Dance review: An Autopsy of a Mother, a Bear and a Fridge by Deborah Light

Cath Barton

Waiting for Deborah Light to begin her performance at Abergavenny’s Dance Blast dance studio, the audience faced a stark, clinical set, a long (dissection?) table, strip lighting and a large fridge, back stage right.

This, composer and sound designer Tic Ashfield’s unsettling soundtrack and the use of the word ‘autopsy’ in the title of the show, seemed to promise darkness, death even.

But no, this show was very much about life and, to quote Light, the power and resilience of women, and specifically mothers.

Light says of this dance/theatre work that it is ‘rooted in my own experience of being a woman and a mother and the patriarchal systems that frame that experience.’

Motherhood

Coming back with a new show after a period of years focussing on her young family, she uses her own body, the fridge and a large toy bear to explore the complexities of women’s experiences of motherhood.

Moving through the space with grace, she slips from physical to intellectual exploration and back again.

The fridge is a metaphor for the isolation sometimes faced by mothers; the bear is both child and mother, as well a representation of ecological and consumerist threats.

This is no easy journey, there are passages of visceral starkness, underpinned by Ashfield’s explosive soundscape; Light crying out inaudibly inside the fridge is one such, and her anger about the pressures which women face is palpable and without doubt authentic.

In some of Light’s earlier work as a choreographer, notably for Hide (2013-15) and Caitlin (2024-19) she has given the limelight on stage to others. Here she is herself and only herself the performer, and deserves full credit for the integrity of her performance.

Collaborators

That said, her work is never egotistical; the audience are her collaborators, both in the R&D
work which has preceded the finished work, and in the live performance. ‘Is the door closed?’ she says, and we feel immediately that this is something we are in together.

At the end of performance Light is sitting on the floor. ‘I’m tired,’ she says, ‘but I’m still here, and I’m not alone. I’m making some space and having a rest.’

There followed tea and cake and conversation. The young woman sitting next to me said watching this work had given her new respect for her own mother. And that is a testimonial to its power.