Desert Body Creep performed by Angela Goh is brilliant, no two ways about it, it’s the kind of performance that makes you want to go back and revisit a second or even third time, imaginative, quirky and down right bizarre it is everything and more. Opening with a scene underpinned by the music of Willow Smith, it’s decidedly gen y, youthful and full of vigour.
It works intelligently with various forms and device, vocals, sound and lighting to name but a few. The resulting effect makes you want to get inside the mind of this brilliant young performer, unpacking her thoughts as you go along your way and that’s the joy, trying to pin point exactly what is the genesis behind the work. Desert Body Creep is measured, composed and full of decidedly attractive sense of self assurance.
It’s humorous and wild yet somehow restrained, a difficult balance to strike when creating performance work. Here presents not so much as a clear narrative, but just enough to envisage your own story line. As your imagination runs wild through through a world which borders on the realm of comedic horror, a beautiful young girl is swallowed whole by a giant worm in the desert, only to emerge a naked heroin, taking the remains of this creature and vacuum packing its soul into oblivion.
It seems to fly in the face of so many trends currently witnessed in contemporary dance here in Melbourne, by employing them to a degree, then only to turn sharply away, just at the precise moment you think you know what’s going on. The choreography here is in an intellectual sense somewhat impressive, though if anything it is more anti-choreography, focused on moving about the space and interacting with the various devices at play.
Desert Body Creep Is great introduction to the form, this is a performance that offers an “in” for audiences that may not have connected or found resonance with contemporary dance. Perhaps art does not always need to push an agenda, and indeed if any question posed in Desert Body Creep, should surface it would surround how valuable dance, as a form can be, when wanting to entertain or offer an elusive moment of pause, from the pressures of our menial existences.
Next Wave festival exists precisely to offer not only the opportunity for emerging artists to develop and present new work, but also the chance for audiences to be introduced to the next crop of fresh young talent we have as a society, collectively help produce. Desert Body Creep, is a clear and fine example of their work at play, not so much as a direct response to the here and now, but something even more special, do yourself a favour and see this work, it’s playing till Sunday the 23rd of May at Northcote Town Hall, book your tickets here
