Life Drawing 23rd October 2026
“Unconstrued” was the title of this silent yet narrative and compelling balletic performance which we had the privilege of watching last Friday.
One of our group sketched as well as watched, another felt the need to record all her reactions in written words such as, gaze, held, tangled, stretch, pull away, roll, sculptural, still, support, and many more. The rest of us, even with sketchbooks on our laps, could not tear ourselves away from the action, even for half a minute, to jot down a brief outline.
Nigel and Orla are highly trained and practicing dancers and this was clearly evident in the controlled poise, balance, form and strength of the choreography.
They opened standing facing but a distance apart with a stillness and a steady curious or questioning gaze across the room at each other. The encircling movements began slowly, hands almost touching but hesitating, cautious and stopping short, then holding a pose regarding each other the movement frozen and held for moments. It gradually built up to some posed and still entangled positions so that the viewer almost could not distinguish which hand and foot belonged to who. There was alternate back on back balancing and support of one body on top of the other and some controlled rolling and pushing across the floor, all this suggestive and indicative of dominance, human and social interaction and experience.
This twenty six minutes long, silent, thought provoking, intriguing and beautiful presentation ended as it had begun with the two performers standing gazing across the room at each other just as the adjacent town hall clock, exactly on cue, filled our ears with eleven chimes and returned us to the fifth floor of Empire House.
After lunch Nigel and Orla recreated some of their previous poses so that we were enabled to create a collaborative set of eight drawings to appropriately end an excellent extraordinary day.
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