Reviews
The Curio Cabinet Choreographer Deborah Light spent two weeks with Aura Dance in Lithuania, devising The Curio Cabinet, which formed part of a double bill with Aura Dance’s Am I The One Who I Am at Chapter Arts Centre. Tara McInerney missed the performance but the filmed version on Culture Colony captured her imagination. Here is her response in words and image.
I am both ashamed and disgruntled that I have yet to witness The Curio Cabinet live. I encountered this dance piece via a video and all I could feel after watching it, apart from an inane glee at men in lingerie, was that it was so very far from what I understood to be dance. This was by no means a negative feeling – the experience brought on the wonderful and rare sensation of anything seeming possible, a prejudice cast aside and my mind pried open a little bit more. Having previously imagined experimental dance with a sardonic slant (I failed to see how shaking ones limbs could be a valid form of communication) when The Curio Cabinet showed me dinosaurs, male trauma and the gender divide all in one sitting, my expectations were confounded. It began with a trio of corseted dancers – whom by no coincidence are doubly constricted and finally trumped – two identical males, and one red-haired female. The gartered socks and corsetry conjure up a Victorian setting, and the white square drawn out on the floor initially struck me as the male realm, from which the one, flame-haired, trouser-wearing, corseted female is prohibited for the duration of the dance. In the gloom, hugging the wall, lurks a dark-haired woman in skimpy stretch-lace. As they incessantly tapped and knocked at the ground the male characters suggested digging and, when they fight, they are animated dinosaurs, the product of a paleontological endeavour. 92 — Issue 02
Inhabiting a polarised space, the female dancers were torn between chastity and debauchery, failure and success, censorship and freedom of expression. The lingerie-clad female freely explored the stage, circling like a ringmaster, and is all at once seductress and manipulator. Conversely, the redhead finds herself perpetually dragged around by an unseen force and rocks in what appears to be uncontrollable sorrow and frustration, forever foiled by the double standard. Somewhere near the end of the dance the penny dropped for me: they are the same woman. They shed light on the virgin/whore dichotomy so prevalent during the Victorian era, but resonating within our culture today. The drone-like males personify male trauma; their corsets cleverly represent the incarcerating burden of masculinity, their white box on the floor, the crisis of being in endless contest with your comrades. As Virginia Woolf said, “I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in”.
After the seeing The Curio Cabinet I discovered that it was a testament to Britain’s (and arguably the world’s) greatest palaeontologist, Mary Anning. At a time when women couldn’t vote, were passed from family to family through marriage, and kept by men, she pursued her career an outsider, and her experiences resonate with everyone who has suffered prejudice at the cost of their biology. The next time someone offers to explain a concept to you through interpretive dance, don’t scoff – Deborah Light has proven this is not a medium be trifled with . You can see the film of The Curio Cabinet at www.culturecolony.com