Twofold. Sydney Dance Company

Below is an enlarged version of my review of Twofold published online by Canberra’s CityNews on 19 September 2024. The CityNews review is at this link.

18 September 2024. Roslyn Packer Theatre, Sydney

Sydney Dance Company’s Twofold began by giving the audience a second look at Rafael Bonachela’s work, Impermanence. Bonachela, artistic director of Sydney Dance Company for more than 15 years, created this work, in conjunction with American composer Bryce Dessner, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was first seen onstage in 2021 when I masked up and braved the situation and went to see it. My review of that occasion is at this link.

Then followed the thrill of a brand-new work, Love Lock, from Melanie Lane who works across the world as an independent choreographer. Love Lock is Lane’s second major work for Sydney Dance Company, following on from the much-admired WOOF, which premiered in its mainstage iteration in 2019. See this link for my review of that work.

Lane spent her early life in Canberra and received her dance training at the National Capital Ballet School under the direction of Janet Karin. She has maintained her Canberra connections and has worked closely in recent years with QL2 Dance, Canberra’s youth dance organisation, and has also created works in Canberra in a number of independent situations.

The titles of the two works in Twofold, Impermanence and Love Lock, both raise interesting questions in the mind of those watching, but neither really explains unquestionably the nature of the works as we see them. But then it has always been Bonachela’s belief that it is the members of the audience, not the choreographer, who decide on the meaning of any dance work.

Impermanence was extremely engaging and was performed to Dessner’s score played live onstage by the Australian String Quartet. Its choreography showed Bonachela at his most intense and relentless giving rise to the dancers being able to display their outstanding ability to bend and twist the body into remarkable positions while maintaining a lyricism and a strong connection with others onstage. They worked with each other in duets, trios, quartets and often as a whole group in unison. But I was surprised by the number of times five dancers formed a group, which made me think back to Bonachela’s Cinco, a work that referred to the five decades of dance from Sydney Dance Company.

The work was lit by Damien Cooper and often the dancers and musicians were shadowy. At other times they were dark figures in brighter surroundings. Always the lighting influenced how we perceived the dancing, which came to an end with a striking solo danced to a song from singer and songwriter Anohni.

Scene from *Impermanence*. Sydney Dance Company, 2021. Photo: © Pedro Greig

As for Love Lock, given Lane’s Canberra connections it was more than tempting to think back to the strange role love locks have had in Canberra. In 2015 a growing collection of love locks, that is padlocks that represent everlasting love that are sometimes attached to a bridge before having their keys thrown into the water never to be retrieved, were forcibly removed by the National Capital Authority from the bridge leading to Queen Elizabeth II Island on which is housed Canberra’s carillon.

But Love Lock was a reflection on folk or community dancing, which Lane said she sees as celebrating what it means ‘to connect with each other through our bodies and essentially what it means to be human.’ In the early moments of the work the choreography was characterised by lines of dancers, dressed in shiny black, largely unadorned outfits, filling the performance space and working in a somewhat geometric fashion. Slowly, however, this structured format gave way to movement that was more eccentric, thus losing to a certain extent its folkloric appearance. As the work progressed dancers began appearing in remarkable and individualistic costumes from designer Akira Isogawa. The costumes were of various colours, often made with softly draped material, and often quite sharply and unexpectedly protruding beyond the line of the body.

Sydney Dance Company in a moment from *Love Lock*, 2024. Photo: © Pedro Greig

Love Lock was also lit by Damien Cooper and was performed to a driving score commissioned from [Chris] Clark. The movement continued to appear intense and individualistic with changing physical connections between dancers until the closing moments when a calm descended over the group.

Love Lock is a work for this century. It is brash at times but always demanding of our thoughts about humanity and how connections may change over time. A triumph for its choreographer and her collaborators.

Akira Isogawa and Melanie Lane, 2024. Photo: © Pedro Greig

Michelle Potter, 20 September 2024

Featured image: (l-r) Dean Elliott, Emily Seymour, Sophie Jones and Mia Thompson in Melanie Lane’s Love Lock. Sydney Dance Company, 2024. Photo: © Pedro Greig

Silence & Rapture. Australian Chamber Orchestra and Sydney Dance Company

17 August 2024. Llewellyn Hall, Canberra

Below is a slightly enlarged version of my review of Silence & Rapture published online by Canberra’s CityNews on 18 August 2024. The CityNews review is at this link.

The Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) has an admirable history of staging productions with dance companies in which both musicians and dancers perform onstage, with artists of each genre reflecting the work of the other in some way. My first recollection of this kind of collaborative endeavour goes back to 1998 when the ACO joined with a small contingent of dancers from the Australian Ballet, then under the direction of Ross Stretton, to present the Stravinsky/Balanchine ballet, Apollo. Since then there have been several collaborations between the ACO and Sydney Dance Company. Silence & Rapture is their most recent joint initiative.*

Directed by Richard Tognetti, Silence & Rapture presented a series of compositions by two composers—J. S. Bach and Arvo Pärt—whose works are years apart but were so expertly curated on the program that they fell together seamlessly. Program notes explained the narrative that was behind the selection. It followed ‘the path of a Lutheran metaphor … the world as a pendulum swinging downward, from the natural world of Hope and Temptation (Garden of Eden), down to Tragedy and Passion (Garden of Gethsemane), then upward again to Resurrection and Redemption (Garden of Heaven).’ The ACO musicians were joined by countertenor Iestyn Davies and two Sydney Dance Company artists, Emily Seymour and Liam Green, who performed the choreography of Rafael Bonachela.

