Bodies and the chaos of the battlefield
'Body, I.D., Space V – Body Battlefield' was held in the Museum of Medical Sciences, a venue unique in terms of its historical and architectural qualities. In the study of medicine, the human body is often treated as an object and the processes of death and life are viewed as a scientific principle. In a museum of medical science, the field of study itself becomes an object in the eyes of the audience. In the night of the performance, the museum, a site of orderly, regulated exhibition that allows only passive participation of visitors, transforms into a site of exploration that invites the transgression of boundaries and normally restricted spaces.
The first few acts of the performance had successfully captured the attention of the audience by illustrating the inherent struggles involved in the processes of life as experienced in the first stage – birth. Worth mentioning is that the painful representation of bodies was adopted not to highlight the suffering in life, but the preciousness of life, since it is the result of a multitude of struggles on various levels.
Despite the creativity in the arrangement of the acts, the transition between each carefully choreographed acts seemed slightly uncomfortable, if not cumbersome. For instance, the first three acts were basically connected by their spatial proximity on the site – and this connection was far too weak, considering the fact that the show attempted philosophical discussions about life and death. Thematically speaking, they are coherent but the actual presentation had yet to be polished and refined, if a smoother and organized performance is to be produced.
Take the first three acts, ‘Journey Begins: Air & Breath 1’, ‘Body Battlefield I: On Site’ and ‘Body Battlefield II for example, there is no clear linkage between the movements of the dancers nor any specific character that made the performance whole. While the second and the third acts were associate with certain womanly sickness (physical or mental), the first act appeared out of place. The lack of a scheduled sequence of the acts also further confused viewers and it became more difficult to put the different pieces of the puzzle-like performance together.
Upon stepping on the grounds of the site, the much anticipated exploration of the politics between body and space was split into scattered fragments without a recognizable theme as the show carried on. It could be due to the lack of articulateness of the body movements or the limitation of the venue; the scattered sites of performance is characterized by some kind of schizophrenic mental state as the audience could only collect pieces of impression from each individual show and try to form a complete picture by guessing. As the voice recorders narrated individual stories of the dancers and their experience of being confronted by the practice of medicine, tension built up as the content of surgery disturbed whoever heard the messages. However, as we were led into the building our attention is distracted by the change of environment. What could have been a time of deep reflection and contemplation was wasted.
In the building the audience was led by staff dressed in full sets of quarantine gear into a white waiting room. Performers joined the audience as patients of various illnesses. This part of the show aimed at including extra interaction with the audience, but it was doubtful in what way this section could enhance or complement the message that the whole performance was trying to convey. I was unsure about the intention behind the design of the waiting period in the waiting room which seemed offbeat compared to the rest of the performance: compared to the scattered acts outside the building, the experience in the waiting room was further decentered. The distance between the performance and the audience was reduced so greatly that they could literally touch each other. The moment when the performers blended into the seated, waiting audience. The patients’ proximity to the audience also reminds us of the existence of illnesses, identifiable or not, around us in daily life. The subjugation of the ill in society can be compared to the subjugation of the performers on stage. In both cases there are room for discussion and change. By the end of the ‘waiting room section’, the four dancers gathered together and once again distanced themselves from the audience. The link between this act and the rest remained unclear. Later we were led upstairs into a tiny exhibition room to view a recorded image projected onto the ceiling. At that point the show has crossed the borderline between different media, yet the effect would be more pleasant if the transition between different rooms had been simpler.
The acrobatic confrontation of space
The highlight of the night was perhaps the tenth part, ‘Body Battlefield V: Cannot See Anything’. In the tiny three-room storage house dancers were stripped off their eyesight and they had to experience the space around them with other sensory organs, particularly with their limbs. Throughout the show the performance aimed at portraying to us the possibility of the manipulation of the body and its inter-relationship with space. The carefully designed venue created a highly claustrophobic environment that further eliminated the boundary between the performers and the audience. A special musical instrument in the shape of a metallic bowl filled with some liquid was used to complement the act. The sound produced by contact between water and the curved metallic surface added a bitter yet inspirational touch to the slow and tranquil body movements. Of all the twelve parts, this section had been the most successful in problematizing the body as something that could be trapped and directionless. It seemed to hint at the situations when the mind, which was represented by the head, was imprisoned, such as in the case of political suppression. It vastly expanded the expectation we have about our bodies – that it could be disadvantaged is such twisted ways.
The Museum of Medical Sciences as a battlefield
In the end the dancers were positioned in a brightly colored playground on which each person, including the audience explored in their unique way. A single performer was seated on his throne above the tallest construction there, with a megaphone giving comments in Cantonese, English and Mandarin such as ‘good’ and ‘feichanghao’. Dancers acted as if under a magical charm and gathered inside a ‘tent’ wrapped in white cloth and slowly marched out of the site. The contrast between the playground and the rest of the performance sites and that between the meaning associated with a playground and the theme of the show are equally puzzling. The difficulty in differentiating the different parts of the sites created certain difficulties for the audience in following the flow of the acts and making sense of the order of the performances.
Overall, the performance was unmistakably a carefully planned production, yet it also contained a certain degree of chaos. On top of the ‘body battlefield’ there was also another series of conflicts that concerns the method of presentation and ideologies behind different presentations.
Performance Reviewed:
Body, I.D., Space V – Body Battlefield (Dress rehearsal)．31 January 2013, 8pm．Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences
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