Dance Performance Construct By Tanja Liedtke

The dance performance I chose to review was a recording of the performance Construct by Australian choreographer and dancer Tanja Liedtke. Construct was performed on April 2nd, 2009 in Seattle, Washington. The type of dance performed in Construct was contemporary modern. Though there were no actual stopping points, or named dances in this performance they did however have different sections of different dances with unique styles and props. The three sections I am going to write about really caught my attention and stood out to me because of how unique they were; I have never seen any dance performed in those particular ways. The same three people danced throughout the entire performance, in some sections all three danced and in other sections
only one or two performed at a time. I feel like Construct portrays a theme of building and collapsing in everyday life. It makes connections with a home, relationships, love and hate. The first section I am writing about was the opening dance of the performance, it included all three dancers one man and two women. It starts off with one woman falling to the ground and the man trying to catch her before she falls. As he is trying to catch her, the other woman begins to fall also. The women are both very stiff in form during this whole section, to me they remind me of dummies because they do not move on their own any. The man is moving at a very fast pace tempo, he is running from one woman to the other to try and keep them up. In my opinion, his facial expressions and the fact that he is sweating let on that he is having a difficult time trying to keep them both up at the same time. This section portrayed a sense of humor also, it was funny how the man was trying so many different things to keep the women off the ground. At one point he had both women on the ground and they both looked up and started laughing at him while he was frantically trying to find a way to keep them both standing at the same time. As I stated in the first paragraph this particular section to me portrays building and at the same time also portrays collapsing. As hard as the man is working to support them and keep them off of the ground, they continue to fall right back down. It shows the idea of needing physical support from another person. The next section starts as the girls are laughing at the man, while he is trying to find a way to keep them up.
He picks up a drill and begins to dance with it, as he moves the drill he moves his body to follow the direction of the drill. When I watched this, it reminded me of the robot dance. He is very sharp and on point in his movements while following the path he is creating with the drill. After having it for a few minutes his dance starts to become more loose and free. I believe the drill makes the man believe he has some type of power now, he then runs over to the women and picks one up off of the ground. As he picks her up he point the drill towards her and starts moving around almost as if he is drilling her. The movements he makes using it, she follows as if he controlling all the movements she is making. The dance moves are very impressive, how she moves as one with the drill is very unique. There is a special type of rhythm in this dance, though they are doing different things they were very similar in the how they moved their bodies to go along with the path the drill made. He then moves to the other woman, and she follows the movements of the drill just like the others. It then switches from a more serious note to a humorous one. The guy starts making quicker more rapid movements causing the girl to make the same type of movements, she also does some gymnastic types of moves. Personally, I think the way they look while doing this is funny and I believe Tanja
meant for this section to be humorous also. When watching this, I compare the girls to being similar to puppets because the way he is controlling them and their movements is like a puppeteer would control his puppets. There are a lot of contemporary moves during this specific part. In the final section, the man and two women have wooden pieces all around them.
They are using these pieces to act out different things, for instance the man and woman hold the pieces while the other woman acts like she is walking up stairs. Another example of what they are doing is, the two woman are holding the pieces up making the shape of a house but then run over to the man and hold the pieces above him like a house while he acts like a dog. All three of them are running around moving very fast, grabbing different pieces and acting out different scenarios. The music is also very fast and has a constant beat to it that they somewhat dance along with. The mood then changes completely from joyful to horrific. This happens because the man picks up a piece and acts like he is hitting one woman with it, she falls like she has died and the other woman makes a cross with the pieces and covers her body. Then the other woman picks up a piece acts like it is a gun and pretends to shoot and kill the man, he then falls also making a cross with the pieces. The woman then proceeds to pretend to kill herself and fall to the ground and also makes a cross. After that the mood switches to a more humorous mood because the first girl that pretended to die jumps up, when she sees the other two pretending to be dead she quickly lays back down. This section was very odd to me, it switched from one thing to the other very fast, but the dancers all put so much expression into their
movements. This performance was like no other I have ever seen, it had a style and uniqueness that made it very good. I really like that the dancers were able to change mood so quickly and dance for such a long period with out rest. Their skill levels were all very high, the way they showed expression when dancing made it seem like the situation was really happening. Their movements were very sharp and very loose when needed to be. Overall, this was a very good performance and it was funny. As I stated in my first paragraph, I believe the theme portrayed building and collapsing in everyday life, but towards the end I realized the theme is showing the building a collapsing of relationships between people. These three dancers did an awesome job of displaying this, I was able to understand what this performance was really displaying. I feel like anyone can relate to this theme because everyone knows the struggles of building good relationships and the struggles of when they collapse.