Every aspect of the show was superbly executed by every single artist, with a standout performance of the Prelude from Bach’s Suite for Solo Cello in C Major from ACO’s principal cellist Timo-Veikko Valve. Apart from an impeccable transmission of the sound of the music, Valve the man could scarcely be separated from his instrument so involved was he, in a bodily sense, in transmitting the notes across the stage space and into the auditorium. While Valve’s involvement in this way was unforgettable, most of the ACO musicians also showed their intense commitment with a similar physical connection with their instrument during performance.

The dancers also stood out for their performance of Bonachela’s highly complex movement. Bonachela needed to restrain his choreography to an extent, given the small space in which the dancers could perform. But he showed his skill and, in addition to a focus on complexity, which often reflected the complexity of the music, he had the dancers at times performing solos on two small tables on the edges of the stage space. There were brief moments too of unison dancing involving Seymour and Green and I am always impressed by the way Bonachela turns to unison work, and how his dancers respond so beautifully.

Emily Seymour and Richard Tognetti in a moment from *Silence & Rapture*. Photo: © Daniel Boud

But the truly outstanding feature of Silence & Rapture was the theatricality that permeated the evening, especially in the use of the stage space. Apart from the two cellists and Chad Kelly, who played organ and harpsichord, all the musicians stood for the entire performance (how did they do it?) and formed a semi-circle onstage. They provided a focused performing area for the dancers and countertenor, who constantly interacted with each other, with the countertenor occasionally joining the dancers in performing Bonachela’s choreography.

Then there was the input from well-known lighting designer Damien Cooper. His design added colour to the production, and darkness sometimes when the musicians were practically hidden but still playing. His design also highlighted certain moments, including the cello solo by Valve, and a moment towards the end when the two dancers mounted a rise at the centre back of the stage to present the ‘upward swing’ to ‘Resurrection and Redemption’.

When I look back at the Apollo collaborative event of 1998 (and re-read my less than positive review of that performance) I wonder whether the success of Silence & Rapture reflects the fact that in this case the dance was made for the music, which had been specifically selected and put together. The show thus had an originality, a presentation that had not existed previously, an originality that was not present in what was put together in 1998? Whatever the reason, in its one-night-only performance in Canberra, Silence & Rapture was a five-star show.

Michelle Potter, 18 August 2024

* It is of course not uncommon for dance companies and composers to work together—even working onstage together is relatively common. This review simply concerns the collaborative efforts of the ACO, while not dismissing other such efforts.

Featured image: Sydney Dance Company’s Emily Seymour and Liam Green (centre) with musicians of the Australian Chamber Orchestra in Silence & Rapture. Photo: © Daniel Boud

Momenta. Sydney Dance Company

21 June 2024. The Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre

Below is a slightly enlarged version of my review of momenta, originally published online by Dance Australia on 24 June 2024. A link to the Dance Australia version is at this link.

The word momenta is the plural form of momentum, a word that means ‘the product of the mass and velocity of an object’. Momenta is also the title of the latest work from Rafael Bonachela, current artistic director of Sydney Dance Company, and there have been several explanations of why Bonachela titled the work as he did. Some are quite complex and don’t help much with understanding what Bonachela was considering as he created the work. But no matter how we might discuss the word, Bonachela’s work momenta was certainly filled with mass and velocity with the ‘objects’ being the extraordinary dancers who make up the current composition of Sydney Dance Company.

The work began with some remarkable unison dancing and this is an aspect of Bonachela’s choreography that I have admired over several decades. He has a gift for grouping dancers in constantly changing arrangements, and for giving those dancers such a varied selection of movement, poses and uses of space within a unison component. The opening section of momenta often had the dancers working on the floor and using their lifted legs as a focus, which initially seemed somewhat unusual as a component of Bonachela’s approach to unison work. But no matter how or where the dancers were positioned, they responded with an input that took the breath away.

Those opening moments set the scene for what followed and as momenta progressed the large groupings broke down into solos, duets, trios and other arrangements of performers until we reached the end sections when the unison work began again. Momenta was very much an abstract work for me, but it was compositionally varied within that overall abstraction and as such the choreography never lost its engrossing quality.

An absolute highlight was a duet between Naiara de Matos and Piran Scott, while the work of Emily Seymour also stood out. But it is quite astonishing to watch the flexibility, the fluidity, the energy and the absolute attention to the tiniest choreographic detail from every single dancer in the current company, many of whom are relatively new performers of Bonachela’s work.

Naiara de Matos and Piran Scott in a duet from *momenta*. Sydney Dance Company, 2024. Photo: © Pedro Greig

In terms of collaborative input, the highlight was the lighting from Damien Cooper. It was mostly relatively dark, although the colour of that darkness was not always the black we might have expected. As the work progressed, there were hints of dark green, sudden flashes of red, a burst of white cloud, at times a sudden brightness, and at others a mysterious hazy quality (especially, although not exclusively, when that white cloud began to dissipate). The lighting design was enhanced by the constant presence of a circular rig of 19 spotlights that moved up, down and around in the performing space and limited, at times, where the dancers could gather. The movement of the rig was beautifully controlled so that it appeared to be an essential part of the choreography.

