American modern dance theatre Pilobolus’ Shadowland is a visual story of a girl searching for independence who becomes, literally, absorbed by her shadow. Wrestling with feelings of burgeoning independence and yet-formed sexuality, Shadowland represents the stuff of dreams – both playful and anxious; chased by knives, jumping into the void, sinking to the ocean floor.
Embracing the pre-cinematic, the phantasmagoria allude to the surreal, the obscure and the bizarre in the depiction of animals, sea flora and in chasing dream sequences while the female protagonist’s ‘down-the-rabbit-hole’ journey constructs allegories of loss, abandonment and disillusion. The canine transformation, a simple silhouette of hand-waggly ear and arm-forming snout, draws attention to the sheer brilliance and simplicity of shadow play: the illusion created from the absence of light and distortion of scale.
Shadowland is a virtuosic exploration of liminality – the state of being in between. In brilliant shadows of bodies morphing into animals, creatures and castle keeps, it physically represents that which is both beyond the object yet inseparable from it. Metaphorically, too, the limininal is present in the imagery of mythic hybrid-creatures. A looming ‘hand of creation’ transforms the protagonist into a cynocephalic or dog-headed creature, setting her on her disorienting journey. And narratively, it resides in the coming-of-age story, wherein on the threshold of independence, a sleeping girl is absorbed by her dream shadow. Through the interplay of live performance and panoply of props and lights, the production explores wakeful, unconscious spaces and murky feelings that beset the difficult psychological transformation to independence.
The production’s approach ranges from beguiling to ironic, counterbalancing the often-terrifying implications of their subject matter. The humiliation, ridicule, scorn and, at the more extreme end, violence endured by the half-dog, half-girl suggests the exploration of feelings arising from the lack of agency and the grappling with authority the shift toward independence takes. In a circus performance, a ringmaster – a menacing character, who’s disembodied figure hovers in costume prior to the performance – whips the half-girl half-dog into performing tricks for her keep. In the performance attended, the ringmaster’s bow before the auditorium generated an applause alarmingly out of step with the emotional tenor of the scene. Where the audience begins as a mirror for the performance, as the protagonist applies lipstick and lifts her adolescent breasts, suggesting her burgeoning sexuality, it too becomes a shadow.
The strength of Shadowland’s performance – the visual fortitude of the performers and the performance – is also it’s undoing. The lengthy production is narratively overstretched – the coming-of-age story is loosely assembled at best – with the central character sketched less through psychological or narrative development than through series of impulses and sensory experiences. The return home, propelled by a hybrid-mother figure pushing the protagonist toward independence, culminates in her wrestling with her shadow self, reaching a sensory threshold as the audience witnesses the distortion of image, light and sound to emerge suddenly joyous, embracing her parents.
But to narrow the performance to its pitfalls in story conception is to sully its magic. The post-card-like encore highlights iconic sights of the hosting city against a vignette of New York City, the home of the forty-year-old modern dance theatre company. Elephants morphing into camels at New York Zoo, the Statue of Liberty and yellow-taxi streetscapes segue into Melbourne’s Art Centre precinct, kookaburras, and, drawing on the performance’s central character, a dog climbing aboard a farmer’s ute, to Men at Works ‘Down Under’. The goodbye salute, ‘cheers Melbourne’, ignited a spontaneous applause that suggest this is Pilobolus at their best. Not pressed into service of narrative, the sheer brilliance of spectacle and illusion evokes a twenty-first century magic lantern show, giving visual voice to David Poe’s score, ‘If it gives you joy, it gives you joy – you don’t have to explain it.’
Rating: 3 ½ out of 5 stars
Shadowland
By Pilobolus
Melbourne
Arts Centre Melbourne, State Theatre
Wed 28 May – Sun 1 June
Brisbane
The Playhouse, Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC)
Tue 10 June – Sun 15 June
Sydney
The State Theatre
Tue 17 June- Fri 20 June
Canberra
The Canberra Theatre
Sat 21 June & Sun 22 June
Perth
The Regal Theatre
Wed 25 June – Sun 6 July
Adelaide
Her Majesties Theatre
Wed 9 July – Sat 12 July
