Whatever else, it promises to be an interesting night out.
Desert Grassland Whiptail Lizards Act 1 is part of the Resolution Festival, the UK’s biggest festival of new choreography. Showing at The Place, it showcases an incredible 60 companies across 20 exhilarating nights.
Kirstin Halliday (they/them) is a dance artist and performer based in Glasgow who has choreographed, facilitated and performed in several diverse contexts. Their work is grounded by their research background in Geography, more evident than ever in this dance piece about lizards in the New Mexico desert.
For those who don’t know, Desert Grassland Whiptail Lizards are an all-female species that live in the deserts of New Mexico. They reproduce without fertilisation, but still stimulate each other to bring on ovulation- something you can go experience live on stage. Dance Artist Kirstin Halliday’s Desert Grassland Whiptail Lizards: Act 1 is a dance-drama that reimagines this species as an all-lesbian fantasy world. It’s co-choreographed with Aniela Piasecka and costumed by Sgàire Wood. . The lights rise on two dancers in full lizard costume, tails and all, lying prone upstage. A single clawed hand twitches and the audience is immediately hooked. The tension is gently punctured by playful, explanatory captioning that meticulously tracks every musical cue and bodily shift. When the lizards’ tongues begin to move, audible laughter ripples through the theatre, a testament to both the performers’ commitment and the sheer precision of their reptilian “body language.”
It’s a unique premise thats execution does it justice.The beginning drags on a few beats too long considering how little movement there is, and the fact that the entire piece is currently thirty minutes; but the commitment is admirable nonetheless. It begins simply with a New Mexican landscape and two performers in lizard costume, occasionally sticking their tongue out. The performers go all in on costume and embodiment, truly giving the sense that you’re watching the lizards undertake what constitutes as their mating ritual. It’s helped by the fact that the choreography takes places entirely on all fours.
The sound design was excellent and included both music and voiceover. The mockumentary style storytelling complimented the absurdist choreography perfectly as well as providing some tongue in cheek humour to an audience that was already laughing to themselves. This is the first segment of a body of work thaat will culminate in a triptych exploring the fetishization of lesbians; and beneath the farce lies a widening of perspective, as the work invites the audience to think differently about gender, performance, and the fetishization of lesbian bodies.
This show is part of Resolution 26, The Place – see all details here.