Arts Hub Australia
The following article was
borrowed from
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Sub-standard criticism damages the Arts in Australia
by Gary Anderson
Arts Hub Australia
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
The Cambodian dancers who performed in 'Weyreap's
Battle' during the
Melbourne International Arts Festival returned home heroes. [Photo
courtesy Sarah
Baker]
Â
The Melbourne International Arts Festival (MIAF) has
passed, and just
as the
clock and our attention ticks over to summer time, there is a nagging,
lingering irritation that needs attention. Now about a week after the
last
performance, the energy of artistic director Kristy Edmund's boldly
international and
unexpectedly proselytizing program is slowly dissipating. Concurrently
on web
blogs and in conversations around the country the poor quality of
critical
reviews of the performances at this festival is receiving increasingly
concerned
attention.
This is not a matter of whether critics liked or disliked a particular
work
but rather the quality and value of their work. The dissatisfaction is
focused
currently on Melbourne-based newspaper columnists. While it would be
easy (and
satisfying) to simply add my complaints to those of others, the pattern
of
discussion reflects a question that needs to be addressed, and that is
– what
standard of work should we reasonably expect from critics?
For readers unable to attend the MIAF it has been widely recognized as
a
major success, both artistically and financially. This year I attended
seven
performance events – mostly dance – from the extensive festival
program: Diamanda
Galas' recitative Defixiones/Orders of the Dead; Saburo
Teshigawara's Green;
Lakhaon Kaol (Cambodian Classical Masked Male Dancer) renascent
production of
Weyreap's Battle extracted from epic Ramayana (or Reamker, in
Cambodian);
Senegalese male dancers performing Fagaala; Shen Wei Dance Arts from
New York
performing Rite of spring and Folding; Stephen Petronio Company, also
from New
York performing The Gotham Suite (Broken Man City of Twist and The
Island of
Misfit Toys); concluding with Philip Glass' collaborative Orion.
Three of the gems of the festival, Orders of the
Dead, Green and
Folding
attracted trenchant critical condemnation.
On the night Ms Galas performed Defixiones, I was in
a state of
anticipation.
Milling in the foyer before the performance well turned out
business-suited
(very) senior members of the Greek community were mingling with
lead-white
gothic ladies layered in black lace. One bald, stubbly shaven
boxer-looking
rough-head sported flared silken dress-like trousers. Another seemed to
be a lost
truck driver but had "amor fati" tattooed boldly across the back of
his neck.
And as a rule of thumb, when the audience is inked with Nietzschen
aphorisms
there is often something interesting ahead.
This work opened on a black setting of a centrally
placed piano
elevated on a
platform, which was framed symmetrically by two lecturn-like dais to
the
sides. A large central candelabra sent smoke pluming upwards – and
was carefully
illuminated, with meticulous attention to minutia of tone, by her
lighting
director. Ms Galas, dressed entirely in black in a archaizing costume
recalling
orthodox liturgical vestments delivered the Defixiones in a very slowly
progressing, arching crescendo. The work draws on cultural fragments,
poems and
lamentation recalling genocide of Greek-Armenians at the end of the
first world war.
Program notes reproduced the source texts in original language and
script
with translations. Defixiones was delivered mostly as standing
recitative or sung
seated from the self-accompanied piano. Ms Galas' vocal method
sometimes
created painfully scrapping sonorities and she, towards the climax of
the work,
was prostrate in an agonized performance delivered from the floor,
backlit by
intense light.
Owen Richardson and John Slavin, both of the Age
newspaper, panned
Defixiones
and called for the future use of surtitiles for these sorts of shows.
The
audience on the night I attended was transfixed, leaving the critics
appearing
isolated and unconnected to their own city. Intellectually the
criticism of this
work that was directed at Ms Galas seemed lazy bordering on ignorant.
It
seemed strikingly obvious, (at least to me), that the use of
un-translated text
from a population whose entire existence and culture were almost
obliterated
would be entirely appropriate in a work of this kind. Surtitles offer
only an
adumbration of meaning. One of the importances of Defixiones is the
preservation
and speaking of these texts, a cultural line extending back to the
graves of
the dead. More shocking still to me was the critics' absence of any
apparent
prior familiarity with Ms Galas or her work. It also seems incredible
to me that
professional critics would not have done background research before
writing.
Even ten minutes on Google would have produced a less empty-headed
critical
appraisal of the work.
