IT ALL starts with two dancers and an orange.
It builds to a bawdy banana duet into a prickly pineapple scene which descends into a strange baroque apple feast with formal napkins.
The dancers then strip off their clothes--on stage.
Tasdance's latest show is a spicy little cocktail.
The fruit scene in question is aptly titled Apeeling and is one of three pieces which make up the Launceston-based company's latest offering, Passion fruit.
And if you thought the fruity excesses of Apeeling were a little on the weird side, just ask Tasdance performer Wendy McPhee what she did a couple of years back to take a break from dancing.
``I milked cows in Iceland,'' Wendy says matter-of-factly.
And she is not joking.
Wendy was sick of the dance routine and thought she needed a break to try something different.
She was up at the crack of dawn, in the ice-chilled Arctic, milking life for all it was worth.
``It was bloody cold, minus 10 outside,'' she recalled. ``It was a fantastic experience.'' Wendy started her dance career in London, working and travelling with a ``wild, weird and contemporary'' company.
Bar Blu
She has since worked in a circus, travelled with a small tent show and done a number of cabaret circus acts.
She has worked with a range of Australian dance groups and formed the Hobart-based Two Turns company.
Wendy believes life experience contributes a great deal to dance. But what life experience led Tasdance to explore the aesthetics of
fruit and movement in Apeeling is anybody's guess.
``It's a very theatrical piece and it comes across as being very sexual in parts but not exactly sexy . . . there's a sumptuous, rich, tempting quality,'' Wendy said.
``It's very, very subtle. There's no linear narrative. It's simply about fruit. The audience will either never eat fruit again or go home and have an orgy.'' Wendy said the piece started with the concept of decadence but became too broad.
It had to be stripped to its bare essentials _ which turned out to be the concept of fruit.
``Put dancers together with fruit and Michael Nyman's music and you have a volatile cocktail happening,'' she said.
A feature of the Tasdance Passion fruit performance is the Paul Mercurio-directed and choreographed piece Bar Blu.
The work is set in a bar and explores the individual journeys of a group of lost souls.
``Paul Mercurio is great. He was so good to work with because he's a normal bloke. He's a boy, a genuinely pleasant and funny guy with a wicked sense of humour bordering on sarcasm,'' Wendy said.
The star of the box office hit Strictly Ballroom, Mercurio was in Launceston last week for the opening nights of the new Tasdance show. ``Tasmanians love to meet him. He goes out and meets everybody,'' Wendy said. ``He loves bars and spends most nights going around the Launceston pubs in the billiards rooms making friends with people.'' The third piece in the Passion fruit trilogy is Julia Cotton's By Chance.
The piece examines the fragility of relationships. ``It's a very different piece, very narrative and people will be able to make a strong storyline out of it,'' she said.
--Bevilacqua Simon, Sunday Tasmanian 31 August 1997
She has worked with a range of Australian dance groups and formed the Hobart-based Two Turns company.
Wendy believes life experience contributes a great deal to dance. But what life experience led Tasdance to explore the aesthetics of
fruit and movement in Apeeling is anybody's guess.
``It's a very theatrical piece and it comes across as being very sexual in parts but not exactly sexy . . . there's a sumptuous, rich, tempting quality,'' Wendy said.
``It's very, very subtle. There's no linear narrative. It's simply about fruit. The audience will either never eat fruit again or go home and have an orgy.'' Wendy said the piece started with the concept of decadence but became too broad.
It had to be stripped to its bare essentials _ which turned out to be the concept of fruit.
``Put dancers together with fruit and Michael Nyman's music and you have a volatile cocktail happening,'' she said.
A feature of the Tasdance Passion fruit performance is the Paul Mercurio-directed and choreographed piece Bar Blu.
The work is set in a bar and explores the individual journeys of a group of lost souls.
``Paul Mercurio is great. He was so good to work with because he's a normal bloke. He's a boy, a genuinely pleasant and funny guy with a wicked sense of humour bordering on sarcasm,'' Wendy said.
The star of the box office hit Strictly Ballroom, Mercurio was in Launceston last week for the opening nights of the new Tasdance show. ``Tasmanians love to meet him. He goes out and meets everybody,'' Wendy said. ``He loves bars and spends most nights going around the Launceston pubs in the billiards rooms making friends with people.'' The third piece in the Passion fruit trilogy is Julia Cotton's By Chance.
The piece examines the fragility of relationships. ``It's a very different piece, very narrative and people will be able to make a strong storyline out of it,'' she said.