WILDFLOWER | ADC Mature Ensemble
When I picked up the program ahead of the show to browse, I was immediately struck by the introduction by Choreographer Wendy McPhee. “WILDFLOWER expresses how we can survive in the most adverse conditions with dignity, grace and empathy.” What a stunningly simple premise for a fascinating performance from the ADC Mature Ensemble.
I was completely rapt in the show from the first moment. I can’t quite fathom how hungry I was to see older bodies in a performance context. Older bodies are So Interesting on stage. I have a spent a week reflecting and trying to unpick why I find them so interesting. It’s more than just their rarity, although it is rare indeed see a full ensemble of eleven older women. It’s more than seeing older women take up space with such aplomb. It’s more than the novelty, or the contrast against the many strong young things that pepper every stage.
All images including cover by Jade Ellis Photography.
It’s the interplay of the performer and their performance, intersecting with the decades of life experiences that have become part of impetus, cadence, posture and musculature. This intersection with time imbues simple choreography and stage craft with a unexpected wealth of storytelling, each performer interpreting Wendy McPhee’s choreography within her unique bounds of physicality and enthusiasm.
Simple motifs, that conjure such strength. Arms raised like the bars of a cage, arms raised weakly against certain violence, arms raised to protect others and self, arms raised in anger, in holding ones ground. I am struck over and over, by the message that runs underneath each scene, be it joyous, ludicrous, powerful, or bitter: what does it mean to be a woman who survives?
The Arts likes to explore and reproduce arcehtypes over and over. We find them in the characters of the commedia dell’arte, Japanese kabuki, the Elizabethan pantheon, Chinese opera, the recurring characters are familiar to us, in their myriad vicissitudes. The joy of the elder performer is that they explore the archetypes through the intersection of time. You are not ‘just’ an anything as an elder, at least, not on the surface. The woman who plays the fool, may also be the woman who endured in silence for too long. A woman moves with grace, after ‘getting on with it’ for decades. A woman who ran and ran and ran and then came to stillness in a place of men, for too many years. Against all that has been experienced, they come here, to this moment, to this place, to take up this space.
It starts with clusters of women chatting on either side of the stage, and I am ridiculously touched. So simple, and yet, to be a grown woman in this world is to survive. To survive is to experience suffering. Of self, of family, of others, of the world. To be an older woman who sits and chats with her acquaintances, who is housed and clothed and fed, who has still a well of happiness inside of her, is to survive with grace.
Defiance defines this performance. Defiance against those they have closed off the stage, the dancing, the community of kindred spirits. We will take what is ours to have.
In a series of vignettes that flow into each other, women help each other, to dress, to party, to give and take comfort.
Wildflower. The melancholic joy captured in the name of the show. A nostos for our ensemble, some returning ‘home’ for the fist time.
There were few younger dancers in the audience on the night I attended. I would admonish them, but I too am getting to the age where I know the worthlessness of chastising the young. Nonetheless they should, and you should, bear witness to these works, for you too may end up here, if you are lucky. It is one thing to be young and immortal and full of vim and vigour. But vitality does not dissipate when the limbs grow frail. The heart beats the whole time, and it will, until it does not.
A brilliant piece of art, it captivated me in the moment, I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It inflamed my imagination, with all I could see, with all that flowed out of sight just under the surface. I feel like I was looking for this without knowing what it was until I saw it. These dancers are heartfelt, and joyous to watch. They offer no solutions for me or my future path, except to signpost that yes, there is one, and I can go looking, and it exists to be found. What a profound gift.
