The writer, dancing. Photo / Dean Purcell.
Greg Bruce becomes unexpectedly invested in the only opportunity he'll ever have to dance alongside internationally acclaimed performers at a major arts festival.
I've never been able to do sexy dancing or cool dancing. I can't keep time, nor control of my limbs. The only type of dancing I've ever been qualified for is funny dancing: in my final year at school, my Theatresports team's improvised ballet scored 10 out of 10; at my wedding, the first dance got a lot of laughter; at a pub quiz a few years ago, I was chosen to represent my team in a two-person dance tiebreaker and, although I lost, my teammates said I should have won. So when an audition call was put out late last year seeking men who can't dance for a show called Untrained, to be performed in this year's Auckland Arts Festival, I felt my time had come.
Physiologically, I was less than qualified. I'm too old to be dancing for long periods, I've been experiencing intermittent pain in my right knee for some months and, on the morning of the audition, as I got out of bed, I experienced a cramp in my right calf so severe I had to stifle a scream. During my most recent physical exertion - digging a trench in my backyard - I'd quickly run out of steam, gone for a lie down in a dark room, vomited several times, gone to the doctor, gone to hospital, spent a couple of hours in the emergency department alongside genuinely sick people, self-diagnosed with severe embarrassment and returned home to rest while my in-laws finished digging the trench.
In spite of my physical issues, I didn't expect to be nervous - the whole thing was just a jolly jape - so why did I find it so difficult to focus on my work the morning before the audition? Why did I go to the toilet twice before leaving the house and again upon my arrival half an hour later? Why had I spent so long thinking about and practising my funny dancing in the weeks leading up to it?
Untrained has been performed successfully around the world for more than a decade, and always using the same format: four dancers - two trained and two untrained - attempting to perform a series of mostly dance-based tasks, with some other funny stuff thrown in. It describes itself as "a fascinating insight into the stories our bodies tell about masculinity and humanity." It's been reviewed positively in The New York Times and The Guardian and very negatively in The Age ("Untrained fails to break any ground and, although seeing it may be mildly entertaining, this work is ultimately uninteresting.") But so what? Others' opinions of you only count as much as you allow them to.
The audition was led by Ross McCormack and James O'Hara, with show creator Lucy Guerin joining by Zoom from Melbourne. McCormack is a New Zealand Arts Laureate who once spent a decade touring and performing with Belgium group les ballets C de la B, which The Guardian described as "one of the world's most influential dance theatre companies". Guerin was recently made an Officer of the Order of Australia for her contribution to dance and O'Hara, who has performed with some of the world's greatest ballet companies, is a co-artistic director of The New Zealand Dance Company.
Together, they taught us a 45-second dance sequence, which, in spite of its simplicity, took about an hour. We performed it, uniformly badly I thought, in groups of three. Next, we were shown how to perform a double pirouette and asked us to emulate it, one by one. Watching the other auditionees, I saw how difficult it was to get around twice, so when it was my turn I pushed off extremely hard, which threw me off balance and I needed to give an extra push at the 500-degree mark. I finished with an extravagant spread of the arms. Afterwards, the photographer said to me, "If they're looking for the most unco-ordinated person, you'll definitely get picked."
Next, we had to go up one by one and talk about a physical aspect of ourselves we felt ashamed of. As the most physically self-conscious man I know, embarrassed by almost every part of myself, I knew I would be good at this. I had so many options: matchstick arms, frail wrists, shocking whiteness, bald spot, hairy moles, soft belt overhang, mismatched eyes, freckle clumps and so on. But as I listened, one by one, all my best issues were claimed by men whose voices and emotive language made clear that their lives had been equally blighted by their self-perceived defects. By the time it was my turn, all the wind had been taken from my sails and all that was left was to talk about my fungal toenails, which, by the way, I am now taking medication for.
After that, we were asked to wait outside so the professionals could talk about our flaws behind our backs. When we returned, they told us this was the brutal bit, that unfortunately some of us weren't going to make the cut, thanks for your time, it's been great, etc. They read out some numbers and mine wasn't among them. I hadn't planned for disappointment but suddenly there it was, and surprisingly strong. Then I remembered that when competitors are culled in X Factor and NZ's Got Talent, cameras will often show the crowd favourite looking sad when their number isn't read out, then the judges will say: "If your number wasn't read out ...YOU'RE THROUGH TO THE NEXT ROUND!!" But that wasn't what happened to me. I was cut.