The soundscape came from Nick Wales whose original, commissioned composition incorporated Distant Light by Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks. Costumes and set were by Elizabeth Gadsby with assistance from Emma White. The costumes were varied (a little) in style and colour but there was a minimalist quality to them in keeping with the overall abstract quality of the work. Their simplicity gave the dancers every opportunity to show that the focus of momenta was the body in motion.

The cast of *momenta*. Sydney Dance Company, 2024. Photo: © Pedro Greig

The work closed with showers of small pieces of sparkling cellophane falling onto the stage and out into the auditorium. I’m not sure why this happened and it was perhaps the one aspect of momenta that seemed entirely unnecessary. But momenta was such an absorbing production that this odd addition could just be pushed aside and basically forgotten.

The work is a huge credit to the underlying approach to contemporary dance that we have come to expect from Bonachela in his leadership of Sydney Dance Company.

Michelle Potter, 25 June 2024

Featured image: A solo section from momenta. Sydney Dance Company, 2024. Photo: © Pedro Greig

Postscript: There were some great production shots from momenta but they were not captioned with the names of dancers. Why? As a result I have limited myself to just three shots, one of which I was able to caption (hopefully correctly).

60th Anniversary Showcase. The Australian Ballet School

12 May 2024. Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opéra House

The Australian Ballet School’s 60th Anniversary Showcase began with a spectacular work, Grand Défilé, choreographed by Paul Knobloch to excerpts from Alexander Glazunov’s Scènes de ballet Opus 52. I was expecting an interesting display of dancers at various stages of their training moving on and off stage, culminating in a presentation of the senior, graduating students, similar to what we have become used to seeing from schools (and companies) across the world. But I was not prepared for the absolutely spectacular staging that came from the Australian Ballet School. Knobloch’s choreography was thrilling to watch—fast moving with a great use of space (even on the much maligned stage of the Sydney Opera House), and filled with movingly beautiful patterns and groupings of dancers. Besides that, the dancers did themselves and their teachers proud as they carried out the choreography with great skill and a passion that coursed, from beginning to end, through every inch of their bodies. The media image gives no idea of what the real life event was like. What an opening!

Grand Défilé was followed by the grand pas de deux from Le Corsaire performed by guest artists (and Australian Ballet School alumni) Ako Kondo and Chengwu Guo. Both Kondo and Guo performed pretty much faultlessly in a technical sense, with Guo carrying out his incredible jumps, turns and manèges and Kondo displaying her beautiful balance and fluid limbs and upper body. But they had a hard act to follow and somehow their performance lacked the strong characterisation that they usually display.

Then followed Camino Flamenco choreographed by Areti Boyaci, teacher of the Spanish dance program at the Australian Ballet School. It was danced by Level 8 dancers from the School to a score by flamenco guitarist Werner Neumann playing live onstage. They were joined at one point by guest artists (and alumni) Hugo Dumapit, Nathan Brook and Jake Mangakahia. Boyaci herself also made a brief appearance. The costumes, including the gorgeous scarves manipulated by the women, were an exceptional addition to this work but I would have loved a little more theatricality to have been visible in the dancing.

From the printed program: Rehearsal for *Camino Flamenco*. The Australian Ballet School, 2024. Photo: © Frederick Mutswagiwa

Closing the first half of the evening’s program was Paul Knobloch’s Degas Dances in which a young boy (Ruito Takabatake) finds inspiration in a Degas sculpture that comes to life. The work also includes roles for a cross section of students, including a bevy of children who are not always behaving as expected and whom an art teacher (India Shackel) tries to keep under control. It is astonishing too to see the stillness that the dancer (Lilly Keith), who plays the Degas sculpture, is able to maintain as she stands on her pedestal until she is brought to life. But the work is crowded with action and people and I would love to see it stripped back a little.

After interval, the program featured Four Seasons, a work commissioned by Lisa Pavane, outgoing director of the Australian Ballet School, in honour of the School’s 60 years of existence, and in celebration of its future. It was danced to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and each section was choreographed by a graduate of the School, with each having trained under one of the four (to date) directors. Spring was choreographed by Kevin Jackson, who trained under Gailene Stock; Summer by Lucas Jervies, who trained under Marilyn Rowe; Autumn by Serena Graham, who trained under Lisa Pavane; and Winter by Graeme Murphy, who trained under Dame Margaret Scott.

I especially enjoyed Autumn and Winter. Serena Graham’s choreography for Autumn reminded me at times of Balanchine and the way he connected people in a work. Graham had her dancers linking hands with others and then changing a pairing by unlinking and linking up with someone else. She used space carefully and thoughtfully and her groupings of dancers were sometimes unusually positioned in the space.

But it was Winter that attracted my attention most strongly. It closed the program with an excitement that had characterised the opening, if in a quite different way. Here was Graeme Murphy making us wonder what would happen next. Seven dancers, clad in white and silver unitards, were often wrapped (or hidden) in white cloaks, which looked a bit like doonas. Were they spirits of coldness, or people keeping themselves warm? And who was that eighth figure, mysteriously cloaked and hooded in white? There were surprise moments, such as when one of the dancers became a skater in red boots, and it was then that the ‘doonas’ were discarded and the dancing warmed up. It was recognisably Murphy creating the choreography. His propensity to line bodies up in curving, undulating lines was there, as were his lifts that continued on as bodies were carried around the stage. But most of all it was the narrative of cold that we (or I) could imagine that characterised this Winter. Then at the last minute the mysterious, hooded figure revealed himself. It was esteemed ‘older artist’ Simon Dow who linked the Winter work to the ‘older’ period of the School. Many other thoughts emerged while watching Winter and that’s what I have always loved about Murphy’s work. It always opens our imagination.

