09 Feb 07 Quite je nais se pas A review of Vermillion, a production from the Singapore Fringe Festival 2007 By Jeremy Chua There is something quite je nais se quoi about Vermilion. From the beginning till the end, it presents a concatenation of abstruse symbols encapsulated in four different dance solos. While the intent is to propose a political relationship with the audience (as the synopsis will have it), the dynamics engendered during the performance fall short. Perhaps this failure stems from an inordinate indulgence in esotericism; rather than provoke and engage as this reviewer supposed it would, the predilection of the night was to alienate. The subject matter was interesting enough but the execution appeared clumsy at times. Each solo was confined to and by a specific area or an object and involved a struggle within this handicap. In some of the sequences, the performer surmounts it; in others, he or she becomes subjugated by it- exploring the various notions of emancipation and the human gravitation towards it. K’s and Neo’s sequences were decent, if not, impressive- made more challenging by the demands of drawing the human body to the extremes. They were in states of dishabille, and this only added on to their sensual appeal. K flourished in the epilogue sequence- fluttering up and down the pole with astonishing panache and strength. There was a quiet and delicate balancing act of attempting to merge with the pole and at other times, attempting to divorce himself from it. His colleague, Neo, presented the same degree of grace in her own journey. She fights against being tied to herself, her mobility suspended by the bed she is mired on. The images produced in these two performances were deeply reminiscent of Francis Bacon’s paintings which prominently feature contorted figures, in which the performance finds its inspiration. However, the performers might have treaded too deeply into smitten, mindless emulation of its influences and thus, had detracted from the show an innovative and a personal communicative energy. Wong’s solo, on the other hand, suffered from a lack of awareness with regards to the performance’s influences. He is only tied to a chair but wages no real battle against his disability. He maunders in his incoherence and does little justice to his namesake- one would have expected better elocution from a literary genius like himself. Indeed, even his eloquence as we usually find in his poetry was lost as well. When the performance required him to speak lucidly before descending into an unhinged collection of blips and inscrutable syllables, he trips over his words. His segment felt under-rehearsed and would have fared better if it was not the first to kick off the night. Haykel ignited his sequence with a trumpet fanfare, but this fizzled away to an incongruent mess of song and movement surrounding a single microphone, too measured in its farce. His performance was rather forgettable, to say the least. Despite its fallacies, this experiment in presenting new formats of dance performances is exciting. The syncretism of music, dance, poetry and technology with its own avant-garde touches has put inter-idiom artistry in a new light. Perhaps most interesting was how the audience were warranted to utilize any part of the entire studio as their seating space, bringing a whole new meaning to “free seating”. Of course, one understands that this was to bring the audience closer to the performers and vice versa. Ultimately, the performance was designed to be a thinking one but how much of the performance managed to cause so much as a ripple in our minds remains to be seen. As aforementioned, its abstruseness triumphs over communication and in that way, whatever political ideologies and connections that it has sought to convey were never really realised. In fact, the intimacy it sought to achieve was neither achieved as well. So much so, je ne sais quoi might just be the only better adjective to describe the performance. Perhaps, it is only ambition that this performance was built on but it is also ambition that will melt the glue that keeps the feathers on its wings. The moments of brilliance flashed by, while little attention caught on. On hindsight, it is a tremendous pity that these sparks could not be sustained.