Sadler’s Wells theatre is always a full house. Never more deservedly than with Sutra. A most visual spectacle, it is absolutely thrilling! I was completely enthralled by it. It left me reeling and amazed at human ingenuity.
What I can’t quite work out is how a visual artist, Antony Gormley, designs the set for something like this. I can understand that a sculptor would have all the skills needed to make 100 different shapes out of blocks of wood. But it takes a good stretch of the imagination to get the boxes to become all the landscapes that I interpreted during the show. The set, to a large extent, IS the performance, in Sutra. The objects (visual art) and the martial artist are united in motion, and one without the other would not work. This is, I guess, a great example of a hybrid partnership, in this case, of a visual artist with choreographers, performers and musicians. Team work and inter-disciplinary collaborations are all the rage in business, science and art in these times of Relational Aesthetics. Sutra shows what a successful mix of creative skills can produce. I love it!
Antony Gormley is someone I have liked since he put up ‘the little man’ bronze sculpture in front of Birmingham’s Art Gallery. I was young at the time, but I think there must have been some controversy when the metal man was half buried in this public square, because I remember the affectionate comments made by my relatives in the Midlands. Maybe it was my nan’s delight at the sculpture, or maybe I just thought it looked like a toy, but when I saw it, I was charmed. The Angel of the North is on my long list of things to see…
I did have the privilege, lucky girl, of seeing Antony Gormley’s exhibition in the Hayward Gallery in 2007. What a show! It did for me what Sutra does – fills you with awe and ideas and energy and joy! The Hayward show drew in crowds to experience Blind Light, and while that was an incredible otherwordly experience, it was the hanging metal sculptures of fragmented men – the negative space and the space between our molecules – that wowed me. Phewh… Art has its moments.
