Image: The Dietrich Group
If it is true that we make art to eclipse our own mortality, no one makes a greater attempt at proving it than D.A. Hoskins in his interdisciplinary performance Paris 1994/ Gallery. Hoskins, artistic director of The Dietrich Group, uses dance as moving visual and sculptural performance art, creating his own form of human installation in Paris 1994/ Gallery. This truly interdisciplinary performance, features a series of video projections, an original score, and compelling performances by Danielle Baskerville and Tyler Gledhill.
The show opens with Baskerville and Gledhill sitting on two orange plastic chairs on a bare white stage, facing the audience. Five industrial wash basins sit piled in the back right corner of the stage forming a sculptural installation, while a white projection screen hangs to the left as Hoskins and set piece designer Jordan Worth convert the stage into a contemporary gallery with compelling accuracy.
The audience fidgets and murmurs, wondering whether or not the performance has begun while the two dancers sit, re-adjust themselves, and murmur to each other looking back out expectantly.
This human mirror instantly sets the stage for this self-reflexive piece.
Gledhill moves first in a grey v-neck sweater, ankle length navy pants, brown loafers and bright blue socks. He is all elbows and limbs, awkward and flailing, yet angular and precise. He repeats the same stilted movement sequence as Baskerville watches, while she casually changes her clothes.
Like the sterile gallery setting, the dancers’ interactions are neutral and detached, wrapping around each other’s bodies slowly to Robert Kinsdbury’s original score of industrial soundscapes. Gledhill rolls his wrist slowly up and down Baskerville’s thigh, and they grip each other’s faces and slowly rotate each others bodies repeating the sequence in a duet which hinges upon precision and neutrality.
Video projections with a French voice-overs and a live feed filming Baskerville’s face, adds to the effect as the installation and the making of the installation are revealed simultaneously.
Like an installation, Paris 1994/ Gallery has an on-going feel to it, as if the dancers would still be there, even if you left the theatre and returned a week later. The dancers grip each others necks and elbows, circling each other slowly as Baskerville and Gledhill’s relationship transforms into as much of an installation as the piled washtubs sitting in the corner of the stage.
At one point, the Gledhill and Baskerville lock in a gentle embrace. She stands on his feet as they rotate slowly. They reach and twist moving gently in and out of each other’s space as they begin to repeat, “We’re gonna die…” “We’re gonna die.” “We’re gonna die!” Each time they deliver the line, it is as natural as exhaling, coloured with varied emotional intonation. They are, at once, playful, calm, exhilarated, anxious, and free.
And of course, they’re right. We are all going to die.
It is an extremely poignant moment, as the performers and the audience simultaneously realize their mortality. The intensity builds, climaxing with Gledhill stripping down, naked but for his socks, shouting the phrase again and again as he sprays gulps of water over himself writhing on the floor. Baskerville sits and watches him until they reunite, locked again locked in embrace, rotating slowly her small feet standing on his.
We have just watched this scene but we see it now with new eyes, interpreting it through a heightened consciousness of our own mortality. Hoskin seems to suggest this to be one of the many reasons we cling to each other, that all relationships stand in the face of death.
Connection over annihilation.
As though to illustrate the point, Gledhill fastens a large bag of sand to a wire and hangs it over the stage. It spins, leaking slowly, from a slit in the corner, an hourglass of sorts, steadily emptying sand out onto the stage.
In Paris 1994/ Gallery, Hoskin uses movement not as a vocabulary but a visual construct with which to build his conceptual world.
As a takeaway, every audience member receives a silver shiny square of cardstock, which, when you hold it up, acts as a blurred mirror. With this, Hoskin asks us to turn inward to our own experiences of memory and mortality and ask ourselves what relationship we have with our own bag of sand, emptying out slowly over the stages of our lives.
Paris 1994/ Gallery
The Dietrich Group
April 25-28, 8pm
Enwave Theatre
Harbourfront Centre
231 Queens Quay
For tickets call: 416 973-4000 or visit: tickets@harbourfrontcentre.com
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