To fell a tree
PIECES
Lucy Guerin Inc presents PIECES 2023
Wednesday 6th December, 2023
The Substation, Newport
The Read
Choreographer and Director: Amrita Hepi
Collaborator/Co-creator: Tilly Lawless
Dramaturg: Mish Grigor
Outside Eye: Sarah Aiken
Sound Design: Daniel Jenatsch
Lighting Designer: Katie Sfetkidis
Fell
Choreographer and performer: Luke George
Dramaturg: Daniel Kok
Lighting Designer: Katie Sfetkidis
Rigger: Rockie Stone
TANTRUM For 6
Choreographer and performer: Harrison Ritchie-Jones
Dancers: Anika De Ruyter, Rebecca Jensen, Georgia Rudd, Oliver Savariego, Michaela Tancheff
Lighting Designer: Katie Sfetkidis
Composer: Nicholas Roder
Costume Designer: Andrew Treloar
Cinematography: Harrison Ritchie-Jones
AV: Nicholas Roder
Editing: Alex Walton & Harrison Ritchie-Jones
PIECES 2023
Co-curators: Lucy Guerin and Nuala Furtado
Choreographers: Amrita Hepi, Harrison Ritchie-Jones, Luke George
Lighting Designer: Katie Sfetkidis
Production Manager: Genevieve Cizevskis
Stage Manager: Zsuzsa Gaynor Mihaly
Technical Operator: Nick Moloney
Producer: Estelle Conley
Before the year is out, one last dance. We All Fall Down, my response to Lucy Guerin Inc’s PIECES with choreography by Amrita Hepi, Luke George, Harrison Richie-Jones, drawn up especially for Fjord Review.
To fell a tree, after determining the fall path, you need to make a notch in the side of the trunk with your chainsaw. Make a horizontal cut a third of the way through the trunk, and a bore cut on the opposite side to weaken the tree, but not cause it to fall over, yet. Hammer in wedges into your bore cut, and cut through the remaining portion. If you’ve followed the steps correctly, you’ll hear the tree crack as she falls over towards the notch. You can turn off your chainsaw now. If you know how to tie a Timber Hitch knot, ideal for cylindrical forms, like that of a felled tree, you can proceed to secure the trunk. And if you are choreographer and performer, Luke George, you can then suspend the trunk horizontally overhead in the foyer of The Substation, setting the tone for Lucy Guerin Inc’s annual commissioned triple bill program, PIECES whose mission is to “unveil, defy and inspire”[i].
I have never felled a tree, but I campaign for ending logging in old growth forests nationally. I know little of knots, so I cannot tell you if this particular trunk is secured by a half hitch or a slipped buntline, but George, a self-described rope obsessive[ii], does. Their bright yellow rope around either end of the trunk strikes a forlorn note: what have we done to nature? Our last great wild places deserve secure, permanent protection[iii]. With Fell, George traces a path to their roots in Tasmania / lutruwita, with an emphasis upon the impacts of the logging industry.
Passing through the foyer, beneath the fallen tree, I head up the stairs for the first of three pieces, Amrita Hepi’s The Read, with collaborator and co-creator, Tilly Lawless, and the promise of “risk, boldness and experimentation”[iv]. The stage is bathed in blue, the curtains drawn, and a sped-up baroque harpsichord prelude to spark the synapses commences as Hepi and Lawless engage in public-private wordplay behind two screens. Strapping on a pair of super high, transparent heels[v], as Lawless pitches her upper body forward for Hepi to catch, together they meet and make an equal force A-frame. As Lawless leans further forward, with her feet anchored in place, playfully testing Hepi until she says “enough”, the genuine connection between them radiates. Lawless gives a smile that I read as “I would have kept going till I hit the floor”.
The see-saw parallels flow into Fell, as George opens the curtains to let the outside in. With the precision of a tree feller, the two tall screens are disassembled in parts and wheeled away. In their place, to the stage floor, the arrival of a second trunk, with sandbags roped to it to equal the weight of George. As George slowly hoists both their own body and what was once a living, life-giving tree into the air in a sustained, heartbreaking counterbalance, the silence of what would have been a forest abundant with wildlife now clearfelled for woodchips is palpable.
