reta Gauhe
Choreographer, Dancer, Producer, Researcher
1 Click Away
performed at the Place, Founders Studio. 2019
1st of NOV at 3PM and 6:30PM
Choreographer: Greta Gauhe in collaboration with the dancers
Dancers:
Hannah Adams, Marta Stepien, Lucie Palazot, Alka Nauman
Composer: Andy Trewren
Poster Design: Lucie Palazot
Tutors:
Eva Recacha and Sue MacLennan
Link to Tickets: https://www.theplace.org.uk/whats-on/lcds-sharing-greta-gauhe
In the immersive dance performance “1 Click Away”, the audience will follow four women onto a journey into the world of packaging materials. In an artful and engaging display, parcels and cardboard boxes are combined and dismantled to create temporary sculptures and shifting landscapes.
Background to the piece is the huge increase in packaging waste produced by how we shop online. We want everything to be available, we want it to be cheap, and we want it now. The consequences of such behaviour not only involve mountains of unnecessary waste, but also tough working conditions for logistics workers and drivers.
“1 Click Away” takes a rather personal perspective by exploring the waste material in relation to the dancers’ bodies. Given how the excessive production of materials will influence our lives in the future, however, darker connotations should not come as a surprise…
_.jpg)
Review by Katie Hagan/ dance Art Journal:
"Whilst it might seem pretty odd to repeat it, Gauhe’s beautiful use of nuance lifts the repetition to another level. From the new side, dancers create rhythms and change speeds as they pass the boxes, cutting the repetition with a marvellous tension, which is unleashed when the dancers carefully construct a box-jenga that nearly reaches the ceiling. Even the faintest breath would make it tumble."
"Gauhe’s piece is a manifestation of a box: it is multi-dimensional, multi-layered and wrapped in paradox. It viscerally exposes the damaging environmental effects of waste, yet in the same breath draws attention to the many people who rely on logistics/delivery jobs to put food on the table. And in another perhaps more innocent way the piece is simply about playing with boxes."
"The lasting message which I took away was the unexpected delight in realising the things we take for granted and use everyday can still make us smile. ‘1 Click Away’ lies on a continuum between play and more sinister ideas such as exploitation, not to mention its ability to demonstrate how we can find beauty in the things we chuck away."
Review by Nicholas Minns/ Writing about dance:
"The approach is to let the boxes do the talking, and Gauhe’s choreography for her four dancers is focused on enhancing their eloquence. But in making the inanimate boxes the principal characters, 1 Click Away inevitably implicates not only their warehouse sorters, packagers and dispatchers, but also the shoppers whose collective proclivity for online purchases has clicked up a proliferation of cardboard waste. "
