Papaya Dance

This is the next of the five dances that we have been working with: The Papaya. It originated in The Philippines and then spread over Asia and America largely bypassing Europe. The basic movements are very simple, though there is a section that speeds up and also a large impro section about half way through. Watching endless videos of school groups, prisoners and shop assistants doing The Papaya they all treat this unset mid-section differently, though most do set some sort of elaborate routine to it. The music is unusual and dates from a 1976 recording by a Polish jazz singer Urszula Dudziak. The story goes it was picked up by a Philippino TV game show not so long ago and with the addition of the dance became a huge hit. Not that we are busy with this history, we are not approaching these dances from a documentary point of view, but it does make a curious story. No, for us these dances provide a movement world into which we have placed ourselves and through the manipulation of certain parameters such as tempo, direction (fwd/back), volume etc. it is proving to be a diverse enough world to sustain a performance. Well, I say that now. On Saturday we will give a work in progress showing, that may be when we see better what sort of world it is that we are constructing.

Enjoy The Papaya!