Garden took place in a very different venue from what we are used to for productions by QL2 Dance: the Fitters’ Workshop in the Canberra suburb of Kingston. I was somewhat taken aback when I first heard of this major change from the traditional theatre space in which the annual May production by QL2 has usually taken place. I’d never heard of the Fitters’ Workshop (despite having lived in Canberra for several decades). But, after doing some research into what and where it was, I was more than a little taken aback—it was a space with no stage, no dressing rooms, no seating, nothing of a theatrical nature really. It seemed like nothing more than an empty rectangular space.*
Well I needn’t have worried really as the space had been fitted out by QL2 with a portable stage that covered pretty much the length of the hall. The stage was raised off the floor and I assumed, therefore, that it was a sprung stage. Great! Cross lighting had been installed and three or so rows of tiered seating had been placed along one wall. There was a curtained off area at each end of the stage, one of which was used as a dressing area. Would the dance works be well accommodated in this area I wondered?
I am also assuming this set up was not permanent because the Fitters’ Workshop seems to be available for hire for other activities (at least it was, and perhaps still is?). Will QL2 continue to perform in this building?
Garden opened with Bloom choreographed by James Batchelor to a score by Batchelor’s frequent collaborator, Morgan Hickinbotham. Bloom continued Batchelor’s ongoing interest in the lineage of Ausdruckstanz, the expressive dance movement that had its beginnings with choreographers working in the early twentieth century in Germany and Austria. It began with a certain degree of simplicity in movement and groupings but slowly became more complex and developed greater connections between dancers when some duets as well as some solo work were introduced. There was an emphasis throughout on curved arm movements and ongoing fluidity. Every moment was beautifully performed by all the dancers whatever their age.
The shape of the performing space was wide rather than deep and Batchelor’s choreography seemed to take advantage of this with a constant and engrossing crossing of the wide area available. The idea behind Bloom was to indicate intergenerational connections and the growth of artists across time. It worked well.
The second work on the program was the beginning is the end is the beginning with choreography by Alice Lee Holland and performed to sound by STREAMS, a ‘convergence’, as program notes tell us, between Malcolm McDowell and Stevie Smiles. In many respects the work seemed somewhat similar in choreographic content to Bloom especially in the continued emphasis on arms, the way in which the wide stage space was used, and in the juxtaposition of group and solo work. I wondered whether there had perhaps been too much emphasis on input from the dancers rather than from the choreographer?
The beginning is the end is the beginning was distinguished in my eyes, however, by the way the younger dancers performed. While all performers danced strikingly, with passion and commitment, the young dancers performed with a technique that defied their age. The work continued the overall theme of the program, that of artistic growth across time.
Costumes for both works were by Andrew Treloar, whose experience is broad-ranging across art forms and companies. They were quite loose fitting and thus eminently danceable costumes. They looked great too.
As a final comment, the Fitters’ Workshop worked quite well as a venue for this show, although I still wonder whether or not the young dancers are missing out on the experience of working in a traditional theatre space. A regular theatre is a somewhat different experience and is a space that many of them will find themselves working in should they go on to a professional career. Having said that, I have to say that the standard of the dancing in both works was a credit to all.
*The current Fitters’ Workshop website gives the following historical information: ‘The Fitters’ Workshop is a heritage listed building and part of the Kingston Power House historic precinct. Constructed in 1916-1917 and designed by John Smith Murdoch, the Fitters’ Workshop formed a key part of a wider industrial complex that enabled maintenance of government plant and equipment, and construction work.’
The BOLD Festival started as a biennial event in 2017 but it suffered in terms of being biennial as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. It will, however, be back in a mini form in March 2024. BOLD24 will be a ‘Bite Size’ initiative and will feature a series of events celebrating International Women’s Day 2024. It will anticipate the next major BOLD festival in 2025. BOLD Bites will, as is the focus of all BOLD activities, honour intercultural, inclusive and intergenerational dance.
The program will take place over three days, from 8 to 10 March, in various venues in Canberra. Further information shortly on the BOLD website. Stay tuned. UPDATE: Here is a link to the schedule.
I will be involved in three conversation sessions:
BOLD critique with author Emma Batchelor on writing about dance in reviews, articles and other formats. Our conversation will be followed by an open Q & A session.
BOLD Moves with Elizabeth Cameron Dalman focusing on the foundations of Mirramu on Lake Weereewa, and on the inspiration Dalman finds in nature. It will be a prequel to the premiere screening of a new film, Lake Song, choreographed by Dalman, directed by Sue Healey and featuring Canberra’s company of older dancers, the GOLDS.
