What dance could be… in DV8 and David Toole’s vision…

I remember quite clearly when I saw the first performance by CandoCo. Dance Company, now it’s exactly 10 years from the event… it was the ‘Out of Here’ dance piece which was choreographed by Annabel Arden, Jos Houben jointly with the company members, and then a classical ‘Phasing/Sour Milk/Shadow’ by choreographers Jamie Watton, Javier De Frutos, Fin Walker in 2002, both at Dance Week Festival…

Last week I finally got the film ‘The Cost of Living’ (2004) by DV8 Physical Theatre… I was enjoying some parts on YouTube, but I simply wanted to see the whole film, you know… (Yeah, the joys of web 2.0)… The movie is based on performance ‘can we afford this / the cost of living’ from year 2000, specially prepared for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Arts Festivals.

Photo: Still from the film ‘The Cost of Living’, DV8 (c)

Amazing David Toole from CandoCo in a leading role, you can watch this dancer for hours… and what is interesting, as you are watching him dancing on his both hands, you get the impression that he could dance too for hours without a break…

The press release for the movie says: ‘The Cost of Living was shot on location in Cromer on the Norfolk coast: a typical, old-fashioned and faded English seaside resort. The summer season has petered to an end. An air of desertion hangs over the town.
Eddie and David are disillusioned street performers. Eddie is tough, confrontational and not afraid to defend his belief in justice, respect and honesty. David is a dancer who has no legs (as he is in real life), watching him makes you reconsider accepted notions of grace and perfection. He is quietly determined not to let his disabilities or society’s prejudices get in his way. A series of inter-linked scenes show Eddie and David’s encounters with other people; some are incredibly hard-hitting, others exhilarating because of their sheer physicality.’

Photo: DV8 Physical Theatre (c)

I like the dramaturgy and the narrative structure of the whole film. Seems like Newson is completely in small details, fragmenting them into smaller and smaller parts but consistently bringing them together again just before every scene ends… I’ve felt a boomerang effect, bringing me back to the beginning but much richer…

I’ve always admired Lloyd Newson’s choreographic approaches… he always proclaims ‘work like a dog’ attitude, very direct – a punch in your body, but the effect is like a mental heavy training…

He makes you feel totally emotional and mentally naked… I could say now that he’s brutal, but Newson absolutely adores his performers… pushing them over the edges, and always giving them a chance to come back through a small channel… and that channel connects them all…

In Newson’s cinematic vision everything in the world seems to be very sleepy and routine – day or night, beach or street, night club or men’s toilet, a mum&kid pair or a bunch of local ‘boyz from the hood’ … But, doesn’t matter!, he is saying without any mystifications, because, lucid people and their energy are the real momentums of our lives, really…

Photo: Still from the film ‘The Cost of Living’, DV8 (c)

’The Cost of Living’ was awarded twelve times from 2004 to 2007 at 14 different film&dance related festivals…

See some excerpts here!

p.s. (somebody posted their classic ‘Dead Dream of Monochrome Men’ on YouTube, too… divided in several movies, sure)