{"id":4598,"date":"2021-07-25T15:46:59","date_gmt":"2021-07-25T14:46:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/?p=4598"},"modified":"2021-07-25T15:47:02","modified_gmt":"2021-07-25T14:47:02","slug":"11-walls-in-7-days-psychedelic-dance-through-the-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/?p=4598","title":{"rendered":"11 Walls in 7 Days: Psychedelic dance through the week"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

11 Walls in 7 Days<\/a><\/em> is a surrealist trip. This piece made me feel high. And, oh, it was exactly the tonic the doctor ordered. So, if you don’t do drugs and need a fanciful flight from the weight of everything happening outside, watch this to feel like you’re floating in a small plastic pool on a serene South African summer’s day. It\u2019s a dose of escapism amidst the current tumult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

11\nWalls in 7 Days<\/em>\ntakes us through a week of different dancers in isolation. With the\nworld shut out, you can watch these performers lean against 11 walls\nand release themselves – and by proxy, us – into trippy\nexperimentation. The Free Pool Collective presents their individual\npieces, crafted during the initial Covid-19\nlockdown, presenting\na film of the pieces as a conceptual week of colourful images. The\ncollection of crazy visuals is juxtaposed to make magical moments\nthat release\nus from logic.\nIt’s a\ncreative candy store.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monday\ntastes like toffee apple. Licking\nand biting into\nthe cracking\nsticky sweetness then getting a\nshot\nof fresh apple coursing through your body. Monday cuts and rewinds\nlike a weird music video. The red silky pyjama-clad person stands in\nfront of a wall thickly covered in newspaper. They eat a fruit, play\nwith the pulp and tear down the newspaper background. The edits pull\nthe newspaper back up, and down, and up again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tuesday\nis like sucking on a lollipop only to discover it\u2019s an edible. Then\nimmediately getting paranoid that the weed in the sucker is going to\nmake you paranoid; then\nrealising\nyou’re just being paranoid. It\u2019s a fast-slide down a slope of\nstrange images. In the Tuesday video, the walls are\ncar\ndoors. A person sits in a car and screams. But inaudibly. Then blue\nballs fall through the roof. Cut to Wednesday and you may start\nlaughing at how you’re tripping, you feel so high off of visuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nhallucinatory feeling that ties these seven\ndays\nof isolation is slick stuff. Wednesday is like having a mouth full of\nblue and pink candyfloss in quick succession with\nan ice-cold glass of fresh water in between. Of course, surrealism\nenjoys juxtaposed and sensory images. The Wednesday performer stands\nin a bathtub in nude underwear. The walls are white. The tub is\nwhite. And they are a pasty-looking white person with quirky\nfeatures, moving\nin\nquick contractions. Bath bubbles and feathers on water create a\nfairylike atmosphere. Cut to the bathtub and they are in pastel pink\nankle boots, playing in the bathwater. But then the walls are\nsuddenly pink tiles and shower curtain too. Squint\nto check your eyes aren\u2019t playing tricks. The person smiles,\ngleeful and conspiratorial. You wonder if they retiled their bathroom\nfor the work. You wonder if it\u2019s just editing. You might wonder\nmany things by the end of the work\u2019s\nhump-day.\nThis\nescapism is\na luxury you can afford, if\nonly to be able to migrate back to problem-solving with a new\napproach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\nWednesday, you may have\nnoticed the soundtrack is a vibe.\nUnlike the often serious drones of dance or film scores, this is\nyoung\nand fun. From Kanye West to\nindi-folk nostalgia to electro dance, it\u2019s\na downloadable playlist that has\nyou swirling.\nReminiscent of a good night out, the score moves through different\nmoods, mimicking\nthe\ncandy store of experiences created for these separate but\nconceptually unified works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On\nSaturday, a room is filled with purple balloons that squish and are\nsqueezed until one pops. It is edifying. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When\nSunday comes around all\nthe performers lie,\nrestfully spent at week\u2019s\nend\n<\/em>after\na full on psychedelic trip. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This kaleidoscope of experimental movement and image is a taste of something refreshingly different during this strange and so sorrowful period in South Africa. Escape, if you need it, is a click away at the National Arts Festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Credits:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Co-Director: Rae Luebbert
Co-Director: Cece Otto
Collaborator: Kara Brody
Collaborator: Bethany Rose Boutwell
Collaborator: Brandt Garber
Collaborator: Faryn Kelly
Collaborator: Ali Lorenz <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\u00a92021 The Critter. This article is licensed under a <\/em>Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

11 Walls in 7 Days is a surrealist trip. This piece made me feel high. And, oh, it was exactly the tonic the doctor ordered. So, if you don’t do … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":4599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[268,577],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4598"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4598"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4600,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4598\/revisions\/4600"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}