There was some beautiful lighting at various stages during the evening especially from Damien Cooper throughout Four Seasons. There was also a large crowd of supporters who cheered, clapped and stamped their feet unreservedly. And rightly so. The evening was a triumph.

Michelle Potter, 13 May 2024

Featured image: Media image for Grand Défilé

ab [intra]. Sydney Dance Company (2022 season)

2 June 2022. Roslyn Packer Theatre, Sydney

It has been Rafael Bonachela’s long-term ambition to have return seasons of his 2018 work ab [intra]. He achieved that ambition this year with a well-received season in France and, more recently, with a Sydney season that opened on 2 June at Roslyn Packer Theatre, Walsh Bay. Return seasons for contemporary works are unusual, but then ab [intra] is an unusual work and definitely worthy of more than one season.

Seeing ab [intra] this time was a rather different experience from that of 2018. The cast was quite different for a start, and I was also sitting much closer to the stage, which gave me quite a new take on the work. Although the work is meant to be quite abstract in the sense that Bonachela says that the work is ‘a representation of energy’, sitting close to the stage gave me a strong feeling of there being an expressive, human element, one of personal feelings between people. This was probably most apparent in a duet between Chloe Leong and Davide Di Giovanni where an element of pleasure in the company of another seemed to pervade. This was made stronger by the music (Nick Wales), which seemed quite romantic at this point.

Chloe Leong and Davide Di Giovanni in *ab [intra]*. Sydney Dance Company, 2022. Photo: © Pedro Greig

Being closer also gave me a new feeling about the lighting (Damien Cooper). The darkness that enveloped those dancers who occasionally moved to the front of the stage and turned their backs to the audience achieved a strong contrast with dancers further upstage, a contrast that I didn’t notice to the same extent in 2018.

But as is characteristic of Bonachela’s work, the overriding element throughout the evening was the exceptional physicality of the dancers. They never cease to amaze with their ability to perform Bonachela’s demanding choreography with the utmost skill and dynamism. The first duet between Jacopo Grabar and Emily Seymour was virtuosic in the extreme and I was incredibly moved by Jesse Scales who performed (amongst other sections) the closing solo. And I always admire the way Bonachela uses groups, sometimes working in unison, sometimes breaking out from those moments only to return to a unified group again.

Jacopo Grabar and Emily Seymour in *ab [intra].* Sydney Dance Company 2022. Photo: © Pedro Greig

It was a real pleasure to see ab [intra] again and to have the opportunity to see some sections and aspects of the production differently. In my review of the work in 2018 I remarked that I thought it was probably one of those ‘giving’ works. It clearly was so for me in 2022. The opening night performance was given a long and rowdy standing ovation.

Michelle Potter, 5 June 2022

Featured image: Jesse Scales in the closing section to ab [intra]. Sydney Dance Company, 2022. Photo: © Pedro Greig

The Frock. MADE

I didn’t see Graeme Murphy’s 2017 work, The Frock, as a live production. It was fashioned by Murphy and his creative associate Janet Vernon on the Tasmanian group of ‘senior’ dancers, Mature Artists Dance Experience (MADE), a company I have never had the luck to see live either. But some research I have been doing recently aroused my interest and I found a way to see The Frock on film. And what an adventure it was!

The Frock follows the life experiences of a woman who sits at the side of the stage on what looks like the verandah of a house in a rural area of Australia. She watches as her life unfolds before her, although leaves the comfort of her verandah to participate in many of the experiences that play out on stage. She is nameless and is something of an ‘everywoman’ living across several decades, beginning perhaps in the 1950s.

But before those decades begin to unfold choreographically, in the opening section the woman explains the moments that define her situation, especially the dress made by her mother, the frock of the title; and her sexual experience as a teenager (wearing the frock), which resulted in an out-of-marriage pregnancy. Throughout the work the frock appears on a wire mannequin designed by Gerard Manion. The mannequin is a mobilised device (robotics by Paul Fenech) with a voice (that of Murphy) that comments verbally, not always kindly, on what is happening.

The first moment of remarkable dancing comes when the frock is tried on for the first time. We watch as the woman (in real life and in the story in her sixties perhaps) dances a duet with another performer representing the woman as a young girl wearing that frock. Murphy’s choreography is lyrical and emotion-filled movement; not a collection of difficult steps but swinging, swaying movement easily fitting the bodies of those older dancers. It is also the first time we see the backcloth (design by Gerard Manion) that stayed in place for most of the show—a beautiful collection of draped fabrics, lit throughout by Damien Cooper.

From there the decades unfold before us: the ‘swinging sixties’ and seventies, along with the smoking of drugs and the hallucinations that resulted; the rise of feminism; midlife; and the gradual move through the following decades to old age, the ‘Age of Invisibility’. Choreographic highlights included, for me, the rock ‘n roll scenes; the section when the woman contemplates her childless life; the beautiful reunion scene in which the woman and friends from her past come together dancing to Moon River, that evocative song from Breakfast at Tiffany’s; a trio as mid-life approaches danced with the aid of lengths of diaphanous cloth; and the extraordinary solo by the woman performed to a poem (written by Murphy) entitled ‘But still I fly’. The poem is heard in the clip below, along with excerpts from various parts of the work.

