When the audience enters the Melba Spiegeltent, a big top in the end of Johnston St, the performer gives them earplugs, with as an only explanation ‘Ringing ears are the new soundtrack’ written on paper. Approximately twenty people stand in the room, most of them by pair, and you can feel than no one has an idea of what to expect. But we all goes with it, by curiosity at least to enters this immersive experience through the brushed paper we have to tear apart. As Narnia’s world, the frontier to the new dimension has been crossed.

Each performance is unique, and as instructions for the audience are written on paper, everyone feels free to do whatever they want with it. Indeed, Gellmann tries to play on the unexplainable and it works. A large part of the public is puzzled by this unique approach to the world of circus and acrobatics.

Although we fear that we don’t fully get the point of all of this, we have to admit than there is an interesting work on the use of space. The tent is separated between different areas and objects that the performer is going to use. Standing on a champaign bottle or spinning on a bowling ball and falling repetitively, he is exposed and naked, in every sense of the term. As if he wanted to be without any artifices, truly to his show. Playing on the bizarre, he tries to disrupt our senses. Most definitely a new version of the traditional circus.

This imperfection is touching in a way, although a bit disturbing in its lack of sense. The audience doesn’t really know what to do, but enjoys being free of moving in the big space, having all the power on their actions and perceptions. We can walk around the room, sit, deciding to take part of the show or not. Everyone can interpret it at his own manner. And the point of it is that even few people know each other, they still feel connected, living the same weird and inexplicable experience.

The obvious attempt of surprising and chocking the public works. And a certain beauty is shown through the distortions of Gellman’s body during his rope figures. At times we feel a bit lost in the show, asking ourselves why do we do a snowball paper fight in the middle of the performance for instance. But then, if we refer to the title of the piece, it leaves our brains wonders on its symbolic. Moreover we feel that this is what the artist wants – to put us in a state of in between, beyond the understanding of normal things, in an all other world. And this surreal and abstract piece opens up new horizons in our minds, leaving us a little bit more clueless about the world around us.

Nowadays, it seems like we cannot help ourselves from taking hundreds of photographs in our daily life. We don’t notice anymore how this media is strongly altering our perceptions. Humans see the world mainly through a screen, and this idea of limitation is what Gregory Lorenzutti is trying to explore in his new dance performance called Mechanical Eye.

The title is a reference to Dziga Vertov’s 1929 experimental film Man With A Movie Camera, which pushes back the idea of identity through the documentation of urban life. The Brazilian choreographer, based in Melbourne, gives us his own perspective on the topic by mixing both of his passions – dance and photography. And the Mezzanine Gallery at Chapel of the Chapels (Prahran) is the perfect place to be immersed in this experience. Indeed, it’s not a traditional dark theatre, but a white and empty place, which looks like the perfect replica of a photography studio.

Everything seems immaculate, from the bare walls to the white, light and silky costumes of the five dancers, standing in a minimalist décor. Barefoot, the hair down, a sensation of freedom and simplicity is present. Only a polaroid camera is put on the floor, to remind us that images are everywhere.

There is not really a beginning or an end to this performance, which already started when we arrived in the room. The movements are light and precise, and often the dancers execute the same dance moves frenetically and repetitively, as if they had no control over them. The human body is thus seen as a machine, trapped inside the camera lens. A huge contrast is present between the agitated movements and the supposedly stillness of photography.

Each dancer floats in his own world, as if he was concentrated only on his own self. Five big white panels are allocated in the room, one for each dancer who seem to be stuck in his frame. Indeed, the choreography is representing the act of taking a photograph – we can easily observe the geometrical decomposition of the body movements, as if each move was fractured in a multitude of others. The performance can refer to the work of Muy Bridge, and its photographic studies on motion.

“By seeing the world through the filter of our beliefs we constantly frame our lives by choosing to narrowing our vision” says Maud Léger, one of the dancers. Questioning identity and behaviour, Lorenzutti’s work is informing us about the power of photography in our daily movements. We see ourselves only through images, and this captivating and hypnotic performance makes us wonder about this particular vision we have on ourselves.

Finally, the show plays indubitably on time and space. At the end of the performance, the dancers stop to take a real photograph of one of them, using the polaroid camera. The time freezes while it captures a moment that will stay forever. This form of immortality is represented through the lack of mise-en-scène and the repetition in the dancer’s actions. Even when the show is finished, the portrait stays still on the floor.

The Dove’s Annihilation is a hybrid and conceptual blend of selected Sylvia Plath poetry and mixed media. This research and performance project is a sequel to Killian’s earlier piece ‘Sylvia Plath in the Domestic Sublime’, shown in the 2012 Melbourne Fringe. This time, the author plays with virtuosity some piano compositions of Beethoven, Bach and even Schoenberg to illustrate the notorious Daddy, or the less famous Brasilia, both written one year before the poet’s death. From the beginning, the contradictory and visionary world of Plath is visible up to the pianist’s outfit – a long and purple velvet dress hiding big black Doc Martens.

From the very beginning of the performance it feels like you have no escape – you must confront yourself to the dark and eerie poems recited. The sonic tone is visually represented on the side by choreographer and costume designer Jan Baker-Finch. She accompanies these musical pieces with eurythmy, a concept invented by Rudolf Steiner in the early 1900′s which presents the use of a corporal alphabet. To translate the speech act into body movements, Baker-Finch makes smart costuming choices: the audience is hypnotised by her light and silky rainbow dress that moves gracefully upon her arms.

Indubitably, the artists invested interest in interpreting Sylvia Plath’s ‘tragic sense of faith’ through this art venue associating dance, music and poetry. It was as if the poet’s scattered mind was oscillating between post-modernist composers like Messian or classical geniuses as Bach or Beethoven, all of them interpreted with intricate intensity.

The concept of confessional poetry goes along with the atmosphere of the act. Although it is by no means easy to understand, it seems the performance is more about figuring out the poet’s inner thoughts than just appreciating the pure beauty of music.

Indeed, everything screams Plath in this show. By pushing the limits of the spectator and making him discover a new facet of her poetry, it talks mostly to an initiated audience. So beware, if you are not familiar with the artist’s universe, you might miss out. You may even feel too conformist if you like only the Beethoven and Bach pieces, because let’s be honest, Schoenberg is not always easy to listen to. But his play on dissonances goes along perfectly with the discomfort and anxiety Danaë Killian wants to deliver to the public with her low-pitched husky voice. Finally, everything becomes lighter and clearer at the listening of the last piece – Bach’s fugue – as if all the heavy thoughts were disappearing into a few arpeggios.

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