Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion in Show and Tell and Body Fit for Purpose. Image via PICA.
Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion are a collaborative duo with impressive achievements. Separately they have had successful careers, British choreographer Burrows a soloist for The Royal Ballet before many other successful dance endeavours and Italian composer Fargion has made a name in his own 30 year career. Together they have won awards and redefined the nature of performance in their own distinct blend of music and movement. Their works are renowned for fresh concepts and being infused with self-aware humour as well as tapping into a deep well of cultural absurdity.
Show and Tell is a presentation allowing Burrows and Fargion to share, separately and together, the works, performances and creative influences on their careers. While Show and Tell is an opportunity to shine light on the drive and meaning in their innovative and provocative performances, we are instead presented a list by two white European men with a distinctly British colonial approach to culture. They reveal themselves as self-consciously self-deprecating and cool, their slide show presented with a supercilious awareness of their own positioning as “better” but not beyond appropriating “exotic” elements. Starting with a presentation of performance video clips, spoken word and musical selections, including traditional English jigs on village greens, African male choir competitions and sections of Les Noces choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska, each segment presented with short deadpan statements, focussing on the career ramifications for each performer but offering subtle glimpses into their personal lives.
Show and Tell continues with Fargion playing piano notes and chords as they recite names of artists and works in a manner reflective of their use of words as rhythmic devices in earlier collaborative pieces. The rapid flow, use of dynamic contrast and repetition for emphasis, fluid switching between spoken roles and occasional unison statements for shared influences demonstrates their ability to control performance, layer meaning and reflect it in their presentation. No further description or reflection is provided, creating a predominant impression of canonical dead white males, supported by a grab bag shopping list from “other cultures” (African wax-textile fabrics, Ugandan xylophone music and gamelan orchestras) demonstrating their self-perceptions as eclectic, diverse and interesting artists who delight in the absurd and totally without awareness that their Western privilege is showing.
Show and Tell’s revelations of broad and interesting influences lead to fascination to see the duo’s first overtly political work, Body Fit for Purpose.
Disappointment ensues.
Seated at a table, Fargion strums elements of the traditional melody, La Folia, on a mandolin, occasionally calling out “Bankers! Bankers! Bankers!” Burrows is seated next to him, reading out the names of the various works, including “Silvio Berlusconi – or, for tonight, Donald Trump”, “Fear of Immigrants”, “A Curse on Bankers”, “How you sometimes wish you were black, or conversely, how you sometimes wish you were white” and “Respect the Poor”. From time to time, Burrows pulls out a harmonica and accompanies Fargion’s mandolin. For the most part, he remains seated at the table, flexing his arms and hands in a rapid series of movements that look like they should be a complex code of signals but are essentially elements of the same jive, repeated. The table top is tapped, every now and again Burrows stands and leans as he waves his arms, but the point seems to be the entire disconnect between the purported statement of the work and the content. While the performance itself is a nice enough interesting vignette, pushing the boundaries of the concept of contemporary art as a form – seated, at a table, body parts moving in interesting ways and questioning what we expect from a dance work – it is not enough in itself to accompany the gruelling rendition of influences of two creative lifetimes that preceded it.
Body Fit for Purpose encapsulates the current political disempowerment of performing arts, not so much preaching to the converted as shouting into a rapidly shrinking echo chamber of self-admiration. Burrows and Fargion’s performance makes political points that flail around the points of the virtue signalling compass, while undercutting the same points with a rejection of sincerity by lampooning the lifestyles and choices made by earnest activists. As an “overtly political piece” it is a self-consciously clever skit that takes the most opaque elements of dance to comment on obvious political stances, pushing the relationship between the audience and performer to its limits. With the sequential performance of Show and Tell with Body Fit for Purpose, the audience are being dared to leave the theatre.
Burrows and Fargion have been to Perth before, having performed at MoveMe Festival in 2012, and are familiar with the local audience. With so much experience in their artform, this duo could have made better choices in what to present in this context. While Show and Tell was revealing on several levels, their choice of performance piece was equally revealing in a disappointing way. While Body Fit for Purpose may be a nice enough novelty work, it is hardly one to cap off two informed lifetimes of creation, education and performance.
Rating: 0 stars out of 5
Show and Tell and Body Fit for Purpose
Presented by PICA and STRUT Dance
Performed by Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion
PICA Performance Space, Perth Cultural Centre
28 -29 April 2017