It was fascinating to see Murphy using some of the techniques that have appeared in so many of his works, including the use of flowing cloth as a device. But also noticeable was the use of linked arms and hands making linear patterns, something that I recall from many of Murphy’s works with Sydney Dance Company. Then there were references (that perhaps I imagined) to Botticelli’s ‘Three Graces’ in his well-known painting Primavera, and even, briefly, to Nijinsky’s choreography for Afternoon of a Faun. (Murphy does this so many times—brings up a mixed bag of ideas, imagined or not).

The sound design by Christopher Gordon with Christo Curtis was brilliantly put together to evoke every moment in every decade. Apart from Moon River, standouts for me were the Sunday School activities of the early moments when the hymn being sung was that well-known Sunday School song, Jesus Loves Me; the Indian inspired music that accompanied the drug and hallucination scenes; and some hugely moving operatic excerpts.

Jennifer Irwin’s costume were also so evocative of the decades being represented as the story proceeded. Especially outstanding from this point of view were those in the scene taking place in the 1960s filled, as it was, with mini-skirted dresses in brightly coloured, floral fabric, sometimes matched with knee high boots in bright colours. How it takes those of a certain age back to their own teenage years.

The Frock might be counted as one of Murphy’s most theatrical productions with so many exceptional collaborative elements, including its hugely diverse selection of musical interludes; its poem ‘But still I fly’; and its robot carrying the storyline line along. But perhaps more than anything it arouses such a range of emotions in the viewer. That to me is theatricality at its best. Sometimes The Frock is quite simply confronting. At other times it is just hilarious. But more than anything it is deeply moving as a comment on life’s many changing situations. I have to admit I started to cry at the end as the woman, and the daughter she had never met, intuitively knew who the other was when they came together unexpectedly in an op shop where both admired that frock hanging on a rack of clothing on sale. But the weeping quickly turned to laughter as the dress was shoplifted out! Magnificent Murphy.

Michelle Potter, 22 August 2021

Featured image: Scene from The Frock. MADE 2017. Photo: © Sandi Sissell

Postscript: I should add that a complete version of The Frock is not publicly available at this stage, although a promo is available on Vimeo, beautifully put together by Philippe Charluet of Stella Motion Pitures.

The poster image below announces the premiere of the work in Japan in 2018.

Impermanence. Sydney Dance Company

17 February 2021. Roslyn Packer Theatre, Walsh Bay

A year ago Sydney Dance Company was just days away from its first program for 2020, which was to include a new work, Impermanence, by Rafael Bonachela as part of a mixed bill program. But the pandemic struck and the program was cancelled. Impermanence was being created to a score co-commissioned by Sydney Dance Company and the Australian String Quartet from Bryce Dessner, an American composer based in Paris. The work was initially inspired by the fire that almost destroyed Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in 2019, and by the Australian bush fires that began in late 2019. After the program was cancelled Bonachela and Dessner decided to continue their collaboration and develop the work into a full length one. This is the show that opened on 17 February 2021.

Dancers of Sydney Dance company with the Australian String Quartet in 'Impermanence', 2021. Photo: © Pedro Greig — Dancers of Sydney Dance Company with the Australian String Quartet in *Impermanence*, 2021. Photo: © Pedro Greig

Publicity tells us that the work is about transience and fragility, but Dessner’s powerful, driving score, played onstage by the Australian String Quartet seated in an upstage corner, felt to me more like determination to overcome. Similarly, for the most part Bonachela’s choreography was fast-paced, dramatic and powerful and with Damien Cooper’s moody lighting design, with constantly changing colour effects strongly apparent, I found it hard to see the impermanence of it all.

But this is not to say that the work was not engaging. It was. I love watching Bonachela’s amazing ability to show us the unexpected in movement. I love those moments when he has the whole company onstage when we can see unison. Sometimes he has the entire company dancing as one, at other times two groups show us two separate, but still compelling instances of choreographic unison. And having live music played onstage is always something to look forward to, and something on which Bonachela seems to thrive.

As ever, all the dancers performed with their usual and incredible technical skills. But two stood out for me. I couldn’t stop looking at Emily Seymour whose strong balletic background was so clear. Her turns were spectacular and were, although in contemporary mode, perfectly placed and finished. Her truly beautiful rounded arms and smooth line through the body were just breathtaking. Then Jesse Scales looked as though they were so thrilled to be back on stage. Even when standing at the side of stage waiting for their next move their body glowed with pleasure. And Scales used every part of their body to give shape and meaning to the choreography.

Jesse Scales (above), Luke Hayward and Liam Green in *Impermanence*. Sydney Dance Company, 2021. Photo: © Pedro Greig

The Roslyn Packer Theatre had its COVID plan in place for Impermanence. We checked in with our phones and QR code, there was no mingling in the foyer, we were distanced (slightly) from other audience members, and we were masked-up for the entire show. But what a thrill it was to be back in a live environment watching the kind of spectacular performance we have come to expect from Sydney Dance Company. Jesse Scales said it all with their exceptionally detailed movement and their obvious pleasure in performing for an audience again.

