Love YouTube
Resolution!
1 February 2007, The Place
Jessyka Watson-Galbraith’s Resolution work “Let’s Talk About Love” is inspired by the frighteningly prolific production of love songs by Celine Dion. 198 in all. Good grief.
Taking the Canadian diva as the ultimate embodiment of the cheap commercial exploitation of love, Watson-Galbraith plays with the idea of what is good and bad quality in several forms: dance, film and music.
The cast have been messing around with poor quality videos of them dancing in bedrooms and singing along to Celine on YouTube for months and several of these feature as a backdrop to the performance. The intention, it seems, was to use this tawdry, sentimental music (pop schmaltz ‘low’ culture), contrast it with contemporary dance moves (supposedly a ‘high’ art form but also poking fun at its seriousness) and have it performed by a cast of 13 young women dressed ready for bed but actually convey real emotion through the drama and blowsiness of La Dion. The project blog talks about looking at the moment when bad becomes good because it’s so bad it’s cool whereas good can be uncool and bad. Yeah, confusing, I know. The piece is really good fun and like nothing I’ve seen at Resolution before. The opening section is the most rehearsed and straightfowardly enjoyable with the ensemble executing serious contemporary dance moves in their own style whilst feeling the love from Celine and lip-synching along. After that, it gets a bit more shambolic - too improvised and shabby for 12 of the cast whilst one, spotlit downstage, almost performs the same dance moves as the girl in the dodgy video behind her - which is effective - but too much undisciplined activity going on around her detracts from it. Still, watch this. It’s kooky:
This was very nearly cracking in its shambolic appeal and was the emotive icing on a tasty three tiered Resolution cake.
PS. I hate to admit it, but the Celine tracks actually sounded very powerful in the intimate Place auditorium. And, alarmingly, I know the words to this song:
[...] See my extended wordiness here. [...]
[...] of Celine Dion came washing back over me when I read the programme notes for tonight’s opening performance. [...]
[...] this stuff second or third hand on the web is also quite jarring. As part of a daily diet of often highly personal clips, parodies and skits on YouTube (and superb post-modern twists combining everything), voyeurism is [...]