The image drawn is part what remains after logging, and of those on the forest frontline who through direct action defend takayna’s rainforests and tall eucalyptus forests, and the rivers and creeks that run through them, and the endangered species, like the Tasmanian Masked Owls and the Tasmanian Devils, that soar and scamper through them. High up in the trees, to secure the protection of 495,000 hectares of takayna[vi], they remain, a vigil of tree-sitters. The yellow of the rope akin to the yellow of the banners that read: “Rainforest Emergency: MMG Stay Out of Tasmania’s takayna”[vii].
George leans back from the trunk, making the upside-down A-frame of earlier, and holds the position, head gazing upward, right arm falling out to the side. Around me, I hear what I interpret as uncomfortable shifting sounds in the audience, the longer George and trunk hold the scene. Their apparent inaction or stillness seems to highlight the inaction of the general public. What will you do? What did you do, when the moment came? In the distance, the familiar rumble of a train. In the stillness, holding the defence, and mourning what lies ahead. Might this be all that remains? Then what?
Unbeknownst to me, a sense of ‘mourning what lies ahead, then what?’ is what I carry too, into TANTRUM For 6 by Harrison Ritchie-Jones, for comedy and tragedy can wear the appearance of the same masks. Premised as “an abstract interpretation of our earliest feelings”[viii], the wailing “toddlers” in pencil-box coloured, baggy briefs look like mini wrestlers with their colour-coordinated ear guards. Together with Ritchie-Jones, Anika De Ruyter, Rebecca Jensen, Georgia Rudd, Oliver Savariego, and Michaela Tancheff, thrash and remain fixed, cry and chuckle, hurtle and fall. At times, the upper part of the body conveys control and strength, and with it, coordination, and the lower part of the body, the legs, the opposite, for they’ve yet to learn to walk. A lovely play between two different types of responsiveness in the one body unfolds: one part which responds to what the brain is telling it to do, and the other which is responding to the ‘we all fall down’ singsong laws of structural collapse.
As five bodies carry the lifeless form of the sixth, the image, for me, is a sorrowful one. As the crying of six people at the top of their lungs intensifies, I cannot help but see what is happening in the world now. As Ritchie-Jones hoists up a fellow toddler and uses their flopsy limb to whack another toddler, the feeling intensifies. And as numerous people around me laugh, the intensity and alienation builds.
From the intimate to the collective, we all fall down. In the meantime, here’s to the power of live and all that it unlocks!
[i] “PIECES reminds us of the capacity of contemporary dance to unveil, defy and inspire. It is an invitation to come together and celebrate the electrifying vitality of live performance.” PIECES, Lucy Guerin Inc website https://lucyguerininc.com/calendar/pieces-2023-6-dec, accessed 7th December, 2023.
[ii] “Obsessed with rope as a medium, Luke George entangles craft with kink to playfully unpick social tensions and connectivity.” Display of Affection No.2, Luke George website, https://www.lukegeorge.net/works/display-of-affection-2, accessed 7th December, 2023.
[iii] ‘Protect takayna Tarkine’, Bob Brown Foundation website, https://bobbrown.org.au/campaigns/takayna/, accessed 7th December, 2023.
[iv] “PIECES is Lucy Guerin Inc’s annual commissioning program showcasing the work of exceptional artists at the forefront of dance in Naarm.” PIECES, Lucy Guerin Inc website, https://lucyguerininc.com/works/pieces-2023, accessed 7th December, 2023.
[v] “The way I make my living is no better or worse than anyone else in this grimy scramble to survive (that’s what the clack of a working girl’s shoes sound out on the parquetry, if you’ve ever wondered).” Tilly Lawless, ‘Nothing But My Body: An Extract’, Kill Your Darlings, 17th August, 2021, https://www.killyourdarlings.com.au/article/nothing-but-my-body-an-extract/, accessed 7th December, 2023.
[vi] ‘Stand for takayna: Help stop MMG’s toxic destruction’, https://standfortakayna.org.au/, accessed 7th December, 2023.
[vii] “MMG, a Chinese-state owned mining company, plan to destroy 285 hectares of ancient rainforest in Tasmania’s takayna/Tarkine. They plan to flood Masked Owl breeding territory with toxic mine waste pumped from their Roseberry mine.” Bob Brown Foundation ‘Action for Earth’ flyer, distributed on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons out the front of MMG’s Melbourne Head Office.
[viii] PIECES, Lucy Guerin Inc website, https://lucyguerininc.com/works/pieces-2023, accessed 7th December, 2023.
Image credit: Luke George in Fell, by Gregory Lorenzutti
