Enter Achilles

Enter Achilles

Lloyd Newson

Enter Achilles automatically triggers, to an audience, the connotations of the Achilles heel or Achilles tendon which from Greek mythology has gained the label as area of weakness. However, Enter Achilles was initially an idea provoked by Lloyd Newsons own experiences. In the early 1980’s Newson injured his hamstring and Achilles tendon in a ballet class he was taking. Whilst hospitalised only Newsons Female and homosexual friends came to visit him and show their worry and concern. This consequently led Lloyd to do some reading into male sexuality and male femininity. He was intrigued by the interaction of men to other men and how heterosexual men find it extremely difficult to express their feminine or more emotional side to their personality. This in turn led to the idea and stimulus for Enter Achilles.

The genre that Enter Achilles would be categorised into would be postmodernism as it returns to traditional concepts for movement ideas that had previously been appreciated by audiences yet making them something new and unique. For example in traditional ballets the interaction and lifting of two dancer would be classed as a pas de deux whereas Newson has developed this accepted dance concept into movement manipulation and �contact’.

Enter Achilles steps sideways from the gay issue that has permeated much of DV8’s work prior to this choreography. It finds Newson moving towards “Territory that is new to him” - Watson. K. Hampstead and Highgate Gazette (nodate). The piece is a contemporary piece that anyone can appreciate as movement is pedestrian and the narrative fairly linear. It has been considered to be his most accessible (in terms of readership and audience) piece to date, meaning an audience can appreciate the piece for what it is without prior dance training or knowledge of the piece. Even in the name of the company DV8 the audience are aware that this choreographers work is going to stimulate the audience and produce new material that does not reject the limitations of classical ballet but вЂ?deviates’ from them thus creating a new style in keeping with post-modern conventions.

The basic premise for the piece is built around a night down at the local pub. It focuses on many issues associated with and around the working class man around the time of Thatcher’s Britain. During the 1980’s the accepted Patriarchal society was starting to diminish. Women started to take up a larger role in the household and formulate strong opinions for themselves to move away of its traditional 20th century span. This piece explores the notions of these working class men, how men interact and express emotion to one and other and popular culture of the 1980’s.

As a viewer the piece can feel at times like a fly-on-the-wall documentary following and depicting the lives of these вЂ?average’ stereotypical men on an emotional journey on a night at the Pub. Issues such as homophobia, Pub culture, sex, voyeurism, violence and the football culture of the time are all conveyed throughout the piece making the whole an eclectic mix of themes and issues of which people can relate. The movement in the piece is more stylised and physical theatre than “clearing the space for set routines” (anon. teachers resource pack, EA).

There are a lot of pedestrian gestures built into the choreography. Newson has tried to make the piece seem as close to real life as possible without getting to the stage where it is just viewed as a dance piece and nothing more. Also the inclusion of mime helps to make the piece more diverse i.e. drinking games and slow motion wrestling and manipulation of movement. The traditional British pint is marked as a totem in this piece, a symbolic icon of which the men can pin their hopes and drown their sorrows. It is seen as a fallacy of which they can bury all their insecurities and they cling onto it to prove their masculinity.

All the characters in the piece (bar one) find it very hard to be in touch with their feminine and emotional side, “The beer proves to be a double edged sword” (anon, company resource pack), one the one hand it proves to be a relaxant and allows some of the men to find this feminine more explorative side on the other a way to relieve all their pent up aggression on anyone defying normality.

At the start of the piece we are introduced and a voyeur in the life of the landlord in the flat above the Pub, but he has a sordid secret. He is fornicating with a blow-up female sex toy. It becomes apparent through the way he manipulates the doll and interacts with it that he has developed certain feelings towards this inhuman inanimate object which he personifies to the point he believes it is real. The first question of male masculinity is where he rejects the phone call (girlfriend? A potential girlfriend?). The fact he rejects the call to favour the inanimate blow-up doll makes u as an audience question…Is this doll the only “woman” he can relate