Asia Dance Channel

Beneath Polka-Dotted Skies
Goethe Institute, Regional Dance Summit, Jakarta
Choreographer and dancer: Donna Miranda
6 August 2009

By Choy Su-Ling

Donna Miranda carries with her a cheery disposition, a perpetual smile and a wonderful sparkle of enthusiasm in her eyes. But on stage, she is all business-like and deeply serious about her work.

At the Regional Dance Summit in Jakarta recently, Donna represented the Philippines to present the piece Beneath Polka-Dotted Skies created for the 2007 Yokohama Dance Collection-R, Solo X Duo Competition, in which she won the Jury Prize Award.

To be honest, this is the first Filipino contemporary dance exposure for me. When I finally got a taste of it, I was not disappointed.

The work began with a video of Donna in a polka-dotted dress packing clothes into a classic, old leather suitcase. The initial impression was that this packing would go on and on until the bag was full but the monotony of this mundane task was interrupted when she suddenly throws in a metallic concoction of knives and coins every now and then. My first thought was, ‘murder!’ And then I found myself asking, ‘how is she going to get pass immigration?’ It then occurred to me that while the suitcase implied travelling, the latter thought subconsciously suggested distance; and a very far one.

‘Journey’ as a theme prevails, but not without the sense of restlessness of being in one place. The tiresome effort of lugging the suitcase across a lush green garden, and the aimless rolling-about on the leaves-carpeted ground in the video echoes the burdens of physical movement.

A similar tone is manifested on stage where Donna throws herself on the floor and traces the rolling movements. She attempted to glide while fixated in one spot and to run while sitting down - the notion of wanting to move on but still being stuck in one place is evident and frustratingly futile. And these were underlined by the familiar tick-tock of water dancing on tin cans on a rainy day – a soundscape that made me envision a person stuck at home, looking longingly out of the window into the distance blanketed by the rain.

In the concluding scene, she walks onto stage carrying the luggage featured earlier in the video and emptied it, pouring a bag-full of brown leaves. She uses either feet to gather the leaves around her and we hear the dry leaves crushing before she steps into the luggage and attempts to close it while she lay in a foetal-like position.

Ultimately, the classic, old, leather suitcase became symbolic of the ‘good old me’ or Donna herself, which tells us that wherever she goes, there’s still that bit of her that remains, that tags along. While the new is exciting, we all revel in the comforts of familiarity. The suitcase also became the schema that connects both video and stage spaces offering the thread of seamless continuity between the alternating video-stage worlds.

Donna used both her body and video as media to convey a highly personal and contemplative solo that works within the confines of a small circular-space that frames her comfort zone. Beneath the sky, the earth is lit, in the beginning, as a large singular polka-dot, and closed in the end with a shower of small polka-dots, but encased within an invisible circular wall still. You can travel the world, but you can’t really leave ‘home.’