Ingress | Bridie Hooper
Bridie Hooper is a very talented being. She has a rare fluidity in her movements. Her tumbling is exquisite, her aerial dance of the highest standard. High skill is always mesmerising, but its also useful cause it gives you a wide palette to draw from, to paint with. But I’m actually not going to talk about the skills, cause that was a delightful feature of the show, but not what made it interesting.
Ms Hooper has made an intriguing show. It has a beautiful starting point, the consideration of the ‘golden deathlessness’, the question posed, ‘If you cannot die, than how can you live?” A mediation of sorts, on the vigour of the living body, juxtaposed against an imagining of the trials of immortality. Lofty goals indeed, but why not? If you are going to go hard, you might as well go for gold.
The show was richly layered with all manner of symbolism, and heavily dosed with deliciously high-level acrobatics and contortion. And of course, youthful vigour is itself a kind of immortality, for who can imagine being weak when one is full of strength? In the summer of life one cannot conceive of the winter of the body. But being young is not an immunity from self reflection, self doubt, self loathing, and self flagellation.
Scene by scene, we are coaxed through a range of reflections on self, some that were giddy, playful, ludicrous, the kind of game that you might play with oneself whilst stuck at home on a rainy afternoon, with no observers. Others were quite self-violent indeed. The scenes ebbed and flowed, rose and fell, with little increase in tension for what I felt was the first act. The second half, however, turned quite sharply, and got quite dark indeed, and that’s where we started to feel the guts of the piece really rise. There was a macabre crucifixion of sorts, wherein Hooper threw darts at a plastic blow-up doll, which had at first appeared as a companion, but actually proved to be a poppet, perhaps a shadow-self. Many in the audience laughed, but I don’t think it was supposed to be funny, no, I felt it was a very real attack of sorts. It was round about here I started to feel the meat and bones of the show, the real dirt. There was lots of this violence, rocks loaded into pockets, dumped on the poppet, dumped on the self. An attempt to drown, a pointless unachievable climb whilst heavily weighted. There was a lot to chew on.
I get the sense though, of very many fingers stirring the broth. Although this ostensibly is a solo production, a first creation by an independent artist, the production levels spoke of many viewpoints, many professionals, many others coming in to watch and add their opinions to the mix. There had clearly been a high level of production for the show, and I say clearly, because it was not quite seamless… the production was audible, rather than merely amplifying.
The show notes state that Ingress ‘embarks on a woman’s self discovery, to rewrite her story, repossess her life and untether herself from her myth’. And that is a very real longing indeed. Be what it may, an artist of this calibre and potential is going to attract opinions, commissions, requests, contracts, and critiques throughout her career. (The irony is not lost on me..) Like other young people thrust into the spotlight early, she will need to learn the lesson of all bright ingénue – that of taking determined creative control. If I could wish for anything for the next iteration of this piece, it would be that Ms Hooper closes the door to the studio and turns the key and does exactly as she pleases without so much as another word from another soul, and dances to her actual very own heartbeat. Less support, i want more raw, more real. Oh, and that she throws away her carefully crafted performers guise, and shows us what she really feels, not just in tiny little glimpses here and there, not just by painting with her body, but in full unadorned expression.
I am struck by the old theatre maxim of how we become one with our roles, our characters, that we write and are written, that the relationship between stage and life is that of mirror, magnifying glass and crystal ball all at once. When we start on that path to know the self and to demonstrate her onstage, her vicissitudes become mine, and mine hers. I wonder if it is possible to make a show about a journey, without undertaking one oneself. And if you follow the tales of tribulation faced by the Greek goddesses, you will know that journeys are not easy, no, and victories are hard won. A risky game to play with the gods of theatre.
I loved the opening scene, the angels flight, the fall, the awakening in a prison wherein you will be forevermore. A stunning metaphor, a warning, a promise and a threat. Indeed it’s very lovely to see an artist on the cusp on flight. It’s rare when you see an artist who can literally do anything with their body. And rarer still when you see them want to bite off a huge bite of everything, mythology, self-discovery, play, innerworkings of the mind, the full extent of their physical range, jokes, chaos, control and mad symbolism. That’s a very good start to a career and I look forward to seeing all of whatever comes next. Kudos to the artist on the eve of her trajectory.