Green unfolded with tremendous energy in a series of
vignettes that
existed
somewhere between modern urban Japan and the bucolic traditions in
western
pastoral art. Neill Jillett of The Age wrote, cruelly, on Green and the
festival
director: "...Kristy Edmunds, in making her debut as artistic
director, has
chosen to honour the rarely breached convention that the main opening
show of the
Melbourne Festival should be a dud! Much of the choreography seems
borrowed
from tai-chi, the martial arts and the sort of whirligig carry-on that
occurs
in crowded, ill-supervised institutions that used to be called loony
bins. The
actual dance forms I saw had no resemblance to tai-chi or mental
illness.
Folding a staggeringly beautiful and infinitely technically demanding
work of
ultra-slow transitions across the stage was viewed simply as
"boring". To my
mind this work, my own favorite and the most thrilling experience at
the
festival, extended the form of pas de deux.
Andrew Bolt from the Melbourne Herald-Sun (19th
October 2005) described
the
entire MIAF program as a "Festival of Fools" concluding that "The
civilised
stay away, while Goths ululate in triumph at a concert of strange wails
and
howls. This is not a festival of culture, but of its loss. This seems
most likely
to refer to Ms Galas. For reference I saw no Goths ululating (howling,
wailing,
or lamenting loudly) but many gave a standing ovation at her
performance."
The detractors of these critics (and I share their views) have pointed
to two
areas of concern. Firstly that the published critics were not well
connected
to the artistic reception of the work by its audience and secondly that
they
lack intellectual and scholarly rigour in their work.
So let's cut to the chase here. What could or should
we reasonably
expect of
a critic? And does quality criticism even matter?
To my mind this is best addressed by examining high quality criticism
in
other fields. When I read a sound critical piece, whether it favours or
derides a
new work, I want to finish knowing more. I want to have the work placed
in its
cultural and intellectual context. I want to see the evidence of the
critics
scholarship and the culture of the writer as the foundation of their
judgments. I want to learn and feel enriched. In the case of a very
experienced critic
I may also be interested in their taste and aesthetic judgment. As an
example
I like, from time to time, to read Suzy Menkes' fashion reviews for
the
International Herald Tribune. I have no great interest in fashion but
Ms Menkes
brings a deep and cultured eye to the new offerings paraded endlessly
on
international catwalks and when she is excited, something new and
important is
happening. The same holds true when the critics pen is dipped in oil of
vitriol. When
Robert Hughes derided the works of Julian Schnabel, the blood sport
"which is
very entertaining to read " was refined by Mr Hughes' artful
turn-of-phrase,
connoisseurship and deep art-historical scholarship.
Ironically, this sort of quality critical analysis
already exists in
the
restaurant, wine and computer reviews of the same newspapers. If the
same standard
of work applied to food as it does to the arts, a restaurant critic
review
might read like this: I had a meal in a foreign restaurant last night.
It tasted
odd. I did not like it and you would not like it either.
But does good quality criticism actually matter
given that the critics
in
question here produce ephemera? Most of their text could fairly be
graded as
filler quality material.
In my opinion, better criticism matters on several
levels. Firstly part
of a
city's attraction to serious performers is its critical culture. Many
of our
critics seem unable to grapple with the idea that, arguably the main
purpose of
arts festivals is to push the cultural envelope. Poor quality criticism
makes
Australia less attractive for performers. Secondly, poor quality
criticism
makes it hard to run commercially viable festivals because audiences
are
dissuaded from, rather than enabled to, experience and value new works.
Sometimes the
ramifications are very important indeed.
On the night I attended Weyreap's Battle, Alexander
Downer the
Federal
Foreign Minster and his entourage sat immediately behind me (not that
this makes
this a worthy performance) only a politically important one
perhaps). I also
noted a large number of Cambodians in the audience. The players danced
and sung a
narrative depicting a battle, ultimately unsuccessful, waged by Weyreap
and
his monkeys on behalf of his king against the humans. The dancers were
not
fully proficient in their art – some tottered slightly in extension
and many
milled about on stage in a wooden and insecure manner. But remarkably
this
detracted nothing from the impact of the work and may even have
increased the
admiration of the audience. Many understood that we were seeing the
revival of an
ancient cultural form. Under Pol Pot, it is estimated that more that
90% of all
artists skilled in narrative dance traditions were murdered. When I saw
these
dancers at a post-event party later that night, they were surrounded
for hours
by cheering admirers. They returned home to Cambodia heroes.
Our audiences, but sadly not our critics,
contributed to this.
Gary Anderson
