Duotones
For ‘to and
fro’ exhibition at Artspace Gallery,
Auckland.
July 11-August
23, 2014, curated by Amelia Hitchcock
“Within the final
Duotones performance smith erected a quasi-lecture set up, a simple power point
presentation giving the titles of their performances thus far as well as
smith’s collaborators and brief bullet points. Initially positioned behind the
station, a trestle table loaded with a computer and audio equipment hooked up
to rather large speakers, smith played a seductive song by the velvet-tongued
Barry White and in a distorted and deep voice repeatedly intoned “Forward…
Forward… Forward” into a microphone whilst making a gesture which seemed to say
“come forward, towards me.” Audience members got up and slowly moved towards
the artist paying attention to the ways in which smith altered their hand
movements like a police officer on point duty. smith manipulated audience members
around the room, herding them like sheep, dividing them into groups, beckoning
them to crouch, kneel, sit, jump. At one point smith had coerced the audience
out of the gallery into the foyer while remaining inside the central space,
only their arm visible from the doorframe, still signalling, as if to say “move
back.” At that point we were all huddled together by a wall as far back as we
could possibly go. Appealing through strange verbal cues, confusing hand
gestures and sometimes more direct bodily intervention, smith moved
participants, appealing, commanding, separating, dividing, controlling,
directing… using one body, one that enjoyed a certain amount of authority, in
order to manipulate the bodies of others.”
This is a Trans-World
Theatre
As Is, Dunedin, February 2012
"wonderfully
confusing ebb and flow between comedy and seriousness (...) so unexpected, so
oddball, and yet --- in the context of such a deliberately oddball, mixed work
as this --- so bizarrely apt that the audience almost to a one applauded
enthusiastically."
Johnathon
W. Marshall. Theatreview.
Old
Folks Association Hall, Auckland, November 2011
"Talk
and cellular improv are combined in a section which considers the notion of
straightness and where it is determined, in the body and/or the mind, with
various kinds of kinked-ness, twisted-ness and bent-ness demonstrated along the
way to arriving at the logic that straightness is relative. (...) By the end of
the evening, we have been thoroughly entertained, provoked, and made to think
(...) "
Raewyn
Whyte, Theatreview.
Straight Relatives
Qubit:
a weekend of Contemporary Performance Art, Dunedin, 2011
“The
split of the public and private self, and the often impossible task of aligning
the two, was also pivotal to Val Smith's Straight Relatives, which
explored gender politics by poetically subverting conventions associated with
dance. (...) Smith beautifully interwove physical and verbal movements in an
effort to re-programme the dancer's straight body memory to account for a bent
lifestyle and perspective. The most touching (and touchingly funny)
moments were those when body memories emerged as verbal memories and vice versa
(...)”
Sandra
Muller, Qubit Catalogue
Gender and Performance Inquiry
Tempo
Dance Festival, 2010.
"I
love watching dancers faces and being given the permission to stare back and
observe nothingness. The minimalism of the movement allows you to soak up each
image. A sweeping arm to a fist, or a turn and reach back. It is a little bit
like a Calvin Klein commercial coming to life."
Jack
Gray, Theatreview
"a
finely nuanced minimalist improvisational duet"
Raewyn
Whyte, NZ Herald.
Camper
Tempo
dance Festival, 2007. Collaboration with Alys Longley.
"How is it
that dance (in this case a fairly broad definition of dance) can invoke
feelings? Two people dancing a teabag dance, moving alongside each other,
reaching for midnight stars in a New Zealand sky or sitting reading in
companionable holiday silence. So satisfying. What an excellent counter balance
to the whirling festival feel."
Felicity
Molloy, Theatreview.
