In 'Vessel', the evolutionary sci-fi collaboration between Japanese visual artist Kohei Nawa and Belgian choreographer Damien Jalet, audiences were teleported to an intergalactic zoo, or maybe to the dawn of creation, as seven headless dancers contorted themselves into genderless and distinctly inhuman shapes upon a water-soaked stage at the Dunstan Playhouse.
There is something oddly disconcerting about coming face-to-face, well, face-to-torso with seven writhing bodies arranged in shapes for which there is no analogue, no ready term of reference, no cellular memory. If the eyes are the window into the soul, the face is the home of our inner human nature, and for almost 60 minutes, the audience was denied access to this by Damien Jalet’s innovative and compelling choreography.
When, during the show’s climax, a solitary face appeared from beneath a viscous white fluid, it was like the completion of an unresolved chord, the scratching of an itch; ah, at last, there it is, human life. After what felt like aeons of evolution, of shape-shifting and competition, though, the human shape, after a brief struggle to free itself, sunk back into the mud, in a haze of smoky pollution, leaving the audience to ponder whether this will be the human race’s fate too.
Having emerged from the primordial goop and ascended to the stars, are we destined to return to dust?
'Vessel', backed by a minimalist rhythmic score by Marihiko Hara and Ryuichi Sakamoto, was a profound and disturbing work which simultaneously offered hope; if we have evolved into beings capable of such poetic and splendid self-reflection and artistry, surely we can resolve our planet’s current existential crises too?
★★★★★
