Shop I Am - Melbourne Fringe Festival
“The rigorism of a choreographer who wants every shape to be just so.”
Originally published on Weekend Notes
Created by Nebahat Erpolat this work 'references art, popular culture and music to challenge and engage viewers to rethink fashion and identity in a space outside the traditional stage.
By displacing live performance and dance into the gallery space it will also challenge viewers to rethink their perceptions on what is dance live art. Warning: Contains nudity.
The piece won the Fringe Award for Best Dance, and it's clearly a work of great complexity and depth, with multiple layers and intersecting patterns. There is confusion in the restless shuffling of bodies and the energetic surges, and there's plenty of theatricality, but there is also the rigorism of a choreographer who wants every shape to be just so.
Perhaps what we're seeing is a performance which empties all the false sentiments and images of romance and leaves us with a bare theatre and separately thrashing bodies.
As the abbess Nyodai wrote: "No more water in the bucket; / No more moon in the water."
Read more about the work
Shop I Am
An lively experimental dance work that interacts with audience and setting.