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ACE (African Cultural Exchange)
'En-trance'
by Thea Nerissa Barnes
November 23, 2004
-- Purcell Room, London
As stated in the program notes,
ACE’s, African Cultural Exchange, vision is to “promote the understanding
of African and Caribbean cultural, dance and music”. Gail Parmel, the
Artistic Director of ACE, intends to use her experience of traditional
and contemporary choreographic methods to create works that are relevant
to British audiences. Parmel intends to build into her work inspirations
that will encourage her audiences to dance spiritually and physically
even before they applaud her works. Growing up in Britain , Parmel had
never visited the Caribbean . Her Grandmother is from Antigua so Parmel’s
reminiscences of the Caribbean are collected from oral stories heard as
a child growing up in Leeds . These stories served as inspiration for
Parmel to make up dances with her friends for local queen shows or community
centre events. The imagery, stereotypical Caribbean icons like “women
with big bottoms, big bellies and got their hair wrapped and always having
conversation chatting over the fence”, served as the initial fodder for
Parmel to investigate her Caribbean-ness. Currently these initial interests
have evolved into a quest to develop choreographic expressions that draw
on African and Caribbean sensibilities that have distinctive British influences.
Parmel explains:
For ACE it’s about keeping Africa and Caribbean as the foundation for
what we do. On top of that I draw all my experiences of being here in
Britain and what’s around me and also what dance I trained in: bring them
together instead of it being a bit of this and a bit of that. I’m trying
to create seamless-ness not just in the approach but the work being visually
seamless. So you can still visualise the African-ness of the work and
the Caribbean-ness but then you can also understand where that’s coming
from because of its contemporariness.
ACE’s performance at the Purcell Room 23 November 2004 was the latest
endeavour for this young choreographer, accompanied by her musical director
husband Ian Parmel, to evolve ACE’s aesthetic. “En-trance”, though, presented
a mixed bag of influences and intentions. An invitation from Koffi Koko
to visit Africa and witness a Vodun ceremony led to the investigation
of trance. Parmel’s discovery was that trance was an outward manifestation
of traditional African religious zeal. Parmel then realised a semblance
between Africanist spirituality and urban club and rave dancers who use
movement to embody the sense of freedom in spirit and mind that seems
to have been vanquished from their urban existence. The observer type
experience of the Vodun ceremony chosen by Parmel eluded her embodied
sense of it but it did provoke empathy for the significance of trance.
Ian Parmel has participated in Vodun ceremonies and thus has an embodied
as well as practical knowledge of the intricacies of this religion. With
Ian’s assistance and a working notion of trance Parmel choreographed and
directed a work that became a mimetic response of her experience in Africa
. This is not to denigrate the work because it was a good effort. “En-trance”
does make the connection that trance as a strategy to release and succumb
to music is as valid an approach within African religious practices as
it is within contemporary British youth culture.
The work opens with thatched huts upstage right. Three dancers enter,
Mirjam Gurtner, Zezé L S Kolstad and Dee Ovens. With their arms knitted
to their torsos the dancers progress across the stage with sentry like
moves. Guard-like, these dancers throughout this first section seem to
represent centennials that protect the sanctity of a ceremony held within
the thatched huts the audience is not allowed to see. As the work progresses
a powerful solo is given by Josephine Okonji danced with brushes with
yanvalou arms and back. There is also a strong sequence of phrases danced
by the women dressed in white turbans and aprons presenting familiar Vodun
ceremonial dress. The movement is performed in a circle creating its own
particular sacred space. Each woman in her own way with vibrating body
and varied poly centric arm and leg gestures dances with a ferocity beyond
natural capabilities in order to manifest spiritual embodiment. At the
end of this, Okonji immersed in her trance state exits behind the guards.
This section seemed the most fulfilled, drawing on Parmel’s experience
in Africa and her already acquired knowledge of African and Caribbean
dance practices and movement vocabulary. There is also a predominance
of conventional contemporary dance movement vocabulary evidenced in Parmel’s
spatial arrangements and linearity within the movement for the centennials.
This section though is a paraphrase of Parmel’s experience in Africa and
presents what is usually believed to be characteristic of trance.
The second section choreographed by Bawren Tavaziva presents another understanding
of trance that might have faired better as a work on its own, not sandwiched
between Parmel’s abridged traditional presentation in the first section
and urban club culture presentation with its amalgamation of contemporary
dance and popular expressions as the closer. We are taken through a movement
landscape that offers Tavaziva’s understanding of trance. His movement
world presents a movement vocabulary that ACE dancers are not quite astute
in. ACE dancers do not quite capture Tavaziva’s full body idiosyncratic
way of moving. As the dance develops two dancers confront each other and
a feigned battle ensues. The reason behind the confrontation though is
not clear even though the protagonist Joanne Moven portrays does allude
to a trickster-type spirit. Moven’s character was present in the first
section as a participant and comforter in the ritualistic activities and
in this second section is an instigator of ill will who is eventually
repelled. Moven embodies trance as do the other dancers in the performance
in the last section that has more to do with stirring up the audience
to join in the tribe-like trance dance associated with urban rave dances
than culminating the visual and visceral manifestations presented by the
previous two sections.
Parmel’s research revealed that prescribed repetitious rhythms delineated
in beats per minute encourage trance states in both African and urban
dance activities like raves and house music. With original music by Andy
Garbi, live percussion from Ian Parmel and the recorded voice of Monique
Reid, beats for the work created a sacred space in the beginning, a dream
world in the second and the pulsating club music for the last. The appearance
of the vocalist Denice Gordon adds another textural layer to the wealth
of sounds in the first section and her appearance in the third section
assists in inspiring those who would dare in the audience to get up and
rock with the dancers. There is also a video to begin the third section.
It is Parmel’s choice to use new technologies in her dance works and the
making of music and video are meant to support her choreographies. For
“En-trance” though the video is a backdrop indicating an urban location
and hinting at the repetition that causes trance states already set by
the music. The video is decorative, adding another layer to the work that,
however, doesn’t necessarily deepen an understanding of the work.
There is a difference between making a dance and making art. A dance practitioner
can make a dance by regurgitating past dance movement experiences and
their associated compositional structures or can challenge herself into
distilling those experiences into memorable dance expressions. How to
recollect past experience on stage so that a memory is relevant to others
may fair better if it is not burdened with self-imposed social obligations.
To make a dance a work of art takes insight and time to develop an individual
voice that is evidenced in the nexus of the movement. From there an aesthetic
expression becomes the summation of past and present life and dance experiences
revised and shaped to reveal the ruminations of a unique voice. Given
this Gail Parmel’s “En-Trance” is a work of note if it only serves to
cause this young choreographer to contemplate what it is she intends to
say with her dance works in the future.
Edited by Holly Messitt
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