In THAW, a lone figure struggles for balance on three tonnes of ice, suspended by a crane, high above a public space. It’s a confronting spectacle, full of jeopardy, and also hope. THAW is the latest work from Australian company Legs On The Wall, heading for a season at the Greenwich+Docklands International Festival in August.
Legs On The Wall, fondly known as ‘Legs’, is an internationally renowned physical theatre company.
“It came from a group of artists coming together and doing street performances,” says Joshua Thomson, a dance and physical theatre performer, and artistic director of Legs On The Wall. “Since then, we have progressed from floor-based work and street performance to aerial performances. We sit in the public art space using spectacle to draw in crowds that may not be usual theatre crowds. We use that spectacle to engage minds. All our work has a concept, and it must collect the wonder of people.”
THAW is being presented at the University of East London as part of the 2024 Greenwich+Docklands International Festival, London’s free, annual outdoor theatre and performing arts festival. “You can come and see it multiple times,” says Thomson. “Over that period, depending on the weather, it loses half its mass. I have lifted many things on a crane. But there is risk in this ice. It’s alive, it’s changing. It’s not something that is static.”
Thomson is highly collaborative in his making process. “The work belongs to everyone who works in it,” he says. “Imagine the ice form as a platform. It is a triptych; there are actually three individual performers that inhabit the ice just under three hours each. They represent moments between the industrial revolution to where we are now. The physicality is another beast — aerial spectacle, but also fine moments of body weather in choreography. I’m always surprised by any image of THAW. Theaction of melting ice means less movement in this context is also amazing.”
The imagery that THAW presents has an immediacy in its activism – the ice is melting, the human figure is at peril. “All of the work I make in an environmental space is about hope,” Thomson explains. “I don’t see much use in work, if there is no hope in it.”
If the politics of THAW are clear and profound, they are represented in a form that allows wonder and awe. One way to think about impact, says Thomson, is “how little environmental impact does the artwork have in presentationand production. The other side that I am interested in as a maker is what is the impact of an idea. The kernel of an idea of an artwork, you may not realise the impact of that until many years later.”
Thomson offers another observation about the impact art can make in climate justice. “Innovation is a part of the answer. We need to stop doing the things we are doing. I know that I have wants – that cost. I still think as a society, we will want to use electricity. We do need innovation to be part of the environmental process. You have to have creative thought to imagine another way. And that what we have to start to think. We need to think about something different.”
THAW is created by Joshua Thomson for Legs On The Wall, in collaboration with performers Tamara Bouman, Isabel Estrella, Jenny Large and Johnas Liu, with composition by Matthew Burtner.
For more information, visit festival.org/GDIF-2024 and legsonthewall.com.au.
By Tamara Searle of Dance Informa.
