Some dance to remember, some dance to forget

We are greeted at PJ’s with Alan Parker showing the milling about audience photos of past productions. “Have you seen this? Do you know this?” he asks. My replies: “Yes… No… Um, which one was that again?”

Inside I try to note the production names but I’ve already forgotten some of the photos…

Detritus For One is an interesting look at memory and dance performance. It opens with Parker working through (“marking”) a dance sequence. He repeats the phrases, building through accumulation… trying to force the sequence into his body memory. And then it unwinds, rewinds to just a few moves. This suggests the fragments left of what had been a whole can never represent an experience.

The style and structure of the work allows Parker, choreographer and performer, to address the audience about the work – an excellent technique to draw us into his world of understanding. Amusingly, he tells us about his flawed recollection of past shows. Memory is fallible and fragile. But in remembering, dance can have a “second life”.

Parker attempts to ‘rebuild’ the effects artistic experiences had on him. He tries to repeat the dances but cannot capture the impact they had on him. He narrates whilst showing us how he remembers four different works.

In one humorous scene, he makes himself a plastic packet that is blown around by a fan, referencing Afternoon of a Faun that played at the NAF 2012. He rolls himself up in paper and lands up like “a human springroll”, referencing a work where a dancer Thembiso created the impression of wearing a big dress. Parker works in clever social commentary as he does, saying “he looked like a woman… no, he still looked like a man, just wearing a dress” – sexual or gender identity is not determined by what one wears.

A roll of paper, a stuffed toy puppy, a blue mat, a stick, red wool, a toy digger… These are littered on stage as they’re littered in his mind. But as we witness with him, one cannot recreate the past, the memory of experience should be enough. Our bodies are our living archives. Each scar and knock and memory in our brain: what we remember “creates” who we are. And to try returning to the same experiences, the same feelings, limits the potential lives we can lead.

Not only is Detritus For One a notable critique on the ephemeral essence of performance, it speaks to life and the impossibility of holding onto everything that has happened. Inevitably we lose track, inevitably we forget, inevitably we age.

Paradise Road plays through the sound system, “there are better days before us”. We hope. But certainly we can never get back what’s gone.

– Sarah Roberson

Click here for production info. Last show is tonight 05 July @ 22.30 @ PJ’s. Detritus For One is an Ovation Award Winner.