The figure emerges from a side door with a preternatural silence that borders on unsettling. Bare legs, hands and face are smeared with thick green matter; a few dark still-wet patches of unidentifiable sludge glisten under electric light. His hair has been coiffed into a fauxhawk that’s starting to wilt in the humidity; his camouflage jacket smeared with the same primordial ooze. From beneath it peeks a pair of blue underpants. And then there’s the humming – a low, monotonous warble. A few feet away, another figure spins slowly on the balls of his feet as he circles a small, green velvet ottoman.
Again.
And again.
And again.
No, this is not a scene from a lunatic asylum – although the Cambodian gentleman watching from outside, who laughs then lifts his arms and spins in mimicry of the dancer’s very purposeful pirouetting, could almost be forgiven for thinking so. The fact of the matter is far from it. For this, darlings, is ART.
But we’re not talking your run-of-the-mill, common or garden, ho-hum sort of art. This, ladies and gentlemen, is art for YOU: art that wants to muscle its way right past your intellectual defences and square onto your dinner plate. Quite literally. And it’s this splicing of performance art with food that’s at the core of a very curious one-night-only show by arts collective Common Sole at Java Café & Gallery.
Perched at a small dining table here in the downstairs gallery, a long-limbed dance and theatre artist from Kuala Lumpur cradles in his enormous hands a white ceramic bowl. His lips strain slowly, painfully towards it before his face snaps away in disgust. Repeat. Seconds become minutes. Minutes become… even more minutes.
“We were playing around with the idea of doing a variety show, some sort of cabaret concept, which is something I’ve wanted to do here for years now – to bring this idea of food and the experience of art together,” says Java founder Dana Langlois. “It’s basically what I’ve built Java on entirely and it’s something that I love: food and art.”
Here’s how this most uncommon of cabarets works: from the moment you walk through the door, you’re part of the action. Five performing artists from around the world present five acts, during which a five-course meal inspired by those acts is served. A Curious Cabaret has been crafted specifically to stimulate all five senses – ‘and perhaps a sixth’ – by fusing the classical elements of a dinner-cabaret and curiosities show with a very contemporary take on performance art.
“As we developed the concept, each person was clearly working on their own, which is really interesting because they [Common Sole] define themselves as a collaborative. The idea was that they would each retreat into this very personal space of their own, where they could develop their own idea, but that would then be presented as a larger show. It’s a very different approach than sticking five people into one piece.”
The number five is a much-repeated motif. During a rare break in the coincidentally five-hour rehearsal, Céline Bacqué, a contemporary dance graduate from the National Superior Conservatory of Paris, rests her shoulders against Java’s front porch and stretches under the damp night sky. “All of the ideas were developed around the number five. We have five fingers; we have five senses; there are five points on a star, five elements. For the audience to be able to feel the five senses at the same time: to look; to hear; to smell; to taste, to touch, but very organic.”
Each of the five courses, from Moroccan gingered chickpea soup to cinnamon-chili chocolate fondant and passionfruit syrup, use ‘taste, colour, texture and action’ to complement each of the solo performances in turn. The acts draw on influences as diverse as Khmer shadow puppetry and South Korean namsadang samul nori, folk music with its roots in ancient shamanism. Combined, they’re designed to ‘take the audience on a path through spirituality, memories, conflict, internal tension and the freedom of purity’.
“This is something that works very well in Java: always bringing the audience into the art,” says Dana. “I try to do this a lot with exhibitions and working with artists who are very connected to the audience. I truly believe the audience is part of the art; I’m not really a big believer in art for art’s sake, in that it exists in a bubble. Everybody’s different and I know there is a space for that pure artistic vision, but in my mind and my experience it doesn’t become art until it exists with an audience.
“A Curious Cabaret is something I’m very excited about because of where it takes the experience of art. It’s very connected to what I like to do with the gallery, being based in a cafe and putting art in public spaces. The cafe is the perfect catalyst for bringing art into people’s daily lives and even making eating an art. I strongly believe in the institutional spaces for art, but I think art should be for the public. I’m a big fan of making art part of our daily lives.”
A wild-haired American spectator tries to interject when someone in an oversized plum-coloured kimono starts jabbering at him in a foreign language. “Dude, seriously, I don’t speak French…” Then it dawns. The ‘art’ is upon him. Bruno Schell, comedian, playwright and stage director, has plucked from his elaborate hat a small origami swan and is pressing it gently into the American’s palm, all the while muttering softly and smiling. His piece, entitled Souvenir (‘Memory’), channels the spirit of his Cambodian grandmother and is paired with a dish Celine says “you have to open to discover; there’s an element of surprise to what you eat”.
In the finale, Black Butterfly, Céline and Un Rattana explore “nature in the night” via an exquisite pas de deux between shadow and light. Secreted behind a Cambodian shadow-puppetry screen, Rattana – the Moon – sweeps a light back and forth in an exotic dance with the silhouette of her counterpart on the other side, the balletic Black Butterfly. “Life’s cycle is mysterious, unknown… maybe because it is as ephemeral as it is infinite, empty,” says Céline. “The moves of the shadows, as the beauty of the night, make us feel a bit scared… as the black butterfly in harmony with the cosmos makes us feel free.”
Striding through the pregnant pauses between each of act is peripatetic poet-cum-philosopher Ann Kimlong. Musing on mysticism and metaphysics he meanders between tables, pausing dramatically now and then to look extra pensive.
But the sensory stimulation positively risks overload when Franco-Cambodian theatre performer/‘body percussionist’ Eric Ellul – he of the blue underpants – bares his almost all. His mud-smeared ritual ‘will explore the tensions between accidental body positions, words and sounds: how these bonds create emotional states and energy that trigger a personal transformation, defining new territories of expression and feelings’.
At one point, you might want to avert your eyes. Says Dana: “I realised by the end of it that half of the performers are in their underwear! It might get more people to come…”
WHO: Common Sole
WHAT: A Curious Cabaret (tickets are $25 and on sale at Java)
WHERE: Java Gallery, #56 Sihanouk Blvd.
WHEN: 7pm March 22
WHY: Half the performers are in their underwear!