Here
follow some reflections on our experience and our particular pieces... including some of the evocative performance images taken by Joel Mills; for which grateful thanks.
Malcolm:
Avid
for Ovid have been dancing and sounding tragedy for three years now and it was
great to have put together a coherent performance around a beautiful, relevant
and resonant space. Building on our recent exploratory work with movement
director Struan Leslie we structured a series of solo encounters with benign
and malevolent nature, in the order of enchantress (with herbs and dragons);
horny deity chases huntress nymph; enchantress (with herbs and porcine following);
radiantly self-promoting deity chases air-headed nymph. We framed these often quite jocular outings
with a more serious and unsettling series of interludes where the ensemble
lined up to suggest potential metamorphoses as a prelude to each episode. This
hinted at the underlying threat in each narrative and in this I hope we caught
some the breezy iconoclasm and irreverence of Ovid. Creating a sonic layer for
such a good dance group in such a stimulating and supportive environment was a
real privilege.
Ségolène:
It
was a pleasure to meander between the beds of flowers and aromatic plants of
Ovid’s garden as Circe. Circe’ s episode - in the interest of time shortened to
simply welcoming sailors and transforming them into pigs - invited its own
interpretation of the Garden as a space. And the Garden magnificently supported
this narrative by naturally defining three spaces. Beyond the central archway,
through the luxuriant burgundy leaves of the copper beech hedge, was Circe’ s
house. Hidden from view at first, her presence is only perceived through a
hummed nostalgic tune sang over a simple
rhythmic cord. Dressed in the blues and whites of the mediterranean island she
inhabits, a lone soul, she soon emerges. Stepping out of her house, the violin
replaces her sung voice; her eyes are mysteriously covered with a tan-coloured
lace mask - is it protection? is it a prison? Regality and inscrutability
characterise her: like an enchantress she has an extensive knowledge of herbs
and their uses, she enjoys their living supportive presence; like a goddess,
she is a sensual yet intimidating and charismatic presence. This garden is her
garden, she enjoys it, relaxes into it, picks her
plants to make her potions.
Making
her way towards the edge of the garden, she welcomes sailors just come ashore
on the beach - the beach is the third space of this episode, materialised by
the rectangular space of the path that lays between the audience (and the lawn
beyond) and the garden. She offers them some potion, they drink, she touches
the top of their heads with her wand - this all happens at the edge of the
garden; it is only as pigs that Circe lets the sailors in, herds them with her
wand (now a herding stick?) through the garden, up along the central alley
towards the house. Her last gesture, before she walks over the threshold of her
house again, is a repeat from the one she first made to the sailors: something
between a “welcome” and a “look at this”, something between a “this is me” and
a “come to me”.
It
was such a treat to perform Circe in Ovid’s Garden: the clarity of its layout
was a perfect environment to support the expression of Circe’ s inherent
ambiguity.
Susie:
We
chose stories for this event that had outdoor locations which might be echoed
by the real garden; thus Circe’ s herb garden, and the woods in which the
nymphs Syrinx and Daphne flee their pursuers and are themselves transformed
into plants. I was intrigued by the tale of Pan and Syrinx which offered the
challenge of switching between two very contrasted characters with some comic
potential; but also ultimately a poignancy and symbolism in its depiction of
the nymph whose life and grace disappears into the musical instrument that Pan
fashions from cut reeds, suggestively captured in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’ s
poem A Musical Instrument. Malcolm’s music heightened the contrast
through use of a sinuous melodic line for Syrinx and an earthy rhythmic groove
for Pan, combined in their chase; at the end the nymph’s
soulful phrase emerges on the melodica as Pan plays his new instrument.
Traces
of Syrinx as huntress can be found in current contemporary female icons such as
Lara Croft and Katniss Everdeen in The
Hunger Games; their archery and tough demeanour provided an inspiration for
a less passive heroine, and specific gestural motifs as starting points to
develop into dance. Meanwhile images
both ancient and from modern fantasy art of the priapic Pan provided the key
for developing a more masculine
and animal physicality, with goat hooves and exaggerated curling horns. The
formality of the garden’ s symmetrical layout of plant beds and straight gravel
pathways imposed a rigorous spatial design on dance improvisation, requiring
detailed structuring for narrative clarity; the surface texture and deep surrounding
foliage also further defining the palette of feasible and appropriate movement
material. The challenge therefore to respond creatively in the moment to the
garden as a new and enriching choreographic element potentially revealing
further layers of meaning in Ovid’s potent myth; my response a work in
progress.
Marie-Louise:
It
was a privilege to perform on Saturday in the very beautiful and evocative
sensory 'living' museum that is Ovid’ s Garden. I presented two solo
dance-theatre pieces, based on principles from the ancient Roman dance-theatre
form, tragoedia saltata, where the dancing body (like the garden) also becomes
a 'living museum piece' for an ancient form and an ancient text, and where what
we might term the ‘ embodied archive’ produces a very 21st
century
performance. The first piece, Medea,
Mother of Dragons (with its nod to 21st century epic Game of Thrones), embodied Ovid’ s Medea as
sorceress; the piece enacts an invocation, and plays with notions of exterior
and interior landscapes, contrasting the order of the formal garden pathways
and Medea’s “received behaviour” with the wild chaos of a shamanic ritual and
the unleashing of unnatural forces. Apollo and Daphne, a new piece specially
conceived for the space of Ovid’ s Garden, was a tragi-comic take on Ovid’s
story: a jazz-dancing Apollo, complete with mirrored sunglasses, both looking
and behaving utterly ridiculously, yet also a cruel predator, hunting down the
young Daphne. Whilst playing comedically with the chase, I was keen to express
the themes of predation and prey that are
evident
in Ovid's text. The comic element came through strongly, especially with our
ending of Apollo amorously caressing one of the laurels in the pots -and I
can't help but think that the playful, subversive Ovid would have approved!
Read Miriam Bay's account of the occasion and explanation of the project on her blog here
And you can read Katherine Aalto's talk Creating Gardens with Narratives here
