Dancing To Be Uncomfortable

If one of the drivers of art is to prick audiences out of their slumber, then Victoria Chiu's new work Floored may just take a needle to our complacencies because, as its creator insists, it's all about the comfort zone. Or rather, busting out of it.

“It's something I definitely can't give up and I'm perplexed by that,” Chiu admits. “When I think about trying to draw the line somewhere it works for a moment but then it always comes back. It's complex because you still have to enjoy life.”

The irony here is obvious; after all, we are talking about a dance show rather than an environmental call to arms or an urgent psychological imperative. Isn't entertainment part of our cultural comfort coma?

Although quick to suggest that “art is not a useless indulgence”, Chiu still reflects on her own busy life as dance creator, mother and consumer. “It becomes easier to consume quickly rather than taking the time and doing it better,” she observes. “I have a two-year-old son and I think about how I can help him to understand, and how that sits with the reality of me tearing around in a car and taking planes all the time. Y'know, even what I'm wearing now has a massive carbon footprint.”

However, rather than use her choreography as a way to work off bourgeois angst, Chiu has decided to branch out of her own reflections and undertake anecdotal research. Indeed, her broad ranging surveys about the comfort/addiction correlation have directly informed both the concept and the physicality of Floored.

“For this project I wanted a cross-section of the whole world,” she explains. “I wanted their opinions, their experience, because there's not one solution, there's not one problem. Everyone has different issues involving comfort.”

Unfolding in three distinct stages, (the pleasure of acquisition, the addiction phase and the finding of balance), Floored places psychological, intellectual and cultural responses directly into the body. It's a distillation of ideas that contemporary dance is justly famed for. In fact, it's a mix that makes most audiences a tad uncomfortable. “I'm really happy that contemporary dance isn't massive and mainstream,” Chiu proudly declares. “I'm happy that it doesn't have to be whips and spurs and flashing lights.”

But for all of our supposed awareness, many of us remain entrenched in comfortable thinking, acting and consuming. “If you're in an addiction, you're switched off to what's around you and you're unquestioning about what's around you or what you're doing,” she concludes.