Anti-Gravity - Chunky Move

Below is my Herald Sun review of Anti-Gravity, published 21 March

At a basic level, Anti-Gravity is about clouds, but the performance hints at multiple mythological and spiritual levels. There’s a cast of six diverse dancers, yet Anti-Gravity emerges more as an interaction of bodies with objects and environments than a dance production. 

Anti-Gravity, Photo by Pippa Samaya

It has the distinct touch of a visual artist - To Tzu Nyen. He closely collaborates with Chunky Move’s artistic director,  Anouk van Dijk, to create an abstracted experience offering gradually evolving images and archetypes. The slowly unfolding activity of the humans with the materiality is a very gradual burn. To get the most out of it, audiences need to submit to the pace, not overthink it and allow it to just wash over them.  

Anti-Gravity, Photo by Pippa Samaya

On the cavernous black stage, in sharp squares of light (by Paul Jackson), individuals relentlessly pursue a single activity. Luigi Vescio rolls and caresses rocks around an astroturfed platform. James Batchelor stares into a shallow rectangular pool of water. Niharika Senapati is immersed with a laptop displaying skyscapes. Bursts from high powered smoke machines, subtle changes in light, the blowing of fans all slightly alter the environment, but the mood sustains.

Jethro Woodward’s spectacular sound score of sub-woofer drones layered with swelling and residing instrumentations prescribes the journey just as much as any other design contribution. 

It takes about half way through the 70 minute piece (just when all the barely moving feels stretched too long) for the individual, internalised vignettes to build into a kind of wild euphoria. Then things get interesting.

Anti-Gravity, Photo by Pippa Samaya

In that frenzy - when the dancers, in their various shapes and sizes, create heaving circles or rousing folkloric lines - are nuggets of Van Dijk’s exciting Countertechnique dance style. The kinetic thrill of the hurling bodies, often in boisterous and surprising duets, brings a much needed visceral punch, lifting Anti-Gravity out of the distant cerebral and into the startling presence before it simmers down again into more solipsistic activity. 

Anti-Gravity will divide audiences. It’s an immersive experience, rigorously developed, but those looking for the physicality of contemporary dance may miss the immediacy and kinetic excitement of more sustained choreography.

*** Stars

Anti-Gravity

Merlin Theatre, Malthouse Theatre

17-26 March 

Pinocchio

Even though I am primarily a dance and circus critic, I occasionally get to cover children's shows. This production from Windmill Theatre and the South Australian Theatre Company is a highly elaborate, sophisticatedly designed affair. It's probably geared more for older kids than younger ones, but having said that, my four-year old son sat quietly transfixed through the whole production (over two hours!) I do think most of it went over his head, but that didn't seem to matter. I had shown him clips of Disney's Pinocchio movie beforehand, but visually there weren't many similarities between the two productions for him to take in.

Pinocchio has lots going for it - it's slicky executed and filled with popular culture references as well as a couple of good songs. Unfortunately, it suffers from being just too long and having too many different story lines. With another draft and an outside dramaturg to tighten it right up, it would be better bang for buck.

Still, it has excellent performances all around and creates that magical feeling of being transported to a totally different and exciting place.

Click here for my review of Pinocchio in the Herald Sun on 11 September 2012.

Rock the Ballet and CIRCA

When I first saw Rasta Thomas's Rock the Ballet in June 2010 I was sorely disappointed. I went in this time with low expectations. Not unsurprisingly, I enjoyed it much more. It still has all the same issues (it is the same show after all) as first time around - dodgy gender politics, choreography that wouldn't stand up in most amateur shows and an incessant reliance on the easy grabs (unrelentless video projections, an "I'm too sexy" finale) and a show that is way too egotistically focused on Thomas himself. 


Because I knew all this going in, I wasn't nearly as bothered by at all as I was two years ago. I just focused on the actual physicality of the dancing, which technically, is pretty darn fine. Thomas and his "bad boys of dance" are really, really well trained dancers. They are powerful movers - they carve space well, they hit their turns, they extend their lines. They make banal movement look like a whole lot more than the sum of its parts. Watching them does remind me why I love dance. 


And the show does have a pop soundtrack - U2, Prince, Michael Jackson. Totally prescriptive and overwhelming, but totally fun. 


So while I still can't go all the way with generous star-age (just too problematic and weak thematically,) I will admit that I had a great time watching the show. 


Click here for my review of Rock the Ballet in the Herald Sun on 01 June 2012. 

CIRCA. Performer Emma McGovern. Photo by Justin Nicholas. 

After the lack of creativity in Rock the Ballet, CIRCA was a breath of fresh air. I've watched Brisbane-based Circa ensemble over the years and their circus/theatre fusions have been a bit hit or miss. I remember one show where a single guy juggled to esoteric jazz music for an entire hour. About as stimulating as it sounds! There's been good stuff as well, though, and what's never been missing from Circa is a desire to see where circus can go. 


