Melbourne International Arts Festival
The Arts Centre
October 2011 

By Rain Francis. 

When, as the ushers check your ticket, you are handed earplugs, you may experience a mix of excitement and trepidation.  Then, when the show opens with the jaw-dropping depiction of a samurai warrior sacrificing himself, you know you are in for a ride that will be engraved on your retinas for some time.

After a standout appearance at the 2009 Melbourne Festival, Hofesh Shechter was back this year with his first full-length work, Political Mother.

This is a total immersion experience for the audience; a powerful blitz of live music, dance, and striking imagery. With his uncommon duality – being both composer and choreographer – Shechter has created a show where the music and dance are not only equally compelling and equally central, but integral to one another.

The music is brutal; thrashing between hard rock and military drumming. Rather than simply being placed on stage, the musicians have an intense visual presence. The rock band, elevated above the rest of the action, is shrouded in haze, with the players evenly spaced and lit from below. Between them and the dancers is a sinister line of often faceless drummers, stern and upright, with the brass buttons on their uniforms gleaming in the dark.

The dance itself is constantly moving; the feet shambling and shuffling, the floor patterns looping intricately, mathematically organised. The arms are very expressive, but never fully extended. They are strung aloft by the wrists, or cradled in what sometimes seems like self-defence, sometimes submission, sometimes weariness. It is emotionally draining. We feel the performers clinging to near-shredded hope, always moving forward though close to exhaustion.

Tying together and somewhat brightening all this darkness is a strong sense of community, which seems to empower the individual. Shechter has interwoven traditional folk dance with his own contemporary vocabulary to comment on the way humanity deals with the pressures of modern life. The result is surreal, but also hyper-real, with a timeless, universal quality. Political Mother reels you in, envelops you and takes you on an intense voyage through worlds colliding.

By Rain Francis

Hofesh Shechter, Artistic Director of Hofesh Shechter Company, is recognised as both a choreographer and a composer. Born in Israel, he studied at the Jerusalem Academy for Dance and Music before joining Batsheva Dance Company. In 2002 he moved to London to dance with Jasmin Vardimon Dance. Forming his own company six years later, Hofesh Shechter is currently one of the UK’s most exciting artists.

On a world tour, Shechter recently brought his bold contemporary work Political Mother to Melbourne International Arts Festival, and spent a few moments talking with Dance Informa about it.

Political Mother is a physical and gritty work danced to Shechter’s own score, featuring a band of live drummers and guitarists.  

Describe the experience that is Political Mother.

It is likely to be quite an intense experience. There are nine musicians onstage and there are twelve dancers. It’s a piece that sort of explodes on you and shouts at you. It has also some tender moments, but it’s rhythmic, like a demonstration that goes on and flickers through worlds – from one world into another. It’s a pretty intense experience. The idea is to create a sort of emotional build up and tension. It’s loud at times, it’s angry, and it’s fun, if you’re in the right mood.

What are the themes you’re trying to explore with that intensity? 

I’m a little bit scared of the word ‘themes’, but I do deal with human emotions and human experience below and underneath the pressures of modern life. But it’s not about these pressures, it’s not about politics, it’s not about politicians. It’s about the people that live underneath, it’s about the emotional experience, it’s about the way that we deal with it. There is a lot going on, but it’s definitely dealing with human emotions.

What sort of emotions in particular do you deal with in this work?

Anger and I think there is a lot of despair, and a feeling of hopelessness. But through that, sometimes at the bottom we find hope, we find a sense of perspective, a sense of brotherhood, a sense that we share this experience with other people. So it’s a lot about hope and the loss of hope.

What was the catalyst for the creation of Political Mother?

The work always starts with things that I deal with in my life. I did deal with collision of different worlds. I’ve seen and experienced in my own life, how you can see something that is happening just next to you, or very far away from you (something that is very powerful, very disturbing) and you can forget about it in five minutes. It can really disturb you, and then you just move on. I find our ability to have parallel worlds that are conflicting in a way, but actually exist sometimes very closely, kind of disturbing and worrying. But it’s also just the way it is. That’s the way we respond to the world. It started from this curiosity about our ability to care and then to not care.

In this work you use both traditional Jewish folk dance and live, hard rock music. What is the relationship between these two?

There are parallels between the social structures that allow people to feel connected to each other, and to feel connected to certain emotions that they need to express and want to experience. Rock can give you that angry experience, but it’s like a bubble in a way – you’re not doing anything, you’re just venting, you’re not changing the world at all, or yourself. Folk dance can give you this sense of belonging, a sense of identity. It helps direct people towards a certain way of thinking. I find this interesting – the social systems that help direct people to where you want to direct them. That’s the parallel that I’m looking at.

Hofesh Shechter Company is currently performing Political Mother and other works across Europe, and will be touring across the world well into the New Year.

Top photo: Israeli Choreographer Hofesh Shechter, photo by Carl Fox

The 2011 Melbourne International Arts Festival brings dance, theatre, art, opera and film to Melbourne from October 6 to 22. A truly international Festival, it features major presentations by visiting artists from countries including Russia, India, Sudan, Indonesia, Japan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, the People’s Republic of China, Iraq, Lithuania, Ireland, South Africa, Israel, Syria and Ukraine.

The Festival examines what it is that unites us across cultures, and includes works that celebrate what can be achieved through unity, through call-to-action, through protest and politics, and through assembly of peoples.

“This year’s program is the most pan-cultural I’ve had the privilege to direct, and celebrates the ‘live’ experience,” says Artistic Director, Brett Sheehy.

