Welcome to the world of Metacorpus, where the barriers between audience and performer are broken down in a highly original piece of performance art.

Others watch the atonal balloon-scraping squall of two silver-clad performers pushing discs along wires. All heads turn for the figure who appears suspended on the high rope, silken tubes draping from her body like a ballgown train and swaying as she improvises bends of the body.

In the first part, the attractions in various parts of the room build into a pulsating alternative take on the scientific workings of the inner ear. An audience member becomes entwined in the twisting butterfly cochlea shell.

The second half offers a Zen-like contrast; we sit like a kindergarten class around a womb-like carpet and watch the awakening of four foetuses curled up like new-born pups in the centre of a woolen spiral of intestines.

Bewitching, intoxicatingly fresh, Metacorpus make sense of the desire to return to the womb." The Scotsman, June 2000 below: 'Mothers'

All costumes shown by Jeanette

review: The Herald, June 2000

"Something lies at the heart - and soul - of what Metacorpus does that is hard to condense into words. In part, it´s a kind of unspoiled curiosity, our willingness to be caught up in the wonderment of being alive. If these seem very innocent, childlike qualities then you should know that the work produced by costume artists Anna Cocciadiffero and Jeanette Sendler is both intricate and sophisticated in concept and realisation.

The Herald, June 2000

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Right: An exhibition of the some work at Edinburgh College of Art Sculpture Court. This work was part of Jeanette's Masters show.

Left: Outdoor installation Warriston Cemetery

Water dissolvable costume:

Animated Body Appendages
Artist Metacorpus
Details: Venue: The Arches, Glasgow

"Probing the boundaries between theater, dance and installation art, Metacorpus propels you into a paralysing landscape. Peepshows, sensory armour and bird birthing cages invade audience parameters with an addictive fusion of sound. Dissolved, magnified and pneumatic, ten performers assault the senses in Metacorpus' exploration of costume art"

Funct 98, Event Guide

This is a fashion show - the work of two designers put on show for the public. But the work is not tacked to mannequins for sedate perusal. Rather they clothe performers. Here we have costume artists, creating conceptual pieces to be worm by performers. But this is not theater safely confined to a stage. This is a crossover exploratory dance confrontation buried in a tunnel beneath a railway bridge. Knowing all this, I expect a strange night- I would not be interested otherwise, and a strange night is what is delivered.

The venue is The Arches; known for theatre presentations and clubs, it is a unique venue for entertainment. The first arch is the bar, in which the audience waits before the performance. Once ready we are led through a wider, bare tunnel into a third arch. The arch is long and relatively narrow, though claustraphobicly so. It is fairly bare with a couple of installation art pieces scattered along its length. The audience has enough time to examine these before the trip has started.

The concepts involved are twofold - one is the body and the other is "transmigration" of body. There are ten performers, five for each of the costume designers and the work they are presenting. Anna Cocciadiferro's works relate to the body and the symbolism its organs attain. The first of the performers is called "Dissolvable" and relates to the last breath - attached to a makeshift drip (plastic tubing, and filters) she rotates around the point - flurries of motion define a struggle to catch the last essence of life from the fluids supplied - collapse, and the performer is subdued suspended from the floor only by the stability of the stand. As these movements die out the second performer is led out behind where the audience is standing - she is "hair" - proud and vulnerable - blindfolded she is left within a circle tarpaulened off from the rest of the world - blindfolded and bound in delicate cloths she is vulnerable, the demeanor of a baby bird - exploring the boundaries confirms confinement - leads to frustration (lashing out) and despair (hunched and shaking). The other costumes play off each other in a choreographed performance. Tooth, Optical, and Vein - each with precise detail and stunning construction. Tooth, a victorian lady in her underwear - a frame that a ballgown would go over - representing protection - mounted at intervals around each circumference of the frame are teeth. Vein, is silk fragility, embroidered with butterflies signifying the fleeting nature of beauty. Optical, a deconstruction of the eye - wires and contraptions - organic flower stems or pneumatic pistons - peering and curious - confronting the audience, walking through and around - stopping to touch and be touched.

While the work of Jeanette Sendler represents the transformation of a human into a bird and back. A transformation, a migration, a metaphor for an attempt to understand identity. The choreography sends the performers through a series of rituals, each representing stages of the transformation. The performers wear white body paint over which they have a range of latex/feathered clothes - loin clothes, shrouds, face masks and crowns. We start with the first stage in a bird cage - wire mesh and a bar for perching. Enclosing this is a disturbing series of "skins", representing the shedding of the outer human. These skins are latex faces attached to long white robes - incrementally the face peels and falls revealing the skull behind, the face resting on the chest withers and dies. Leaping from a side tunnel we have spring - full of life and new born, dancing with joy for all to see - flying towards the encircling audience till they make way. This stage leads the caged stage from the cage to a stone circle . Results in the ritual of protection (surround you with stone to make you safe) and burial (a cairn to that which has gone before). This is followed by a series of confrontations as the bird transforms further to bird and then back to human. Which includes the release from the nest - stripping down and leaving the feathery spine behind (the core of the bird) and rolling around the floor with the pain and ecstasy of return.

Each of the performances here goes on together, with each designer having her own composer - Neil MacArthur (Sendler) and swab(Cocciadiferro). The sound through the evening is seamless and along with the calculated lighting effects leads the audience. We wander around the tunnel from one end to another, guided by the fading speakers giving way to blare, and dimming lights to glow. Through the night we are manipulated and confronted - unsure of where we will go next and how far the performers will push us.

RVWR: PTR
August 1998