Oderin

Directed by Charlie Tomlinson and Amber Borotsik
Inspired by the poems of Agnes Walsh
Arts and Culture Centre St. John’s, NL | February 1-2, 2025

Reviewed by Nicole Haldoupis

The show starts with words. “It’s about water. It’s always about water.” Lines from Agnes Walsh’s poetry collection Oderin, on which the show is based, punctuate the performance. “Oh, open your mouth / throw back your head / taste the nothingness of stars / disappearing into you.” Haunting music from Michelle LaCour on the keyboard and Kate Read on the viola lulls the Arts and Culture Centre theatre into night, the lights dimming, the string lights sparkling stars above. 

Oderin, co-directed by Charlie Tomlinson and Amber Borotsik, is a multi-generational, multi-genre work of movement theatre. 

The movement begins: first with one dancer dragging another, a body, across the stage by their ankles, then a second pair, then a third. The three pairs move slowly across the stage, and I am astounded by the strength of the dancers. Their movements coupled with the haunting music feels like watching corpses being pulled along. The dancers place the bodies in a diagonal line across the stage, and each experiences the placement differently – one seems to be clinging to life, grasping for the dancer who pulled them there. The other seems more alive, the pair seated upright, playful. The dancer in the middle seems to be dead for sure – the one who brought them there positioning each part of their body in a comfortable resting pose, carefully lining up their feet, placing their hands on their chest, pulling their dress down over their knees to cover them up as much as possible. All of the dancers, one by one, lay down then in a diagonal line across the stage until they all become corpses next to their friends. The grief is palpable.

Michelle begins playing the accordion as the bodies reanimate, learning how to move again. The costumes of the dancers begin to shine here, old-timey skirts and dresses in muted and pastel colours. The dancers come together in the middle and hold up an empty teal dress in the shape of a standing person – again, the feeling of loss shines through the empty dress and the frame of dancers around it, some holding it up, some laying down below it. One of the dancers slips into the dress from below and it is filled. The brilliant Bernardine Stapleton tuts at the dancer in the new dress until she does up all of the buttons. The dancers begin to play, chasing each other across the stage, and joy has returned to the room. They congregate again in the middle of the stage, most of the chorus of dancers creating a structure with their bodies around the dancer in the teal dress – maybe a house, maybe a church – until the wind comes, or a storm, or hurricane, and the structure is blown around gently at first, and then more violently, chaotic, uncertain, until it is shattered and blown away. The chorus retreats and the dancer in the teal dress is propelled onto a pile of large pebbles, beach stones. She balances, and the sounds of the pebbles rubbing against each other echoes across the theatre, transporting the audience to a Newfoundland beach. A second dancer returns to the stage and starts singing along with the viola as the dancer in the teal dress lays face down on the pebbles, arms splayed, washed ashore. 

The show is a bounty of intimate and heartbreaking moments, including several once the larger set pieces are brought out. A metal-framed bed, made up with beautiful handmade crochet blankets, vintage wooden chairs, a walker, fake flowers, and a wheelchair set the stage later in the show – a woman seated on the bed next to another woman, brushing her hair. Later still, thick nautical rope is used as a prop alongside the beach rocks, with one dancer draping a section of the rope over herself, wrapping it around her shoulder like a python, and then drags it across the stage, an echo of the bodies dragging from the opening of the show. Themes of relationships between mothers and daughters and grandmothers, home, resettlement, aging, dementia, memory, resilience, death, grief, care, and love between women are overwhelming. Firmly rooted in Newfoundland, this show is full of magic.