stage, edging towards the audience, but each dancer taking turn to rise above the mass, narrating his or her acceptance of this life and this body, before going back to their multicolored costumes again.
So despite the constraints, the performance ended with acceptance. Acceptance that our bodies move in their own unique ways. Acceptance that each of us is part of something larger. A community that moves in sync, looking in the same direction, searching for similar answers. Acceptance that we live in the life we live in, professional dancers chasing a dream or non-professional dancers chasing a dance dream.
Ultimately, Body History celebrates what our bodies are capable of. No body is truly average when everyone has its idiosyncrasies and special powers. Our body can bend and stretch, can carry another human being twice our size (see image below). Each body a unique badge of our identity, but also malleable enough to connect with another human being. I was reminded of the last show I watched in the same theatre, The Running Show by Monica Bill Barnes & Company. Another ingenious performance nudging us to never stop moving.
I find myself constrained by the power of words, limited by the architecture of the language, especially when you try to describe something like contemporary dance. What I took away from watching Sigma was more than what the words above could describe. It was the composition of the choreographer, the dynamic soundtrack, the technicoloured lights, the magic-like projection that almost looked like a hologram. And of course, the joy of seeing beautiful dancing.