The Prime and Tempo offerings were at turns confronting, heartfelt, joyful and witty.
Anna Bate’s For Crying Out Loud perfect counterfoil to mostly digital programme.
Film culture, filmed Melanesian women from another generation displaying their traditional tattoos, a strange dance by Pah Homestead people in and among their magnificent trees and an entirely filmed dance of a goddess emerging from the sea give the Prime programme of 2014 a distinct flavour. Only one of its
five works, The Fallen Mystery, by Zahra Killeen-Chance, comes completely live - and that draws on film noir conventions from the 1940s-50s with great wit and style.
While dance film has intellectual complexity, visual sophistications and cinematic magic on its side, there is still something primal in the moving and present body, unfettered by digital distraction and not once removed by shutter and lens.
This programme, whether by accident, design or established trend, seemed over-filmed somehow, though Lyne Pringle's Lung Tree was still a very direct and personal communication on the spiritual succour of trees and environmental issues and Julie Mage'au Gray's Reveal could not have been a more personal and heartfelt cry for the loss of cultural heritage and its accompanying loss of a people's power.
Upstairs in The Loft, Anna Bate, one half of the Q&Q with A&A team, proved the perfect counterfoil. Her For Crying Out Loud is an exquisite and pure exploration of breath, syllables, emotional expression, music and meaning in the moving body.
