Dance work about consent is funny, sexy and frankly weird

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DANCE
idk ★★★★
Carriageworks, until August 26

Recent legislation introduced across Tasmania, Queensland, NSW, Victoria and the ACT defines affirmative consent as “freely given, ongoing and enthusiastic”. If only it were that simple. Force Majeure’s new work, idk, explores the kaleidoscopic nuances of consent: those myriad moments in life when you have a choice to go along with something, to do something different, to commit wholeheartedly or to just fail to object. How we express our consent constantly and implicitly, through movement, gesture, sound and touch.

Adriana Daff wears a bear costume in the opening scenes of idk.Credit: Brett Boardman

This funny, sexy and frankly weird artist-devised work, directed by Force Majeure artistic director Danielle Micich, takes the audience through a series of loosely connected vignettes. There’s an infant rolling around in its cot; girls trying on dresses; would-be lovers feeling their way into intimacy. And there’s the Bear, a life-size, furry, brown, cuddly toy.

It is the Bear that sets off the first ripple of laughter. We laugh when we notice the cuddly toy slumped against a ladder is moving. We laugh with delight, with surprise and, often, with a vague sense of discomfort as we try to make sense of what is going on. What does become clear is that every detail counts in this intricately constructed piece, whether it is the velvet nap of a rug, or the outstretched little finger brushing against another body. Expression and, by extension, consent, is embodied in every waking moment.

One scene shows a woman’s early experience with pornography.Credit: Brett Boardman

Putting on and taking off clothes is a motif. The performers each wear floor-length white robes that can cover every curve of their body, but can also be twisted, tied, adapted and transformed into ceremonial dress or clubbing gear or baby swaddling. They use a ladder, rugs and ropes to create spaces.

They also speak. Gabriel Comerford, Adriane Daff and Merlynn Tong, the three performers, seem to have no fear: their dialogue slips out with easy grace while their vocalising adds menace and beauty. And all the while, their bodies tell the story beyond the words. Of how consent is so often implicit and nuanced, and how explicit consent, consent that is “freely given, ongoing and enthusiastic”, is a rare, inadequate and oddly unhuman response in a complicated world.

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