Michelle Potter, 22 February 2021

Featured image: Emily Seymour, Jacopo Grabar, and Rhys Kosakowski in Impermanence. Sydney Dance Company and the Australian String Quartet, 2021. Photo: © Pedro Greig

NOTE: The personal pronouns used in this review are those given for use by Sydney Dance Company.

The Happy Prince. The Australian Ballet

25 February 2020. Lyric Theatre, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane

Graeme Murphy has said that his latest creation, The Happy Prince, is basically for children. He wants, he says, ‘to cater for the tiny imagination bud inside children’s heads, which needs just the tiniest bit of imagination, of fertilisation, to burst into a million thoughts.’* I am looking forward to taking my grandchildren to see it. But, from the moment the work opens with an explosive sound and much white smoke—’the war is over’ says the program note—to the closing moments set on a sunny Australian beach, you don’t have to be a child for hundreds of thoughts to rush into your mind.

The narrative line is based on the Oscar Wilde story reimagined slightly by Murphy and Kim Carpenter. (Wilde’s version is readily available to read online.) In the ballet the Prince (Adam Bull) has been brought up to know only happiness. But, when a statue in his honour is erected in his home town, he comes to realise that not everyone lives in a world of happiness, and that there is much disparity between the rich and the poor. He engages with the Little Swallow (Marcus Morelli), who has not kept up with his migrating swallow family, and together they strip the statue of its rich decorations, which they give to the poor. The story ends sadly for both the Prince and the Swallow. But, as the ballet concludes, they are united in a different, heavenly world.

Adam Bull in 'The Happy Prince'. The Australian Ballet, 2020. Photo: © Jeff Busby — Adam Bull as the Prince in *The Happy Prince.* The Australian Ballet, 2020. Photo: © Jeff Busby

Instantly striking in the ballet are the visual aspects of the production. Sets and costumes by Carpenter, expressive lighting by Damien Cooper, and some fascinating projections by Fabian Astore created all kinds of resonances for me. Even though the production was meant to be set in post-war London, the township that was revealed as the smoke dissipated in the opening scene reminded me immediately of the architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser and his eccentric apartment buildings in Vienna and elsewhere with their assortment of shapes and colours. By the time we got to the end of the show, the sunny Australian beach scene recalled Charles Meere’s iconic painting Australian Beach Pattern, with the addition of a dominating reference in the background to Hokusai’s famous woodblock The Great Wave off Kanagawa. In between, how enchanting was the drop cloth in the scene where the Prince explained to the Little Swallow that happiness had pervaded his childhood. The cloth looked as if it had been borrowed from a kindergarten or a child care centre and was perfectly in tune with the box labelled ‘Toys’ in the downstage corner, from which emerged an assortment of toys who danced their way across the stage. Which brings up the question of the choreography.

Murphy has always been at home moving groups of dancers around the stage and this ability was an outstanding aspect of his Happy Prince choreography. The way he filled the stage with townspeople in the village in the opening scene, and the groupings he set up in the final beach scene were strong examples. Then there were the references to other theatrical genres. The characters of the Lord Mayor (Luke Marchant) and the Lady Mayoress (Jarryd Madden) came straight out of the pantomime tradition with the Lady Mayoress being the traditional Dame (always played by a man). Their extravagant costuming and outrageous movement also recalled this tradition.

Luke Marchant and Jarryd Madden as the Mayor and the Lady Mayoress in 'The Happy Prince'. The Australian Ballet, 2020. Photo: © Jeff Busby — Luke Marchant and Jarryd Madden as the Mayor and the Lady Mayoress in *The Happy Prince*. The Australian Ballet, 2020. Photo: © Jeff Busby

Touches of vaudeville appeared in the scene where the Little Swallow engages with Rita Reed (Serena Graham) and her companion Reedettes. The choreography for this scene was appropriately in the Tivoli line-up mode.

Artists of the Australian Ballet as Reedettes in *The Happy Prince*, 2020. Photo: © Jeff Busby

Much of the production was filled with emotive and heartwarming moments. The characters who benefitted from the Prince’s generosity were finely drawn characters and beautifully portrayed: Corey Herbert as the Seamstress, Nathan Brook as the Artist and Benedicte Bemet as the Little Match Girl. They engaged our hearts and minds as their poverty was revealed prior to being helped by the Prince and the Swallow. And in true Murphy fashion, the Swallow was not always bird-like (although he did have moments of flying) but a teen guy with jeans ripped at the knees and occasionally a skateboard as a means of getting around.

A commissioned score from Christopher Gordon added to what was an exceptional collaboration.

I must admit, however, that I did find it hard to be convinced that the final beach scenes related to the migration to Australia of the so-called ‘£10 Poms’ (as I learnt later from the program notes). To me it was just Murphy in the same kind of mode as I thought was clear in his Romeo and Juliet where the story moved from place to place, era to era. I remember calling his R & J postmodern (to the annoyance of some) because it made reference to many aspects of many things. The Happy Prince was a bit the same.

I look forward to seeing this production again when I am sure I will notice other things, more of the choreography perhaps, and probably change my mind on some issues. But my first impressions are that The Happy Prince is exciting, surprising and heart warming theatre in which the whole is so much more than the sum of its enticing parts.

