REDD (2006)
A choreographic work by Tedd Robinson
Within this imagistic meditation on solitude, with bats and bears and mice for company, Tedd Robinson creates a canvas of his life. In the three sections of Redd, he muses on art and isolation, escapes into fantasy, and explores a new relationship with reality.
The opening image of the work reveals him balancing a stick on his shoulders. Then he takes a stylized walk, through his woods perhaps – a whiff of the country gentleman in his belted coat and soft cap, moving across ground scattered with large squares of light and fabric.
The autobiographical text in the first section is part of the stage environment and Robinson says he merely “follows the rules.” This text becomes the set, the imagery, costume and sound of the work – his body becomes the story. Reading the words from various surfaces, sometimes from the fabric in which he wraps himself, he unfolds tales of moving to the country, his neighbours, caution and wariness – bears in the woods! He reflects that an artist is someone whose “defining attribute is to bring to reality that which is not.” The activities of the work become the dance; as he recalls smoking out seventeen bats from a hole in his new home, for instance, he reads and tosses aside strips of words with rhythmic, formalized gestures.
Tedd Robinson’s head is a focus of attention throughout Redd; he swaths it, balances sticks on it, dons glasses, and speaks about his search for coherence between inner and outer experience.
He talks about how being alone has replaced his fantasy of a perfect love with a far more practical idea: the need for someone to hold the ladder while he climbs onto the roof. Still, he laments the loss of dreams; paradoxically, isolation has made him realize that he cannot escape the world in which we live.
Precarious acts play with notions of risk and control, while Robinson’s identity shifts and changes. In the central section of the dance, fantasy glides in a glittering “robe”, then this imagined being of light morphs into an antic gnome-like creature who jumps through a rhythmic dance. The music is a collage of wailing pipes, opera and rhythmic song – genres colliding in his epic imagination.
The final section shows Redd (a clever title, at once anagram and wry comment) as the creator of his own “exotic island”. He unrolls a long spool of fabric, walking and turning while balancing a huge stick on his head, revisiting an earlier metaphor. He cocoons himself in the fabric of his thoughts and his being. In an image of balance and support, he resumes the journey of this dance, then comes to rest in a meditative pose.
Continuity in contemplation; the elegant simplicity and multilayered imagery of Redd is reflective. Both melancholy and wistful, this soliloquy of middle years illuminates the realities of relinquishing fantasy and dreams.
Carol Anderson