Any act of expression - a dance, a recited line, a painting or sculpture - is defined not only by its content but also by its context. Economic, moral, social and cultural influences can upend and transform the impact and relevance of a work of art, just as removing it from those empowering associations can rob it of that potency.
Take, for example, the world's most famous street artist, Banksy. His subversive and satirical guerrilla artworks are innately powerful because of their urban contexts, and how nefariously cool that makes their creation. The rebellious 'fuck you' spirit of his modus operandi and the satirical politics championed in his trademark stencils have only captured the popular imagination because they are created without permission, daring to tame spaces that ordinarily resist art. When former Banksy collaborator Steve Lazarides brought his unauthorised touring exhibition of the street artist's work to Melbourne last year, housed in an awkwardly staged pop-up gallery, the paintings and prints on display were frustratingly stifled by the jarringly safe curation. Trying to make an anti-establishment and anti-capitalist icon fit within a conspicuously commercial space was a gamble fated to fail; context and credibility go hand in hand, and without one, you cannot hope to have the other.
The same is true on stage. Here, the worlds conjured by set designers can make or break a production, although the skill and importance of good design can often take a backseat to the plaudits earned by performers. This might well explain why so few visual artists have applied their talents to the theatre, although there are, nonetheless, several impressive historical examples of such collaborations. Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, Edvard Munch and Andy Warhol, to name just a handful, were all contributors to stage productions. More recently, megastar artists like Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley and Anish Kapoor have also created for the theatre, and in doing so have revealed an intriguing quid pro quo relationship between art from different fields. Just as an accomplished set can imbue a performance with a richness of context, a theatrical muse can provoke and challenge an artist to produce work that pushes them beyond their usual comfort zones and into exciting new territories.
And of the various mediums of the stage, dance is perhaps the most successful at nurturing these soaring collaborative exchanges. Two such examples are by far the most technically audacious events at this year's Melbourne Festival. Firstly, a partnership between two of China's most celebrated artists, choreographer Yang Liping and designer Tim Yip, best known as the father of "new orientalism" and the visual visionary behind Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Yip is the natural choice for Liping's Under Siege, a piece exploring a chapter of China's ancient history, not unlike the Oscar-winning designer's cinematic ventures.
However, far from the luscious, albeit stylised, naturalism found in Crouching Tiger, Yip's concept for Under Siege opts for striking symbolism as the frame for Liping's dance. An ominous cloud of steel scissors hangs as an oppressive mass from overhead. These burnished blades, clattering on high, are a constantly present threat to the vulnerable flesh of the dancers below. This expression of danger is counterpointed by drifts of blood-red feathers, fluttering and falling in great drifts through which the performers carve and disappear. These are visual statements that work on both extremities of scale, as grand gestures that encompass the entire stage and as detailed, nuanced flourishes around individual performers.
There's a telling synergy between Liping's choreographic approach, portraying the story of the climactic battle between Chu and Han armies that would mark the birth of the Chinese nation, and the corresponding response from Yip. While Under Seige is Liping's fifth major production, it is the first which has embraced contemporary dance genres alongside the traditional Chinese dance she is famous for. Folk technique is mingled with avant-garde expressionism and even elements of hip hop like popping and locking. "I searched within the past and present for connections between human beings," Liping says of her approach, and this is clearly mirrored in Yip's design. "The pages of history are turned, but our imagination lasts," Yip explains. "I followed the dancers' footsteps to look for the voices of struggle in the richness of this history." Taking his cue from the diversity of different dance aesthetics, stark contemporary design interlaces with aspects of traditional Chinese art, in a production that is as evocative of the past as it is responsive to the now.
However, Yip and Liping's fruitful partnership is still relatively conventional as far as the notion that the design should serve a narrative. In Tree Of Codes, any semblance of that typical dynamic is surpassed entirely. This dynamite collaboration between three artists at the height of their powers — contemporary dance icon Wayne McGregor, electro art-pop sensation Jaime xx, and revered installationist Olafur Eliasson — breaks new ground in virtually every way possible.
It stands to reason that such a radical collective should adopt an equally radical methodology. Drawing its inspiration from American novelist Jonathan Safran Foer's book-cum-sculpture-cum-thought experiment of the same title, the trio of collaborators adopted various forms of intellectual rigour, enshrined within Foer's Tree Of Codes, as a kind of unifying plurality, intrinsically linked to the other elements of the production, yet creatively distinct. But crucially, at the heart of their exchange is a common understanding of the way in which art of every medium can only exist in the moment in which it is experienced by an audience. "Both Wayne [McGregor] and Jaimie [XX] work in ways with which I identify - they embrace abstraction and complexity in contemporary languages while giving their output a form and a tone that are accessible to broader audiences," Eliasson shares. "Producing reality is always about a relationship, between you and a space, you and a thought, a proposition, an object; between you and other people."
Melbourne Festival presents Under Seige, 5 — 8 Oct and Tree Of Codes, 17, 18, 20 & 21 Oct, both at the State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne.
