Universal Hall, Findhorn, 29 July, 2012

THE TITLE of this show seems on the surface very simple but on closer examination it’s a bit of a deep philosophical statement.

DOES it mean a refusal to do something? Is it a comment on the lack of thought in today’s society? Or could it refer to the difficult-to-attain goal of dancers to dance in full flow without the thinking layer of the brain being involved? So there’s something to ponder before a single foot has made contact with the stage.

Anushiye Yarnell

When it does, it belongs to Karl Jay-Lewin, sporting an astonishing pair of baby blue and white winkle-pickered co-respondent shoes that would have made even Bertie Wooster blink. There’s a hint of Jacques Tati and a breath of Benny Hill – this is the dancer as clown, a genre that is more widely explored in Europe than over here, but which Bodysurf has worked hard to spotlight, most recently in their Evening of Contemporary Dance here in April. It seems from this piece that Jay-Lewin has studied Benno Voorham’s work closely.

In the same way that the Cubists dismantled the life-like realism of classical painting, choreographer Deborah Hay unpicks the smooth clarity of line prized by classical dance and replaces it with the natural, artless, unpolished movements of the child and the lunatic. It takes some courage to unlearn conventional dance and make these small, strange, compulsive, moves which are filled with a meaning which is never explained. It takes courage to stand blindfolded with chest bared, and arms lifted as for torture or execution. There’s no humour without sadness. Jay-Lewin’s performance is filled with both.

Hay’s second work is for Anushiye Yarnell,  but also features her partner and their nine-month old daughter Hepzibah, who of course steals the show – and will almost certainly be the youngest performer in the Fringe when this programme transfers in August. It’s difficult to tear one’s eyes away from such an enchanting tot, whether being cradled in her father’s arms or sitting on the floor playing with a pair of tap shoes. The artlessness of her movements and sounds underlines the naturalness which Hay, Jay-Lewin and Yarnell are constantly aiming for in their practice of dance. Her t-shirt bears the legend “C’est pas moi”, echoing the words scrawled on Jay-Lewin’s bared chest in the first half – a serendipitous accident, they reveal afterwards.

Yarnell proves to be a delicate, mesmerising performer whose work is informed by her experience of motherhood and the tightness of the bond between mother and child. It’s about freedom, she says, including “the freedom to go to the toilet” – every mother in the audience smiles and nods their head. We know what she means – and we also understand and salute the courage it takes to include a baby in one’s performance, even a baby who has demonstrably inherited the performing gene.

After the show, the works linger and echo in the mind and thoughts continue to be provoked. So perhaps we do think, after all.

© Jennie Macfie, 2012

Links

• Bodysurf Scotland
• Jennie Macfie