BOLD Diva with Morag Deyes, former director of Dance Base in Scotland. This conversation will focus on the rich tapestry of Deyes’ career as the leader of Dance Base and as the founder of PRIME, Scotland’s premier dance company of elders.
New dancers for Sydney Dance Company
Sydney Dance Company has announced that five new dancers will join the company for its 2024 season—Timmy Blakenship, Ngaere Jenkins, Ryan Pearson, Anika Boet and Tayla Gartner. It was more than interesting to read a brief biography of each of these new dancers. Two have strong New Zealand connections (Jenkins and Boet); Blakenship was born, raised and trained in dance in the United States; and Pearson and Gartner are Australian with Pearson having a strong First Nations background and a memorable early career with Bangarra Dance Theatre.
Sydney Dance Company has always been a company of dancers with diverse backgrounds but with the new additions in 2024 that diversity is being strengthened. And from a personal point of view, after watching Ryan Pearson perform so magnificently with Bangarra Dance Theatre, I really look forward to watching him work with Sydney Dance Company. Below are brief biographies of the five new artists (taken from the Sydney Dance Company media release):
American dancerTimmy Blakenship was born on the Lands of the Arapaho Nation/Colorado, and completed his early training in contemporary dance and choreography at Artistic Fusion in Thornton, Colorado and Dance Town in Miami, Florida. He continued his training at the prestigious University of Southern California’s Glorya Kaufman School of Dance on scholarship, graduating with a BFA in 2023 where he performed works by William Forsythe, Jiří Kylián, Merce Cunningham and Yin Yue.
Ryan Pearson was born and raised in Biripi Country/Taree, New South Wales and is of Biripi and Worimi descent on his mother’s side and Minang, Goreng and Balardung on his father’s side. Ryan began his dance training at NAISDA at age 16, after taking part in the NSW Public Schools’ Aboriginal Dance Company, facilitated by Bangarra’s Youth Program Team in 2012. Ryan joined Bangarra Dance Theatre in 2017 as part of the Russell Page Graduate Program and was nominated in the 2020 Australian Dance Awards for Most Outstanding Performance by a Male Dancer for his performance in Jiri Kylian’s Stamping Ground.
Originally from Wadawurrung Country/Geelong in Victoria, Tayla Gartner commenced full-time training at the Patrick Studios Australia Academy program in 2018 before undertaking the Sydney Dance Company’s Pre-Professional Year in 2022, where she performed works by choreographers including Melanie Lane, Stephanie Lake, Jenni Large, Tobiah Booth-Remmers and Rafael Bonachela. In 2022, Tayla worked with and performed repertoire by Ohad Naharin and was a finalist in the Brisbane International Contemporary Dance Prix.
Born in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Ngaere Jenkins is of Te Arawa and Ngāti Kahungunu descent. Ngaere trained at the New Zealand School of Dance, graduating in 2018. Throughout her studies, she worked with influential mentors including James O’Hara, Victoria (Tor) Colombus, Taiaroa Royal and Tanemahuta Gray. Ngaere represented the school as a guest artist in Tahiti at the Académie de Danse Annie FAYN fifth International Dance Festival and Singapore Ballet Academy’s 60th Anniversary Gala. From 2019 Ngaere was a dancer with The New Zealand Dance Company and was the recipient of the Bill Sheat Dance Award.
Raised in Christchurch, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Anika Boet is of South African and Dutch descent. Moving to Sydney in 2020, Anika completed two years of full-time training at Brent Street School of Performing Arts, receiving her Diploma of Dance (focusing on Contemporary) with Honours. Anika made her professional debut in Sydney Festival in January 2022 performing a work Grey Rhino, choreographed by Charmene Yap and Cass Mortimer Eipper. Anika completed a post-graduate course at Transit Dance, performing works by Chimene Steele Prior, Prue Lang, and Paul Malek.
Ruth Osborne, OAM
Ruth Osborne, outgoing director of Canberra’s QL2 Dance, was honoured with the richly deserved award of a Medal of the Order of Australia at the 2024 Australia Day Awards. Osborne has had a distinguished career over several decades, most recently since 1999 with Canberra’s outstanding youth dance organisation, QL2 Dance. Among her previous awards are an Australian Dance Award (Services to Dance), 2011; a Churchill Fellowship, 2017; and three Canberra Critics’ Circle Awards, most recently in 2023 for her performance and input into James Batchelor’s Shortcuts to Familiar Places. For more about Ruth Osborne on this website see, in particular, this link and, more generally, this tag.
