Depressing but needing to be told
Deirdre Tarrant9/11/2011 9:48:00 a.m.
INSPIRED by choreographer Maria Dabrowska’s own parents and their stories of the deprivations and destruction of the Second World War when they met here in New Zealand as settled immigrants from Poland and Holland, this family history finds expression onstage in a dark and powerful dance work. Eden Mulholland provides an evocative score and the theatrical intensity of director Jo Randerson creates a complex and multi-layered experience in the concrete bunker of a pared back Downstage theatre.
Three figures emerge from a pile of mannequin dummies, bodies without life but representing deception and rejection in a series of connecting tableaux. Dabrowska sets herself a solo that is all clarity, angles, aggression and danced at a ferocious speed as she seems to be fleeing the space.
A domestic dinner table, an almost alive mannequin and the lonely, desperate and wonderfully sinuous Alex Leonhartsberger connect us to the tragedies of relationships that smoulder and erupt. His foil/alter-ego in this scene of ritual food sharing and later in his desperate longing to be wanted/needed/loved/ sexually satisfied? is the wonderfully gutsy and unattainable Mariana Rinaldi. A spirited chair fight brings possession, competition, winning, teasing, losing into the mix. Emotional blackmail, emotional demands, emotions surge and simmer. Struggles to win, but what? Temptation lost and found, death and military horrors and ultimately the disembodied bodies find their own place and a trio of energised and positive dancers find their space in tight boxes of light and their technical precision and constrained yet compelling choreography leaves us wanting more.
A roller coaster for the senses and not an easy watch, but as the lights come up and we all release the body tension and breath we find we are holding we know we have been part of something very personal for our own history as well as for the performers charged with the responsibility of letting us in on Dabrowska’s own personal life journey. Powerful, depressing but an urgent story needing to be told.







