Infra GCSE Resource

ANALYSIS
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STRUCTURE OVERVIEW
ANALYSIS OF INFRA BY LUKE JENNINGS 4
There are twelve dancers in Infra, six female and six male. Wayne McGregor
states that he isn’t thinking about gender in a binary 2 way, where a society
splits its male and female sexes into gender roles, gender identities and
gender-specific characteristics. His aim is to provide a snapshot of the whole
of society, the real world.
AUTHOR AND DANCE CRITIC
In Infra (2008), McGregor offers us the conceptual and the lyrical in
perfect equipoise. The curtain rises on a stage peopled by motionless
dancers who begin to move in a tense, exploratory fashion, as if propping
the limits of their outward reach and their capacity for contact. Above them,
meanwhile, electronically generated figures move with stylized grace along
an LED screen designed by the artist Julian Opie.
+ + The piece accumulates using an episodic 3 structure. It gradually builds
in complexity using pace, rhythm and number of dancers.
+ + The movement language and motifs are introduced slowly in order
to help the audience to gradually process it; over time the structure
builds in complexity.
+ + Eventually the piece has a full visual field in which the audience is invited
to individually select what they would like to watch. McGregor explains
that it is more like an accidental way of seeing, reflecting our experience
in everyday life; the audience will not see everything with one view.
2. Binary – Relating to two
things or two parts.
3. Episodic – This type of
choreographic structure
includes a series of independent
sections that when put together
communicate the overarching
theme of the work.
See Appendix A for full glossary.
In Max Richter’s score, we discern the staccato beeps of Morse code,
another form of attempted, encrypted contact. A duet ensues, emotionally
inflected but mysterious and, as the man tenderly leads the woman through
a series of extreme articulations, Richter’s music assumes an elegiac tone.
We hear a repeated, falling phrase, which seems to echo the dancers’
poignant yearning.
4. Some of the vocabulary used
in this analysis is explained in the
‘Infra Glossary’ – see Appendix A.
There are further duets, each more tensely mannered than the last, until
six couples are performing simultaneously, each in its own box of light,
but each framed by darkness.
+ + This is partnered with clearing the stage and giving the audience just
one duet or solo to view, or contrasting lots of movement with complete
stillness or slow motion, allowing the viewers’ eyes to focus on one
element once more.
+ + The climax of the piece includes six male/female duets performed
simultaneously in blocks of light.
Train-whistles sound, and we are reminded of the lines from T.S. Eliot’s
poem The Waste Land… Eliot is comparing commuters to souls in torment,
and on cue, the stage is suddenly filled with anonymous traversing figures,
all seemingly blind to each other. At the centre a female sinks to the ground,
weeping inconsolably. The crowd dissolves, taking the woman with it and
a final lyrical duet expresses acceptance and a cautious note of hope.
+ + A highlight of the piece is towards the end when the stage is filled with
a crowd of ‘normal’ people walking like pedestrians in one particular
direction. This is contrasted with a solo female dancer centre stage moving
slowly to the floor, demonstrating grief and despair.
+ + The piece ends with one duet that continues as the lights and music fade.