My colleague Jennifer Shennan has passed on the news that Ballet Zürich has just premiered a new work by Meryl Tankard. Called For Hedy, it is part of a triple bill called Timekeepers, which looks back to the artistic achievements of the 1920s. Other choreographers represented in Timekeepers are Bronislava Nijinska (Les Noces) and Mthuthuzeli November (Rhapsodies). More information is on the Ballet Zürich website.
Press for January 2024
It has been a while since I have been able to add a section called ‘Press …. ‘ in a dance diary, but in January I had two items published in print outlets (which of course also appeared in an online version). The first appeared in Canberra’s City News, the second in Dance Australia for the 2023 Critics’ Choice section.
‘Flatfooted funding threatens company’s future.’ City News (Canberra), 4-10 January 2024, p. 17. Online version at this link.
‘MICHELLE POTTER, Canberra’. Dance Australia: ‘Critics’ Choice’. Issue 242 (January, February, March 2024), p. 46. The text for this item is quite difficult to read against its black background, even in a blown-up version, so that text is inserted below next to a small image of the page.
Choreographer James Batchelor regards himself as a Canberran, although at this stage in his dance life he works between Australia and the rest of the world. To make a career as a professional, independent artist he goes where work is available for him and most recently has been working in Sweden with Norrdans. But he grew up in Canberra and had his dance training with QL2, Canberra’s youth dance organisation. He returns frequently to his home town and in 2023 presented Shortcuts to Familiar Places, a work that in fact had a significant connection with Canberra. It was a major highlight in the city’s dance calendar.
The work began as an investigation into the transmission of dance from one generation to another. Batchelor was especially interested in his own “body luggage” as passed on to him by his early dance teacher at QL2, Ruth Osborne, whose background had links to the work of pioneering dancer and teacher Gertrud Bodenwieser. Shortcuts to Familiar Places was the end result of this interest and investigation.
Shortcuts began with footage of Osborne giving an insight into the swirling movements of the arms and upper body that she absorbed via her own teacher, former Bodenwieser dancer Margaret Chapple.
As the footage came to an end, Batchelor appeared onstage and performed a shadowy solo that began slowly but that gathered momentum as time passed. From then on there was a beautifully conceived melding of film footage and onstage movement with Batchelor being joined by Chloe Chignell in a series of duets. It was a fascinating experience to watch the movement unfold and to feel a clear connection to what Osborne and others demonstrated and spoke about on film at various moments during the work. In addition to Osborne we saw on film Eileen Kramer, who demonstrated the movements she recalled from Bodenwieser’s Waterlilies, as well as Carol Brown and Shona Dunlop MacTavish. But it was also interesting to see how Batchelor and Chignell moved away from the movement of Bodenwieser and her followers to develop an individual but connected style.
One moment stood out in an exceptional way. It happened when, on film, Osborne stretched her arm forward in a straight line towards Batchelor and Chignell on stage as if reaching to them in a gesture of transmission, which they accepted with arms outstretched towards the footage. There it was, the lineage and its transmission for us all to see.
A driving, original score from Morgan Hickinbotham was played live and a changing pattern of light and dark came from lighting designer Vinny Jones. With dramaturgy by Bek Berger, Shortcuts was an intelligently thought through show. The idea of embodied transmission is one that is so often mentioned in dance discussions today, but with Shortcuts Batchelor showed the concept to us specifically through dance, and demonstrated in particular how a style from an older period can be developed to suit the current era. Shortcuts to Familiar Places was just brilliant to watch and consider.
James Batchelor continues to make a name for himself in Europe and November will see a national tour around Sweden by Norrdans (Northern Dance) of Batchelor’s latest work Event. Event will share the program with Everlasting—a new love by New York-based choreographer Jeanine Durning. Media for Event describes it as follows:
In Event by Australian choreographer James Batchelor, you encounter a sensuous world of looping patterns and oceanic ripples. Ornamented with a hint of the baroque, the dancers find joy in connection, synchronising and falling into rhythm with an original score from collaborator Morgan Hickinbotham.
Event premiered in late October. One reviewer (Yvonne Rittval) remarked, ‘The stage is covered by a painting with sinuous, swelling shapes in warm colors reminiscent of the Baroque. One gets the exciting feeling that the ten dancers, some wearing crinolines others in many layers of frills, have risen from the painting and are bringing it to life.’