There's lots of practitioners of contemporary circus and Australia doesn't lag in that department. I've seen a wide range of stuff over my years reviewing. Most of what I have seen has involved taking a collection of individual acts and harnessing them together with some sort of theatrical premise, usually text-based. Most of it has felt more circus/theatre than circus/dance. 


Which is why I was so intrigued by CIRCA. Essentially it is like one long dance piece made by a choreographer not a theatre director. That's how it came across anyway. (Director Yaron Lifschitz, who made the work in collaboration with the performers, is actually trained in theatre direction.)  It moves in and out of solos, duets, group sections often on an empty stage. When there is a circus apparatus - a static trapeze, a set of blue hula hoops, Chinese straps -  the apparatus is alone on stage and the choreography on it is closer to the texture and syncopations of a dance piece than an acrobatic act. The physical material is subtle, with more dramatic tension and suspension than whizz-bang trickery. This isn't to say that the acrobatic level isn't strong - it is very, very high, but there isn't reliance on it like there is in so much other circus. 


Like many a dance piece, CIRCA needs some editing. Its 75 minutes non-stop movement would probably be more powerful in 55. Despite that, it remains quite powerful. Lots of different basic human emotions are evoked and it engages without being too esoteric or too dumbed down. There's a really cool bit towards the end where the guys do a Chinese hoops act without the actual hoops. They simulate the hoops with their arms and they do a lot of the classic jumps and maneuvers characteristic of the traditional act. Without the actual equipment there, the effect is more of a fluid acrobatic ballet than a stop-start-reset-do-a-big-jump routine. It turns a familiar circus routine into something same, same, but different. Excellent!


CIRCA runs until 10 June, so there's still time to check it out. 


Click here for my review of CIRCA in the Herald Sun on 04 June 2012. 


Rasta Thomas's Rock the Ballet
State Theatre, Arts Centre
30 May to 03 June


CIRCA
Merlyn Theatre, Malthouse
30 May to 10 June

Dance Massive is Coming....

The Malthouse Theatre launched its 2011 season yesterday. Along with all the great theatre that new artistic director Marion Potts has planned are four dance shows which are all part of the 2011 Dance Massive Festival. Along with Dancehouse, Arts House, and Ausdance, the Malthouse is a producer of Dance Massive. 

Dance Massive began in 2009 as a festival for Australian contemporary dance and was so successful that the plan is for a bi-annual event. Shows range from small to medium size and the artists presented are all of a very high calibre. 2009 artists included Lucy Guerin Inc, Helen Herbertson, Russell Dumas and Splintergroup as well as younger choreographers like Rogue Collective.  

Based on what's been announced so far at the Malthouse (the full Dance Massive program will be revealed in early December), the 2011 program is going to be pretty exciting - there's new work, recent work and a remount of a significant production. 

Connected. Photo by John Drysdale. 

The new work is a Chunky Move premiere called Connected. It's a collaboration with American kinetic sculptor Reuben Margolin. Margolin is creating a huge sculpture of moving parts that will be attached to the five dancers. Music, lighting, sculpture and dance will be highly connected, with all elements triggering each other. 

Faker. Photo by Heidrun Lour.

In a totally different vein, Gideon Obarzanek, artistic director of Chunky Move will present his solo, Faker - more a personal expose about creating artwork than a dance piece in itself. He presented it in Sydney this year and it looks really interesting. 

In Glass by choregrapher Narelle Benjamin also has a connection to Chunky Move. Benjamin danced with the company in its early days when it first moved to Melbourne in the late 1990s to take up the post as Victoria's flagship contemporary dance company. I still remember her fiesty performance as the knife-weilding go-go dancer in Bonehead. She has worked with just about every major company in Australia as well as having success as a dance film maker. For In Glass, her first full length production, she's collaborating with award-winnning dancers Kristina Chan and Paul White. Both are phenomenoal performers, having worked extensively with Tanya Leidtke and Australian Dance Theatre, among many others. 

Amplification. Photo by Jeff Busby.

Finally - and another connection to the late 1990s -  is a remount of Phillip Adams' Amplification. I should admit here that I have a special connection to Amplification - I wrote about it in my MA back in 2000. It was not only Adams' first major work after moving back to Melbourne after a decade in New York, it was also the inaugural work for his company BalletLab, that now, over a decade on, has an extensive and extremely diverse repertoire.  

Even though Adams' dance making practice has moved in all sorts of directions since Amplification,  the work is a great example of Adams' ideas about the relationship of ballet to contemporary performance, his interest in distorting/reinventing ballet technique and his ability to zealously research a dark topic and re-fashion it into something utterly unique. 

Check out www.malthousetheatre.com.au for more details about these shows or become an e-subscriber to Dance Massive on www.dancemassive.com.au and get all the latest updates and articles about the festival. 

Dance Massive runs 15 - 27 March 2011.