Baby Cake

Baby Cake is an exceptionally honest and raw new duo performance by Kerensa Diball and Yuhui Ng- Rodrigeuz. They are a collaborative team in the practice of site, movement and domestic space. This is a post-modern piece addressing contemporary feminist artists.

They weave themselves in out around the space with a comforting warmth yet a detached calmness. An aired pre-recorded message is posed as a dilemma for both, unable to commit time to their art because of their own personal commitments.

Yuhui Ng- Rodriguez is a mother of a two-year old boy who has been integrated into the performance - he plays and joins in with an unassuming ease. It works well and it opens discussion about mother artists torn between nurturing and artistic creation. Rodriguez bares her soul with a beautiful and honest cathartic energy. “Unsex me here,” she cries out as she grabs at her shapeless, sagging milk breasts.

Both women are distinctively separate as they address the themes within their   domestic and culturally defined socio-political spaces.

Diballi appears whimsical playing the perfect hostess serving sweet treats to the audience with an absurd pathos. She is an uber urban dweller who has a problem with gastro-parasites after living in London.

Her pivotal time is outside of the space looking at us through the window flipping her cards of handwritten statements; challenges the everyday drollness of one’s life.

Both women address their familial heritage and class backgrounds. How long do you boil your eggs? The pressures of the perfect princess! The need to marry well!  Will inter racial marriage create problems? Am l middle class because l married an architect? Is my fertility at stake?

The quasi-improvised nature of this show works well in the small space. The piano player addressed as Roman punctuates sounds, and lighting is used with sharp subtlety further enhancing the integral essence of this production.

This is a thought-provoking show that exudes a fresh and natural vibrancy for modern thinkers.

Flora Georgiou

Photographer: Nura S.