Michelle Potter, 27 February 2020

Featured image: Marcus Morelli as the Little Swallow in The Happy Prince. The Australian Ballet, 2020. Photo: © Jeff Busby

* Graeme Murphy quoted in ‘Darling Buds’ in program notes for The Happy Prince.

Artists of Sydney Dance Company in Rafael Bonachela's 'Cinco', 2019. Photo: Pedro Greig

Sydney Dance Company turns 50

Below is the text of an article I was commissioned to write about the Canberra season of Sydney Dance Company’s first program for 2019, Bonachela/Nankivell/Lane. It was meant also to include a note on the company’s 50 year history. Sadly and disappointingly, a truncated version, with no images, appeared in The Canberra Times. It was not what I was led to believe would happen.

Several people in the dance community were generous in their support of what I was writing, so I am posting the story as it was meant to be, and I’m including some images: an article on dance without images hardly makes sense.

Sydney Dance Company turns 50 in 2019 and it’s time to commemorate the exceptional endurance of one of the country’s favourite contemporary dance companies. It’s time, too, to celebrate Sydney Dance Company’s bold commitment to the new in the performing arts. The company’s current artistic director, Rafael Bonachela, calls that commitment ‘the continued investment the company has made in new Australian work over its 50-year history’.

Shane Carroll, former dancer with the company during the years it was led by Graeme Murphy, has been engaged in digging deep into the history of the company. She has come up with some astonishing figures. In addition to the creation of 250 new works, over 50 years Sydney Dance Company has commissioned new scores from 38 composers—the very first going to Peter Sculthorpe in 1971. It has also commissioned 124 different designers, employed more than 260 dancers, and has shown the work of about 90 different national and international choreographers.

‘It’s an amazing contribution,’ Carroll says. ‘The company has been a leader in developing a broad view of contemporary dance in Australia and the longevity of the company is incredible. It has also often been a rollicking ride. There have been no safe productions and funding has often been shaky. But the company has just persisted and has continued to push boundaries.’

Sydney Dance Company began quite modestly in 1969 as Ballet in a Nutshell. It was the idea of the then artistic director of the Australian Ballet, Peggy van Praagh, and was led by a foundation member of that company, Suzanne Musitz. Her small team consisted of some dancers from the Australian Ballet School and one pianist. It was essentially a dance in education company taking dance into schools, initially secondary schools in Sydney. A little later, to attract more boys to its sessions, the name was changed to Athletes and Dancers.

The group grew into a fully-fledged dance company named the Dance Company (NSW). After being led by Musitz for another few years and then, briefly, by Dutch choreographer Jaap Flier, Graeme Murphy was appointed artistic director at the end of 1976. With his artistic associate (now wife) Janet Vernon, Murphy led the company for 30 years. The name change to Sydney Dance Company came in 1979.

The contribution made by Murphy and Vernon over that period raised the profile of the company to that of an internationally respected one whose repertoire was hugely diverse. In the early years of his directorship, Murphy’s choreography included the first evening length work by an Australian contemporary dance company with Poppy (1978), which looked, inventively, at the life of Jean Cocteau; Glimpses (1976), a work based on the art and writing of Norman Lindsay using a score by Margaret Sutherland; and a very daring Daphnis and Chloe (1980) with designs by Kristian Fredrikson to music by Ravel. Murphy’s commitment to new work, often with an Australian theme, and to collaborating with Australian composers and designers, continued until 2007 when he and Vernon resigned.

Rafael Bonachela joined the company as artistic director in 2009. His first program in Sydney Dance Company’s 50th anniversary year consists of a new work of his own, Cinco; another brand-new work, Neon Aether, from Gabrielle Nankivell; and WOOF from Melanie Lane, which was first seen in 2017 as part of Sydney Dance Company’s experimental choreographic season, New Breed. Canberra audiences will see this program in May.

Cinco, which means five in Spanish, has been created on just five dancers. It is danced to five movements of a string quartet by Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera, which ‘by chance’ says Bonachela, was written in the 1950s. Bonachela admits that there is something about numbers that fascinates him. He loves the idea that, in this case, the emphasis on the number five is unusually significant. Fashion design Bianca Spender has created the costumes for Cinco. Bonachela says he has admired her work for some time, especially the way her clothes are both structured and fluid. Spender’s Cinco costumes move beautifully with the body, and play with colour and shape.

Holly Doyle, Chloe Leong and Charmene Yap in *Cinco*, Sydney Dance Company 2019. Photo: © Wendell Teodoro

In 2014 Gabrielle Nankivell made a powerful, idiosyncratic statement with Wildebeest for Sydney Dance Company’s New Breed season. Now she is back with Neon Aether, which was inspired by aspects of the solar system and science fiction. Nankivell’s partner in life, Luke Smiles, has created an electronic score, which is punctured by voices announcing instructions relating to a journey in space. Those instructions coincide with dramatic blackouts from lighting designer Damien Cooper.

Artists of Sydney Dance Company in 'Neon Aether'. 2019. Photo: Pedro Greig — Artists of Sydney Dance Company in *Neon Aether*. 2019. Photo: © Pedro Greig

Melanie Lane had a smash hit with WOOF in the New Breed season of 2017, so much so that Bonachela has included it in this 50th anniversary program. It too has a commissioned score, this time by Clark, who is Lane’s partner in life and who prefers to be known, theatrically at least, by just one name. Bonachela describes WOOF as ‘brilliant, powerful and about community and belonging, with a touch of vulnerability.’ Watching it on opening night in Sydney in March it reminded me a little of an absorbing, modern-day Rite of Spring.

