Serpent Dancer – Nexus Cabaret, Adelaide Fringe – 12 March 2009
Fringe shows can sometimes be a bit of a risk – the event can be a prelude for an artist to test material before polishing a show to the standards that might be demanded from a performance that was less of a showcase affair.
With that in mind I’ve agonised a bit over the following review of Serpent Dancer, in that I see it as a performance with real potential and some flashes of creative cleverness. And while the mistress in the main, Flavella L’Amour, delivers as the sensuous siren with serpentine companions around her neck – I almost felt she had an albatross also hanging there, dragging the performance down.
Cyclone Flavella hits the mainland
My opinions have been tempered by the thoughts of a companion with a background in lighting and production who accompanied me to this performance. He had some takes on the performance that escaped me initially, and on reflection those observations are quite valid and worth including.
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Adelaide Fringe Event Review – 7 March 09
Do Tibetans experience death any differently to the rest of us?
Short of dying somewhere on the Asian continent at the hand (or should that be hooves?) of a rabid Yak, it is perhaps somewhat easier to ponder these questions through a profound dance/theatre performance of the key Tibetan work known (perhaps erroneously) in the West as the Tibetan Book of the Dead, more accurately named Bardo Todel – Profound Dharma of Self-liberation through the Intention of the Peaceful and Wrathful Ones.
Our psychopomp in this exploration as part of the Adelaide Fringe is Sun Li Tsuei and her ShangOrientheatre company. Originally from the provinces of Qing Hai and He Nan in China, she emigrated to Taiwan and studied Tai Chi, Chi Gong and meditation. In the early 80’s she traveled to Europe and studied mime under the master, Marcel Marceau, and also worked with master of physical theatre, Jacque Lecoq.
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Musicians can come in two particular flavours.
There are recording artists who perform. And performers who also record. The ability to truly entertain can often be more the domain of the latter, and sometimes sadly lacking in the former. Thank god Amanda (Fucking MacKinnon) Palmer is the consummate performer.
But before I degenerate into an overt ramble on her performance last night at the Governer Hindmarsh in Adelaide, I want to pay particular praise – and raise awareness- to her “opening act”, a key member of her touring troupe, the ubiquitous Zoe Keating. One time member of cello-rock ensemble Rasputina, also ex- of psychadelic instrumentalists Tarentel, and accomplished performer in her own right, Ms Keating set the tone and musically dictated the prelude to the evening’s convivialities.
Zoe Keating and her amazing loop’n’thing’o’strings
Wielding a cello and a bank of sampling/looping pedals, she folds layer upon layer of neo-baroque sentimentality, electro-experimentalist sensibility and improvisational inspiration. Within 10 minutes of her performance I left temporarily to go back to the merchandise desk to buy her album One Cello X 16: Natoma. I don’t think I have done that before with any artist.
Pour one absinthe, press play on your multi-media interface of choice, and listen. Seriously.
Back to Ms Palmer, freshly resurrected and back out of hell, following her many little deaths at the hands of Neil Gaiman.
The demonically divine Ms Palmer and her cenobite minions
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