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Dance Massive 2009


 Da Contents H2

dance massive
March 15 2009
knowing pop
carl nilsson-polias: luke george, lifesize

March 14 2009
ensemble power
carl nilsson-polias: rogue: a volume problem, the counting, puck


simultaneities
virginia baxter: rogue: a volume problem, the counting, puck

March 13 2009
inner-scapes
carl nilsson-polias: splintergroup, lawn

March 12 2009
nothing hidden, much gained
carl nilsson-polias: lucy guerin inc, untrained

dance massive
reality dance
keith gallasch: lucy guerin inc, untrained


talking australian dance internationally
virginia baxter: ausdance, international dance massive delegation day

dance massive
March 11 2009
18 minutes in another town
virginia baxter: helen herbertson & ben cobham, morphia series


dancing the cosmic murmur
jana perkovic: shelley lasica, vianne

March 10 2009
dance party art
keith gallasch: 180 seconds in (disco) heaven or in hell

March 10 2009
passing strange
keith gallasch: jo lloyd's melbourne spawned a monster

dance massive
March 9 2009
horror stretch
jana perkovic: splintergroup, roadkill


March 8 2009
in bed with a mortal engine
keith gallasch: chunky move's mortal engine

limina, or saying yes to no
jana perkovic: michaela pegum, limina; and the fondue set

who’s zooming who?
virginia baxter: chunky move, mortal engine

March 7 2009
rabbits down the hole
tony reck: the fondue set's no success like failure

suspending the audience
keith gallasch: splintergroup in roadkill

the return of the super-marionette
jana perkovic: chunky move's mortal engine

words for the time being
virginia baxter: russell dumas, huit à huit—dance for the time being

March 5 2009
lateral intimacies
jana perkovic: shannon bott & simon ellis' inert

March 3 2009
after glow
keith gallasch talks with chunky move’s gideon obarzanek

critical mass
virginia baxter: melbourne’s dance massive

engineering the arts
kate warren talks with arts problem solver frieder weiss

nothing to lose
keith gallasch: the fondue set’s no success like failure

worlds within
philipa rothfield: shelley lasica’s vianne

 

Laura Levitus, Derrick Amanatidis, Danielle Canavan, Kathryn Newnham, Holly Durant, Sara Black Laura Levitus, Derrick Amanatidis, Danielle Canavan, Kathryn Newnham, Holly Durant, Sara Black
photo Jeff Busby
IN A FESTIVAL DOMINATED BY CHOREOGRAPHERS, ROGUE IS THE EXCEPTION—FUNDAMENTALLY A COLLECTIVE OF DANCERS. THAT IS NOT TO DIMINISH THEM OR THEIR CHOREOGRAPHERS, FOR THAT MATTER. BUT ROGUE’S TRILOGY OF SHORT WORKS, PERFORMED AS ONE SELF-TITLED PROGRAM, IS STAMPED WITH THE UNMISTAKABLE DEMOCRACY OF AN ENSEMBLE.

Byron Perry and Antony Hamilton, who are both dancers in Lucy Guerin’s Untrained, contribute their own choreographic turns for the first and second segments respectively. Compared with the fresh-faced members of Rogue, Perry and Hamilton must qualify as senior statesmen—with the exception of Harriet Ritchie, the ensemble all graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2006. The concept and choreography for the third and final section of the night’s offerings are credited to the ensemble as a whole, with Sara Black and Derrick Amanatidis stepping up to direct their colleagues.

Perry’s work, A Volume Problem, begins with a spotlit box wrapped in fake grass. Crowded around the box are the seven dancers, their hands darting across the greenery and then retreating. Fingers become legs, become bodies, become mouths. The images fold out and back in dexterously until two protagonists arrive in the form of disrobed speaker cones. Individuated from their familiar box and mesh habits, the cones are easily anthropomorphised with their central circle suggestive of a monocular perspective. Given a set of finger legs and the ever-propelling beats of Luke Smiles’ sound design, the speaker cones soon find themselves bounding about on the grass in harmonious stereo.

