Tha-at’s right (2018) 16mm film, 11:07

Tha-at’s right captures the process of choreographing a dance from a review of a dance. This review, written in 1959 by critic and poet Edwin Denby in response to a ballet by Stravinsky, articulates music and movement using an idiosyncratic stream of metaphors. Tha-at’s right takes these outlandish descriptions literally by using them as scripts or scores, translating the written word back into a performance.

Commissioned by An assembly.

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‘...a seemingly disconnected parade of musical and choreographic gestures that swing - like Denby’s prose - between baroque grace and withering bathos. It’s funny - but more than that, it raises questions about translation, the fitness of words to sounds or movements, the role of criticism, and the authority of the score.’
- The Wire, December 2018

‘There’s a sly humour throughout the piece, made all the more subversive by never letting the audience relax into certainty over what, or who, is being made fun of from one moment to the next...The dancers bring a discipline and dignity to the ridiculousness. Like in a Robert Ashley piece, only with movement instead of words, the music does its work while the audience is distracted, a deadpan “No comment” while slipping a diffuse, brittle collage of chamber music past our ears.’
- Boring Like a Drill, October 2018