All that’s left

As ephemeral as theatre is – a performance exists only within a certain time frame and can never be exactly repeated, even the same play with the same cast is different on a subsequent night – dance is arguably the most ephemeral of the performing arts. It is over almost as soon as it begins. Each movement exists only for the briefest of moments and all we have left is an imperfect recollection. The detritus of a moment past: a prop, a sweat-stained costume, a photograph, some notes perhaps, the flat facsimile of video, and partial memory of the movements and the feelings they invoked.

It is this detritus of four performances that affected Alan Parker during the moments they existed and were viewed, that forms the material for his surprisingly touching and tender work, Detritus for One.

Parker, exhibits an engaging, almost boyish charisma in this work, at one stage made me think of a big kid delving into a trunk of old, half-forgotten toys and revisiting the significance and meaning they held, the treasured hours of play and discovery they enabled.

He wanders through these memories, revealing the poignance of ever-receding moments while at the same time celebrating the possibility of re-enactment, however flawed, as the re-enactment becomes a new performance, which will itself be eroded by time.

Although Parker has created a performance about performance, art about art, there is no solipsist slip into academia, instead there is humour and engagement as he takes us on a journey of reconstruction. I laughed at his recreation of Afternoon of a Foehn the dance of plastic bags which was performed by the French Compagnie Non Nova at the National Arts Festival some years ago, although he does not make fun of it. Comic though his dance may be, it is heartfelt. Later his tender interaction with a remote-controlled digger-loader (Philippe Priasso) moved me to tears as he invoked a strange pathos, possibly through the invocation of hidden childhood memories when inaminate objects – toys, teddy bears, a porcelain giraffe – were imbued with a character of their own.

Neither did we need to be familiar with the peformances he re-enacts. Although I had heard of some of them, I have seen none. There’s no presumption on Parker’s part, he holds out his hand and I accompanied him willingly, until he himself became detritus.

Detritus for One was hands down the best thing I’ve seen at Cape Town Fringe so far. It is on tonight and tomorrow at 20:30.

— Steve Kretzmann