It is a beginning that echoes, with a touch more ornateness, the opening moments of Elbow Room’s excellent There (Melbourne Fringe 2008; p40). And, just as in There, this micro beginning bursts out of its frame when the speaker cones disappear and their character is transferred into the larger bodies of the dancers themselves; the contained box stage giving way to the stage proper. The dancers have their hair pulled back in simple ponytails and are dressed in grey shirts and black pants that give them an appearance of anonymity, androgyny and austerity—the focus is on movement, not bodies. The dance itself is steeped in the waves and beats of sound, with Smiles’ mastery of drum and bass composition a vital player.

As solos, duets and ensemble moments come and go, the figurative language of Perry’s choreography remains intact. Each body produces a beat and concentric circles of sound waves that emanate, propagate and overlap with those of others. The result is interference, both constructive and destructive, that either amplifies or mutes one’s partner. Towards the end, Ritchie and Amanatidis solo in isolation and then come together, the beat becoming that of their hearts and the very specific form of propagation that this entails.

Hamilton’s piece, The Counting, does away with Perry’s austerity from the outset. The costumes by Doyle Barrow, fluoro leggings and thin white cotton singlets, sit somewhere between Merce Cunningham and an American Apparel advertisement. The dancers, who have suddenly been given gender and sexual presence, are accompanied by an amazingly slappy bass line and undulate in unison.

Yet, despite its grinding sensuality, there is something very formalistic in Hamilton’s choreography here. He tweaks and replays movements and gestures with a modernist sense of purpose—seeking nothing more than a rediscovery of forms, of shapes and physical textures. There is no narrative or psychology to speak of, nor any of the impish fancy that characterised Blazeblue Oneline (RT85, p35) or I Like This (a collaboration with Perry, RT89, p12). Not that this is surprising per se because, as a dancer, Hamilton has always seemed particularly entranced by the quality of movement and this explorative instinct has made him one of the most formidably gifted dancers in Australia.

The final part of the night’s program is named after the prankster sprite Puck, though the arcade-like set by Anna Cordingley suggests that the title may well reference the video game Shufflepuck as well. The twin associations work well together because the piece, especially created for this Malthouse season, is all about interactivity. The rise of video games as an artform and medium of entertainment has dubiously, though nevertheless firmly, entrenched interaction as a byword for contemporary. The concept in Puck is that the audience, equipped with various noisemaking devices can, with the sounds they create, prompt certain responses in the dancers: go back to the beginning, change places, wiggle while dancing.

The effect of course is utter mayhem. The audience is put to the test in deciding how disruptive or respectful they want to be. But a fundamental paradox is set up because it is the disruption that creates the elements worth respecting. The form is inherently messy and prone to somewhat facile conclusions—in the end, all that can be affected is the pictures we see as an audience. While there are moments of exaggerated emotion, it will be interesting to see if Rogue can develop this cheerfully enjoyable concept into something that extrapolates more on the relationship between the audience and the performers, between the eyes and the bodies, between what is liked and disliked, where the stakes are almost as high as they once were in the interaction at the Colosseum. That could make for some real mischief.


Rogue, A Volume Problem, choreographer, costume designer Byron Perry, composer Luke Smiles, original set construction Anita Holloway; The Counting, choreographer Antony Hamilton, sound design Pansonic, costume designer Doyle Barrow; Puck choreography, performance Rogue: Derrick Amanatidis, Sara Black, Danielle Canavan, Holly Durant, Laura Levitus, Kathryn Newnham, Harriet Ritchie; Tower Theatre, CUB Malthouse, March 11-15; Dance Massive, Melbourne. March 3-15

RealTime issue #90 April-May 2009 pg. web

© Carl Nilsson-Polias; for permission to reproduce apply to [email protected]

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