A chance to flesh out some gender issues

Flesh and Bone featured in The Age. See article in its original context here.

Long-term funding has given two dance collaborators a chance to explore their relationship, writes Philippa Hawker.

There are two people at the heart of Kage Physical Theatre – its name tells you as much. It is made up of the first two letters of the first names of its founders, Kate Denborough and Gerard van Dyck, who established the company 15 years ago.

The pair have worked with plenty of other performers and creative partners over that time, but their new work Flesh And Bone returns to the relationship at its centre.

It also brings them both together as dancers for the first time in eight years.

There are various reasons, Denborough says, why they decided to take this step. After some anxious times, they’ve been given a solid base with triennial funding from the Australia Council. There was a sense of relief and freedom, she says, in this support, and ”something in me felt it was a good time to reconnect with the reasons why we started the company”.

Flesh And Bone grows out of their 20-year friendship and working relationship – out of reflecting on intimacy and trust, shared humour and a sense of the absurd.

It is not an autobiographical work, she says. ”It’s not actually about us, in fact. The reason to do it was about us, but the work itself moves beyond the personal.” It is also an exploration of, among other things, the masculine and the feminine, of gender expectations and images. They have worked with writer Clementine Ford, who recruited a group of students, between the ages of 19 and 22, to give them feedback about the work as it evolved.

None of them had dance or theatre backgrounds, she says. It was their interest in gender issues that brought them into the project. She was pleased to find that they were ”more moved by the physicality than they expected, that they were quite involved and transported by it”.

Their roles had changed over the course of Kage’s life, as Denborough moved into a director’s role, while van Dyck focused on performance. She has had to do some physical preparation for Flesh And Bone, particularly because there are moments when she has to lift van Dyck.

Design, as always for Kage, is also an integral part of Flesh And Bone: costume designer Lisa Gorman, lighting designer Paul Jackson and composer Kelly Ryall, who has worked with sound based on the human voice, have been involved from the early stages.

”We love creating a world – three or four worlds, in fact” – and a sense of transformation, within the confines of the intimate space of fortyfivedownstairs. ”Initially we wanted a little show that we could put in a suitcase and tour around,” she says, but it has evolved into something a little more complicated.

The sense of risk she sees in the work carries over into the staging. ”There are a lot of strange, weird technical things that could easily go wrong.” Some of the ”wondrous moments” they have created involve ”little bits of old-school technology, little machines that go bump in the night that Gerard’s father has built”.

The discovery process is still taking place for Denborough and van Dyck, and part of this is the element that an audience will bring – often fresh and sometimes surprising responses.

Denborough has already had an inkling of this, she says. ”There is a bit that I thought was quite racy, and my mum cried, at the dress rehearsal, she said she found it incredibly moving.”

Flesh and Bone begins on March 7 at fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne.