Review – Luminous
In an almost blacked-out tent, with a sold-out audience squeezed in shoulder to shoulder, orange and yellow neon forms on the canvas of a young man’s body. To a pulsating, rhythmic beat, slowly, glowing patterns emerge, reflecting in the glass ball that swirls fluidly through his fingers. Luminous is black-light luminescent body-art, burlesque and circus show, and while you may be able to see any of these a thousand times at other venues throughout the city, you will not see them together like this.
The costumes and detail in the body-paint are wonderful, and transform the small and not-quite-completely-pitch-black La Petite Grande into a magical neon underworld. The multidisciplinary team showcase their skills, from dance to acrobatics, juggling to pantomime, in vignettes that take us from a bright Pandora-esque insect world to a pixelated video game. While as individuals, their performances are not necessarily extraordinary – with a few dropped pins, balls and diablos – what makes them so is the spectacular body art, and the hypnotic, semi-trance state we fall into as light, sound and movement come together. The fault of the show is in the size of its venue, which does not allow the space, nor the darkness, that would truly see the effect most realised.
Where concept, skill and sound come together most strongly is in the illumination of movement. With the human form hidden in black, the luminescent glow of twirling sticks or batons becomes mesmerising. The pulsing beat of dubstep and house and the whirling and spinning apparatus manipulate the way we see not just the glowing sticks but the performer and their performance. Drawing attention to particularities of the body – a white set of gloves on blacked out arms, a disembodied mask that bobs and weaves – we see not just the luminescent form, but also its absences. It is a dark and magical place, one that transforms and transcends. And when the lights come up and the performers – Matt Anderson, Chris Willshire, Jessica Bloom, Jonny Turley and Watson Miller – are revealed, the shock of their suddenly real and human forms, and the marks of the paint that still drips from their bodies, is testament to the transformative quality of their performance.
