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Greta Gauhe and Deborah DiMeglio’s Collapsing Into The Equilibrium Line addresses the climate struggle through the metonymy of melting glaciers – though still unanswered in its call to action, a discourse all too familiar, that awareness crystallising as Ludwig Berger’s composition of melting sounds gives way to news snippets punctuated by “surprised” gasps that verge on choking. Thus the ordinary set, composed of large sheets of paper, and Gauhe and DiMeglio themselves, dressed alike and a generation apart. Their message is nuanced, revealed by the intricacies of the performance, often, somewhat ironically, urgent and sharp – be it in the rapid collapses, the near-robotic sequences, or the precise folds of the paper itself, clearly the glaciers of this set (and, crucially, also the debris). They may try to repair the paper-glaciers, but the folds cannot be undone, and the tape they bring out is futile; they may attempt to catch one another in a series of repeating embraces and falls, as if borrowed from Segal, but the cycle is vicious. We are past the point of melting.

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Olivia Wachowiak

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Greta Gauhe and Deborah DiMeglio’s intergenerational collaboration, Collapsing Into The Equilibrium,‘is inspired by glaciers — their struggle for existence and the inevitable collapse’. There are no glaciers on stage but they are represented by armfuls of white packing paper, either flat or scrunched up into crinkly forms. Gauhe and DiMeglio are the human, interactive, agency moving these paper glaciers and changing their shape. They are sometimes under the paper, sometimes on it, wrapped in it or carrying it. But in moments of silence, the qualities of the paper itself give it a life (and death) of its own. When we watch this intrinsic struggle of the paper as a living entity holding and releasing its form while we listen to Ludwig Berger’s audio recordings of dying glaciers, the overlapping effect is mesmerising. Gauhe and DiMeglio draw parallels to this struggle in their own empathetic interactions of equilibrium and support suggesting the fragile but vital unity of life and its environment. In their final pose they face the audience, leaning against each other in solidarity as if to pass on to us the enormous challenge they have so lucidly illustrated. Over the years Gauhe has developed similar calls to action, pointing out the hazards of allowing our human footprint to wander unthinkingly over the potentially devastating forces of nature. Collapsing Into The Equilibrium serves as an eloquent manifesto.

 

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To finish, choreographer Greta Gauhe and visual artist Deborah DiMeglio explore the devasting reality of melting glaciers. These big dense bodies of ice are depicted as piles of large stiff sheets of crumpled white and pale blue paper into which the performers immerse themselves. The women wrap themselves up in the folds of the paper, collapse onto it or balance the engulfing sheets on their heads. At one point they engage in a duet of harsh pushing and resisting, their jaws clenched in effort. In another moment, they tussle with the paper, scrunching and ripping with the aim of destruction. Doomfully, the sound of dripping water and alarming news flashes accompanies their endeavours. Gauhe and DiMeglio’s moving embodiment of the glacier’s struggle for survival, before its watery collapse, is creative, topical and visually striking.

Jo Leask