Zendra Giraudo is WHITESNAKE3000, one year after their contemporary dance theatre work premiered at The Blue Room Theatre in 2023’s Summer Nights program. CO3‘s independent dance initiative, IN.HOUSE, which provides support to an independent dance artist to further develop a choreographic work and present it to the public, has brought the band back together to the State Theatre Centre WA to present the show for a limited season.
WHITESNAKE3000 is a cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural dance theatre work co-created by Giraudo and a team of collaborators that explores Giraudo’s personal reckoning with her identity. Along with the voices of collaborator and director Joe Paradise Lui, movement artist Emma Fishwick, and poet Andrew Sutherland, Giraudo takes us through the Chinese legend of the White Snake by breaking the story into four parts and giving it historical and personal context through monologue, PowerPoint slides, and dance.
To be frank, this work is such a detailed collage of sight, sound, voices, and movement that encapsulating it into a brief review simply won’t do it justice. As I watched the piece unfold, I was so impressed by how the performance elements were interwoven, the leitmotifs that were both subtle and deliberate, and the care given to brief moments and small details. The finger guns of a western gunfight later mirrored by a two finger movement in Chinese opera, the crinkling of butcher paper followed by the crinkling of foil on the mic, prostrations in a Buddhist temple and Emma Fishwick’s dance mantra, Morricone and Wagner…these are the kinds of elements that make no sense out of context in writing, but which are so integral to the complex worldbuilding of WHITESNAKE3000.
Giraudo is gifted with the ability to transform and morph her physical being to tell a story; they are light as air, swift, fluid, sharp and precise. Whatever the idea, emotion, or story requires, they become. As for the narrative content of the show, WHITESNAKE3000 delves into deeply personal territory from Giraudo’s life and identity, but it speaks to a larger experience of displacement and dissociation from one’s own cultural identity. We hear about Giraudo’s family history and the traditions she learned both as a child and as a young adult as a dance student. She asks us to consider the passing along of traditions, and through the White Snake legend, posits how our cultural traditions and legends change through their retelling over time.
WHITESNAKE3000 questions, observes, and instructs, and gives us insights about history, culture, individual identity, and the process of creating art in collaboration. As a work in development, it can only go from strength to strength as Giraudo continues to evolve and transform. WHITESNAKE3000 offers plenty of ideas to chew on after its viewing, and is a remarkable example of artistic synergy.
CICELY BINFORD
WHITESNAKE3000 runs from 20 – 24 March at the State Theatre Centre of WA. For tickets and more information, visit here.