Chunky Move, Assembly. Photo by Jeff Busby

This year’s festival includes six unique dance works, including the world premiere of Assembly by Chunky Move and the Victorian Opera.  One of our greatest choreographers, Gideon Obarzanek, presents his final work as head of Chunky Move in an ambitious collaboration with Victorian Opera. Devised by Obarzanek in partnership with Victorian Opera Music Director Richard Gill, Assembly investigates the enigmatic motion of crowds. Integrating dance with theatrical and operatic performance, this grand piece involves over sixty performers on stage, with the entire cast choreographed into an awesome mixture of movement and voice.

Phillip Adams also presents a world premiere with Aviary, A Suite for the Bird with his company BalletLab. A fusion of feathers, flight and fantasy, Aviary imagines a jungle paradise of exotic birds, brought to life by BalletLab Artistic Director Phillip Adams, who both directs and performs, with six exquisite dancers. Costumes are by acclaimed Australian fashion designer Toni Maticevski, with plumage designed by iconic Melbourne milliner Richard Nylon.

Political Mother. Photo by Gabriele Zucca

After his astonishing Australian debut at the 2009 Festival, the much feted Hofesh Shechter returns with his first full-length work, the critically acclaimed Political Mother.  A powerhouse performance that meshes traditional Jewish folk dance with a jackbooted live soundtrack of military drums and electric guitars, Political Mother finds Shechter at his most innovative and impassioned. Over the course of 70 minutes, Shechter’s dancers lurch through the authoritarian nightmares of recent human history.

In an Australian premiere, Jecko Siompo and Jecko’s Dance present We Came from the East. First you hear the noises, a cacophonous array of yelps emerging from the blackness. And then the bodies appear, contorted and animalistic, folded backwards and leaping toward the ceiling with bestial vigour. It’s a long way from breakdancing, yet it seems so familiar.  Could it be true? Could hip-hop really have come from Indonesia? This is the question mischievously posed by Jecko Siompo in We Came from the East. Siompo conjures up a furious display of the apparently indelible links between traditional Papuan dance and contemporary hip-hop.

Arts House and Force Majeure present Double Think

Arts House and Force Majeure present Double Think. Critically acclaimed Australian dancer, director and choreographer, Byron Perry explores the concept of a performance work in constant flux in his second full-length dance work Double Think. A rhetorical examination of the illusion of opposition, Double Think creates a constantly evolving landscape of relativity – a place where actions and statements serve double functions and characters create and derail trains of thought simultaneously. One tall man and one short woman make imperfect sense as they shed some dark on a light subject in a complex world of simple objects.

In a fun addition to the dance program, Strut & Fret will present Tom Tom Crew who smash together acrobatics, hip-hop and percussion to create an entertaining, adrenaline-fuelled circus show for the 21st century. From the first bass drum kick to the hair-raising, acrobatic finale, the Tom Tom Crew deliver a show that grabs you and doesn’t let go. The pulsing energy of hip-hop meets the raw physicality of acrobatics in an astounding mash-up of gravity-defying manoeuvres, astonishing beat-boxing and breakdancing, improbable contortion and energetic drumming.

To get your tickets and find out more visit www.melbournefestival.com.au

Top photo: Aviary by BalletLab

Sydney Opera House, Drama Theatre
July 2010

By Lynne Lancaster.

Hofesh Shecter is regarded as one of the UK’s most exciting artists in both the music and contemporary dance fields, and after seeing his work Political Mother, I can understand why.

A shattering, powerfully explosive piece, this work should come with a warning that tells of the need for recovery time afterwards. Discussing power and oppression and how it can affect intimate relationships, the show opens with a Japanese Samurai committing harikiri to Verdi’s ‘Requiem’.

There is an intense partnership between the eleven dancers and eight musicians (four drummers and four percussionists). Ear plugs are provided, but even so we are almost physically assaulted at times by the overwhelming noise.

A solitary performer becomes a menacing, crazed dictator shouting mindlessly like a rock star whose words you can’t quite catch. There is an ominous Big Brother feel, with allusions to the Holocaust and war eras of modern history. There is also the theme of religious oppression and unarmed civilians attempt to flee the horrific events but are driven back to the violence.

Photos: Gabriele Zucca

Technically the dancing is extraordinary. You can see the Batsheva influence where Shechter once worked. The company has an incredible loose flowing ‘line’, and is soft, yet very controlled with great use of demi plie (possibly from the Mediterranean folk dance influence). There is a lot of ensemble work, with whirling, circling lines, interspersed with frenetic solos. At times there is Guerin-like twitching.

We see friendships and loving couples, and how this is destroyed by The Oppressive State. There is a sense of community of ‘the masses’ and how individuals can be controlled and terrorised by The State.

Scattered synchronic movements are broken by solos where people almost seem to be in physical pain. There are exultant dances of shuddering adulation where the dancers seem to lose their sense of self. 

For some sections the costumes are bright and colourful, but for the most part they are rather drab. 

Lee Curran’s lighting is an integral part of the show. At times the lighting is like a rock concert, and at others like a prison cell. Visually this work is superb.

To end, a Joni Mitchell song gave a gentler note of hope, for some. As did an orange sign saying “Where there is pressure there is folkdance”.

There are just so many layers of meaning in this work that it really needs to be seen several times to decipher them all. 

Political Mother is a challenging, confronting work about the horrors of war and oppression all depicted with artistic brilliance. It is a scary analysis of our modern world.