Augustine, Darkin Ensemble

How extraordinary... A day or so after I decide I am going to create a blog combining interests in the movement/performance field and interests in the study of bodies and history of medicine field, I come across a listing for a dance piece based on hysteria in Paris in the 1890s of all things...

Titled Augustine, and performed by the Darkin Ensemble, choreographed by Fleur Darkin, it was based on the photographs of patients at the Salpetriere, and one particular patient, the eponymous Augustine.

Hysteria is fascinating. I wrote about it for my masters in History of Science, Technology and Medicine, and read many articles in medical journals of the time about particular cases. As a concept it had been around since the Ancient Greeks, linked to ideas about pathology connected to the movement of the womb. Though this theory changed much over time, it stayed very much connected to femininity. The cases I looked at were stark in the disparity of causes identified - hysterical women could blame it on their anatomy and their overtly feminine disposition; hysterical men had probably been wobbled too much on the railway, or suffered another similar trauma.



We don't use the word in the same sense today. They didn't mean wailing with tears, or crying with laughter. Hysteria was the name for a vast constellation of symptoms, any collection of which the patient may possess, but which in all cases, the commonality was the absence of any clear physiological cause.

Having been around in one form or another for many many centuries, it faded out as a disease category in the 20th century. What happened to it, and why it was used as a label for specific groups of 'patients' down the ages has been investigated by many.

Anyway, the dancing, the dancing...

If I explained it in terms of components, more likely than not, noses would be turned up in disgust - disgust for 'experimental new-fangled nonsense'. Yes, the costumes were sparse, there were boxes to encage the dancers, there were cries of anguish, there was a soundtrack of breathing, panting, there was frenetic movements and tussles, there was a man laying out violins across the stage talking to himself about how the world was extinguishing itself...

But. There was also this - a visceral energy to the dancing that was so powerful at times I almost reeled as if hit by it. There were moments of captivating rhythm and soothingly sad melody. There were sequences of movement both fluid and frenetic that were enchantingly beautiful. There were 7 people on stage putting so much into it that it all held together and arrested me.

I liked it very much.

I liked the cellist on the side of the stage - who also provided the breathing soundtrack, some unconventional violin playing, and a lovely song-voice.

I liked the soundtracking to breath. Funnily enough I had been experimenting with this kind of thing walking home the other day - making the kind of sounds that people make inadvertently - sighs, umms, ahs, sounds of exertion and impatience and so on - to movements that felt appropriate. Yes, I must have looked a little strange, but so do most people on the streets of Archway. Anyway, it really did feel quite satisfying - the moving and the making of noise. A certain sound would match a certain noise. I liked it as an idea for a troupe of dancers. The same sounds or a cacophonous variety of sounds. I thought it could be quite impressive. A further kind of exploration of dance quite literally being a language - adding the expressions of non-verbal sounds on the top...

Darkin Ensemble's breath was not quite like that, it provided emphasis for the movement and heightened the sense of frustration and exertion that the dancer in the box was creating. But it had this great rhythm, which was quite hypnotic for me.

I loved the poses the 'hysterics' took. Trying to portray the complicity between doctor and patients in displaying the illness to academics, Darkin had her dancers contract themselves into taut and jagged shapes, which qualities travelled over into the movement pieces. The vibrancy of outstretched poses and flinging limbs reminded me of times when I've had such great rage or frustration that the body just seems full of some potent energy, almost forcing your limbs out, forcing a flailing, fighting, scratching release....

Release was the last section. There was not too tight a narrative; symptoms, treatment, release were the stages, but the first two seemed to be a collection of ideas and images - the helplessness of patients, the relationships between doctors and patients, frustration, delusion, performance... The third, release, really did give a feeling of release though. The patient/doctor accoutrements were removed, and in neutral clothing - just as humans - the dancers let go of the fight and just moved with energy and lyricism.

Above all it was the energy that impacted on me - jumping into another's arms, fighting, contracting into a pose. Everything was done with such startling vitality. It made me feel alive and it made me want to live harder, brighter, bigger, more hungrily.

I left the centre feeling gladdened. It was my first visit to Laban, and it's an awesome building - the angular hills, the shimmering colours, the shed-like humbleness, combined with smooth, vast majestic curves...

And the whole of the walk back to the station was bathed in golden sunlight. A tower block in browns and whites looked truly beautiful against a deep blur sky. Razor wire and barbed wire were calmly coiled, making pretty shadows incongruous with their nature. A little church spire took on a pumpkin-coloured hue, traffic lights winked at me, even an abandoned sign behind a fence struck me as being in the perfect place - it was like walking in a work of art.

I sat at the front of the DLR and watched the sun squeeze out its final deep rich rays over canary wharf and the wonders of east london and felt filled with riches.

Listen to Radio 4 programme on Hysteria http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20040422.shtml
Great book on hysteria and female psychiatry http://www.amazon.com/Female-Malady-Elaine-Showalter/dp/0860688690/ref=pd_sim_b_1/103-9546212-5033427
Review of Augustine http://www.musicomh.com/theatre/augustine_0507.htm
Fleur Darkin http://www.writingthebody.co.uk/writingthebody/Fleur%20Darkin.html
Darkin Ensemble http://www.writingthebody.co.uk/writingthebody/welcome.html
The Musician http://www.sarahmoody.co.uk/