How I Faded and Disintegrated

Sean Tuan John
Diversions Dance House, Wales Millennium Centre

Tackling the descent into senility isn’t quite the subject choice many dance choreographers would leap at.
Welsh choreographer Sean Tuan John has been working on this latest video and movement work in sections, leading up to these performances of the complete package: How I Faded and Disintegrated.

Here we have three solo movement pieces which I question would stand alone as dances, starting with ’Faded’, opening with a small house that he puts on his head for video to be projected onto, dribbling amongst a sea of alarm clocks as a voiceover explains the snapshot action.

The second is ’Brut 45’ as he becomes an old man with false Elvis style wig, 70s clothes and a medallion from his long gone wife who talks of his life as he dances a la Saturday Night Fever.

’Disintegrated’, the final dance is life in a “home” for the mentally infirm.

The evening culminates in our disintegrating man wandering off through a snow shower that falls from the sky. It is performed against a cartoon style video of the home, Meadowlands, which is interspersed with short clips of real wrinkled hands.

The dances are separated by two films that are stunningly acted by Howell Evans as an old man talking about the on set of dementia and Ri Richards as a guilt-ridden old age people’s home nurse who has abused her residents. Written and directed by Sean, these are intensely powerful.

The overall package? Definitely engaging and stimulating, ultimately distressing and deeply poignant. But was that because of the power of the two films and did the live performance greatly add to that? Brut 45 is definitely an effective piece of live theatre with a witty, dark and mesmerising character creation that you laugh and almost cry with while Faded contains disturbingly effective physical movement.

Diversions Dance House was perfect for a very intense, intimate show that demands a close relationship with the audience that is one of the hallmarks of this unique venue.

Disintegrated slightly had the feel of a mime or even ballet performance with repetitions of movements signifying actions in the narrative of the piece. My mind wandered off to the children performing Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the film the King and I with stylised, over emphasised hand gestures accompanying the story telling.

What I would really like is to see how old people would react to the piece.

Mike Smith