Roughly half the auditionees made it through and, as I looked at them standing there against the far wall, I felt the vastness of my inferiority. Few people I know are as physically incompetent as me. I'm always hurting myself. I burn myself almost every time I cook and people laugh constantly at my physical ineptitude. Sometimes I think it's my best quality. I had tried really hard and failed at the first hurdle. I replayed my audition in my head, chastising myself for my performance: looking at the ground too much, not emoting enough, failing to be either funny or interesting. I tried to remind myself I had been cut from a show designed to showcase an absence of talent, but I knew that an ability to showcase an absence of talent is also a talent.
I saw on the faces of the other rejects that I was not alone, that they too had wanted this strange opportunity, had become invested in it, had spent weeks allowing themselves to fantasise about what it might feel like to be up there on stage at SkyCity Theatre, having hundreds of people laugh at them, and what that might do for them or open up for them. Now that the fantasy was gone, as suddenly and easily as hearing a stranger read out a list of numbers, it was back to plain old life.
The remaining auditionees were asked to speak about their fathers. One said his dad didn't know how to stop working; another said his dad used to be very angry but is now quite quiet; another said his dad is very successful and doesn't really accept him, even though he is also reasonably successful; another said his dad wasn't around much; another said he doesn't have much of a relationship with his dad. Nobody said their dad was really great, nor do I recall anyone using the word "love".
Then everyone had to talk about how they take their T-shirts off, while taking their T-shirts off. After listening to McCormack explain the task, one of the men said, "We don't actually have to take our T-shirts off, right?
"Yeah, you do," McCormack said. "Does that feel all right?"
I found it uncomfortable to watch that parade of exposed flesh, some of which had earlier been outed as a source of its owner's shame, but that might have just been me projecting.
"I really love to watch that," McCormack said afterwards.
"I do too," said Guerin. "It's one of my favourites."
They had to beatbox, perform a double-take, sing a song of their choosing, improvise a dance, mimic O'Hara's dancing in real time, and act out a scene as if they were a cat.
McCormack: "It's a cat that gets electrocuted and dies - that's my memory."
Guerin: "That's right. It wanders into a room and finds an electrical outlet and sadly dies."
One of their last tasks was to give themselves advice: "Give yourself a little bit of a talking to," McCormack said, "A bit of guidance for the way forward."
One of them said: "You probably don't look as stupid as you think most of the time, you probably don't sound as stupid as you think, and people are actually nicer generally than you think they are."
Another: "You need to stop worrying about things. You're too young to be worrying about things that haven't happened yet."
Another: "Just chill out. Just chill. It's okay. It's okay."
Another: "Stop worrying about all the embarrassing things you did in the past. Focus on now - what's happening in the present. No one cares. You're the only one that remembers the embarrassing things 10 years ago. No one else does. Just you."
It's rare to see men being vulnerable in front of each other. By and large, we're committed to the long-standing cultural ideal of appearing strong by appearing emotion-free, which is ironic because being vulnerable is much, much harder. It was moving and uplifting to be in that room listening to other men exposing their true selves. It's far harder to feel bad about how f***ed up you are when you hear how f***ed up everyone else is.
The room emptied to allow McCormack, Guerin and O'Hara to make the final round of cuts, but I stayed behind because I wanted to hear their assessments:
"I like the duality of that masculine image with that softness that he also gives."
"He thinks up and looks up."
"It's a fine line between being entertaining and trying to entertain."
"He's not trying too hard but he's just naturally clumsy."
"I'd say this about [X]: He's the most unco-ordinated."
"[Y]'s almost quite elegant."
It would have been nice to have had this knowledge at the start, so I could have incorporated it into my performance, but that's a different thing from saying I would have liked to do it again.
They were wrapping up their discussions when Guerin, over Zoom, presumably ignorant of the fact I was still there, told the others: "I'm so sorry I cut the journalist."
"He's here!" McCormack said. "I'm surprised you can't hear him crying!"
I wasn't crying.
• Due to current Covid-19 protection settings, Untrained, which was scheduled to run this month at SkyCity, as part of Auckland Arts festival, has been cancelled.
A live cook-off featured ox heart, wapiti, wild boar and plenty of edible wildlife.