Artists of Sydney Dance Company in *WOOF,* 2019. Photo: © Pedro Greig

There are several Canberra connections to celebrate in this current season. Bonachela is now a patron of Canberra’s youth dance organisation, QL2. He accepted the invitation last year, mentioning that he wanted to mentor young dancers and adding how impressed he had been with dancers who had come through the various QL2 programs and then joined Sydney Dance Company.

Then there is Melanie Lane. Now with an international reputation, Lane grew up in Canberra and trained at the National Capital Ballet School when it was directed by Janet Karin. Lane recalls Karin’s ongoing interest in new choreography and was inspired to make her own dances as a result. Karin says she felt sure that Lane would go on to choreograph and adds that as a dancer Lane was ‘fluid, sensuous, strong and feminine all in one.’ On opening night of this anniversary program, WOOF was greeted with huge applause and even had Bonachela himself standing, shouting and whistling. Composer of WOOF, Luke Smiles, has a strong connection with Canberra too. He performed as a dancer with Sue Healey’s Vis-à-vis Dance Canberra back in the 1990s.

In addition, Sydney Dance Company, under its various different names, has been touring to Canberra for almost the entire 50 years of its existence. In fact, the company’s first season under the name Dance Company (NSW) was in 1971 in Canberra, when Love 201 with that commissioned score from Peter Sculthorpe was presented.

The program Bonachela/Nankivell/Lane is Bonachela’s tribute to Sydney Dance Company’s commitment to the new in dance. But Sydney Dance Company’s commitment to Canberra is definitely something that also deserves to be celebrated by local audiences. Don’t miss it.

Michelle Potter, 20 April 2019

ab [intra]. Sydney Dance Company

1 September 2018, Canberra Theatre

In his first full-length work for several years, Rafael Bonachela has made a startling, extraordinarily powerful dance piece to an original score by Nick Wales (extra music by Peteris Vasks), with lighting from the remarkable Damien Cooper and production design from David Fleischer. The title ab [intra] (Latin: from within) we are told refers to ‘the energy transfer between the internal and the external’. The external energy is absolutely clear from beginning to end in ab [intra]. The internal aspect giving rise to the external we can only ponder. But Bonachela likes us to ponder (I think).

Choreographically the piece has two main duets, several shorter duets and trios, a major solo, and several sections for the entire company. The standout section for me was the duet between Charmene Yap and Davide Di Giovanni. The partnering was spectacular, as was the energy of the relationship between the two dancers. It was almost R & J à la Bonachela. I especially admired it for the clarity of movement it contained. The duet that preceded it, danced by Janessa Dufty and Izzac Carroll, also had some amazing partnering and it was impossible not to be stunned by the contortions of the body that it contained. How did those two dancers get into and then extract themselves from some of those moves? But quite honestly I preferred the cleaner, and yet still highly physical, look of the Yap/Di Giovanni duet.

Charmene Yap and Davide Di Giovanni in 'ab [intra]', Sydney Dance Company, 2018. Photo: Pedro Greig — Charmene Yap and Davide Di Giovanni in *ab [intra]*, Sydney Dance Company, 2018. Photo: © Pedro Greig

Another choreographic highlight was a solo danced by Nelson Earl. Earl emerged to take centre stage from a line of dancers who walked solemnly onto the performance space to stand in a row around the back and sides of the stage. His solo was characterised by stretched lines of the body and was largely without the curving fluidity of much of the rest of the choreography. At times I even started to think of Charlie Chaplin’s rather eccentric style of moving! But Earl performed with great panache and the rather different look of the choreography was refreshing.

I continue to admire the way Rafael Bonachela handles large groups of dancers. In ab [intra] there were several occasions when the whole company (or sometimes almost the whole company) were onstage together. It is fascinating to see how at times Bonachela has his larger groups of dancers look like a collection of individuals in different poses, making different moves, only for the group suddenly to be moving in unison. It is also fascinating to look harder at what the dancers are doing because it often is that what looks different is actually the same move done with back to the audience, or facing another direction.

Dancers of sydney Dance Company in 'ab [intra]', 2018. Photo: © Pedro Greig — Dancers of Sydney Dance Company in *ab [intra]*, 2018. Photo: © Pedro Greig

As far as staging went, ab [intra] was distinguished by a certain restrained power. The lighting was always quite startling and consisted variously of haze, brightness, strong downlights, and occasionally a bank of small, bright lights that moved up and down limiting and then expanding on the space the dancers occupied. Costuming was quite minimal in appearance. Everything added to the unfolding of the work.

In a brief conversation I had earlier with Bonachela about ab [intra] he mentioned that he hoped the work might continue to be part of the Sydney Dance Company repertoire. I think it is probably one of those ‘giving’ works in which audiences will see more on second and subsequent viewings. So I hope Bonachela’s wish for it to continue to be shown is realised. At times it seemed slightly too long (at 70 mins) but mostly the strong staging, the remarkable and constantly changing look of the choreography, and the exceptional physicality of the dancers made it one of Bonachela’s (and Sydney Dance Company’s) strongest works to date.

Michelle Potter, 3 September 2018