Below is a brief teaser.
Diaghilev’s Empire
Browsing one day in Dymocks bookshop in Sydney I spotted a book called Diaghilev’s Empire. How the Ballets Russes Enthralled the World. It was written by English opera critic and (in his own words) ‘incurable balletomane’ Rupert Christiansen and was published in late 2022. It had not previously come to my notice for whatever reason and my initial reaction was ‘not another book about Diaghilev’. But I bought it anyway and am in the process of reading it. So far it has turned out to be a fascinating read and more than interesting for the comments Christiansen has included from books written by those who danced, or otherwise engaged with Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. But the one paragraph that continues to make me smile is a quote from American author and critic, Carl van Vechten, about the opening performance in Paris of Nijinsky’s Rite of Spring. Van Vechten remarked (and according to Christiansen this quote comes from Romola Nijinsky’s book Nijinsky):
A young man occupied the place behind me. He stood up during the course of the ballet to enable himself to see more clearly. The intense excitement under which he was labouring, thanks to the potent force of the music, betrayed itself presently when he began to beat rhythmically on the top of my head with his fists. My emotion was so great I did not feel the blows for some time. They were perfectly synchronised with the beat of the music.
And so I continue with my reading!
News from Houston Ballet
The most recent news from Houston Ballet is that Australian conductor Simon Thew has been appointed as the company’s musical director and chief conductor. Thew has had a distinguished career across many countries to date and has been the recipient of many awards including the Dame Joan Sutherland/Richard Bonynge Travel Scholarship and a Churchill Fellowship. Thew and Welch first came into contact in 2016 when Houston Ballet staged Welch’s Romeo and Juliet in Australia. On that occasion, Thew joined Houston Ballet’s Ermanno Florio as a guest conductor.
In other news, Stanton Welch has been at the helm of Houston Ballet for some 20 years now but last year former principal with American Ballet Theatre and recent artistic director of Washington Ballet, Julie Kent, joined him as co-artistic director. An article on that joint directorship written by Nancy Wozny recently appeared in Pointe Magazine. Read it at this link.
Shortcuts to Familiar Places began a few years ago as an investigation by James Batchelor into the transmission of dance from one generation to another. Dance is an art form that has no widely practiced method of reconstruction via a score or similar written derivative, and knowledge of a movement style or a particular choreographic work is most commonly regarded as being passed on from body to body—sometimes referred to as ‘embodied transmission’. Batchelor was especially interested in his own ‘body luggage’, transmitted to him by his early dance teacher Ruth Osborne whose background had links to the work of pioneering dancer and teacher Gertrud Bodenwieser, and who had mentored Batchelor at Canberra’s QL2. The work that emerged was the above-mentioned Shortcuts to Familiar Places and the result was somewhat unexpected with its beautifully conceived melding of film footage and onstage movement. A driving, original score from Morgan Hickinbotham was played live and a changing pattern of light and dark came from lighting designer Vinny Jones.
Shortcuts began with footage of Osborne giving us an insight into the swirling movements of the arms and upper body that she absorbed via her teacher, former Bodenwieser dancer, Margaret Chapple. As the footage came to an end, Batchelor appeared onstage and began a shadowy solo that began slowly but that gathered momentum as time passed. It was fascinating to watch the movement unfold and to feel a clear connection to Osborne’s demonstration, but also to see dancing that moved away from the initial style in a very geometrically structured manner.
Batchelor left the stage at the end of the solo and more footage appeared. This time we watched as Eileen Kramer, a surviving Bodenwieser dancer (now aged 107), recalled some of the choreography she had danced during the Bodenwieser era, in particular movements from the duet Waterlilies. This she was passing on to Batchelor and filmmaker Sue Healey (neither of whom we saw on the footage but whose presence was clear to us).
An onstage duet between Batchelor and another QL2 alumna, Chloe Chignell, followed and at times recalled, quite strongly for me, the intertwining of arms that characterised Waterlilies. But again, Batchelor’s choreography didn’t stay with Kramer’s recollections but moved on in a new direction using the Waterlilies movements as a starting point. That Batchelor named the duet Bodenwieser Remixed gives a clue to what was occurring and in fact probably encapsulates Batchelor’s whole process with Shortcuts. But that aside, the duet showed a truly exquisite dancerly connection between Batchelor and Chignell.
The final piece of footage was an exceptional mix of different snippets of film including some relating to Osborne; some to Carol Brown, former student of Bodenwieser dancer Shona Dunlop MacTavish; and, briefly in archival footage, some to MacTavish herself, with Batchelor and Chignell reacting to the footage. In one amazing moment, Osborne on film stretched her arm forward in a straight line towards Batchelor and Chignell on the stage as if reaching to them in a gesture of transmission, which they accepted with arms outstretched towards the footage. There it was, the lineage for us all to see.
The duet that Batchelor and Chignell continued as the last section of footage faded was linked choreographically with the previous one, at least at first in terms of the connection that was set up between the two dancers. But gradually Hickinbotham’s score got stronger and more urgent, and the gentleness of the choreography gathered strength and speed. There was, throughout this last duet, a link back to Bodenwieser, I believe, as much of the movement seemed to be moving in a figure-of-eight pattern, which Osborne had mentioned in her early demonstration of the Bodenwieser technique. But the duet moved faster and faster with little skips and jumps inserted. Then it came to a sudden end with a blackout. When the lights went up, we saw how Batchelor and Chignell had gone all out, dancing on and on until pretty much exhausted, to give us a modern perspective on the transmission they had been examining.
Shortcuts to Familiar Places, which includes dramaturgy by Bek Berger, was an intelligently thought through show and just brilliant to watch and consider.
23 December 2017. The Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre
How to write about Deepspace, the work James Batchelor has created as a result of time spent aboard the RV Investigator in the Southern Ocean? To begin with, we were not seated in an auditorium but, in Canberra anyway, we found ourselves being ushered onstage to wander the space and surround the action. Batchelor has used this technique before in Island when, just as an aside, I think it worked better, perhaps because of the smaller audience and the more intimate space of the Courtyard Studio on that occasion? Deepspace is an extremely introspective work with a lot of very fine detail in the movement. Sometimes it was not easy to see the detailed action with 50 or 60 other people crowding to get a closer look. It was also quite tiring standing onstage for around 60 minutes, to the extent that some members of the audience left the stage and sat in the auditorium, while others took to sitting cross-legged on the stage. Neither ideal for seeing the action.
Nevertheless, as we have come to expect from Batchelor, who worked on this occasion with one of his long-term collaborators, Amber McCartney, there was much to ponder upon. The opening section reminded me of Merce Cunningham and his notion of ‘body time’. Morgan Hickinbotham’s soundscape seemed not related specifically to the movement, although I enjoyed the ‘distant’ and somewhat surreal quality it had. But Batchelor and McCartney moved together in the opening section with the kind of unison I have always seen from Cunningham artists who understand so well the concept of body time.
Other sections reminded me of the practice of artists like the American-Japanese pair Eiko and Koma, who always declined to say that their work was Butoh (out of respect) but who moved with an intensity, an emphasis on tiny details and a slowness that was Butoh-like. Butoh-inspired movement came to mind at various times throughout Deepspace but especially in the closing section when McCartney placed a series of small stones on Batchelor’s back and he proceeded to change position and allow the stones to move along his back, and eventually on to the floor. It was certainly mesmerising, but of course one couldn’t help wondering if they would fall off at the wrong time. (They didn’t).
Another section with the same feel came midway through the work when Batchelor, on all fours, moved slowly upstage with McCartney balanced on his back. On reaching the wall at the end of the stage space they both proceeded (very slowly indeed) to stand up, with McCartney eventually reaching Batchelor’s shoulders. In this stacked up position they moved sideways along the wall with McCartney feeling her way with spider-like hands. As well as the Butoh aspect of it all, the notion of balance and support was paramount.
Other sections were somewhat obscure I thought, although I suspect they related to things that may have happened, or discoveries that may have been made on board the Investigator. I rather enjoyed a fast ballroom/waltz-like episode with Batchelor and McCartney moving quite speedily in a circular pattern. But were they skating? On thin ice perhaps? I think that the emphasis that has been placed on the fact that this work grew out of Batchelor’s trip to the Antarctic has led us to ponder too much on how the dance and the expedition relate. What I have enjoyed about Batchelor’s earlier works is that we have been left to ponder meaning without such an obvious lead-in. But then perhaps I was just irritated by the discomfort of having to stand up and often peer through groups of people to see properly.
When I interviewed Elizabeth Dalman in July for the National Library of Australia’s oral history program she told me, off the record, of a potential performing opportunity that she hoped might come her way. Well, the potential opportunity is now a reality and Dalman is currently in Ireland rehearsing for the role of the Mother in a new Irish production based on the story of Swan Lake. This Swan Lake is being created by Michael Keegan-Dolan, former director of Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre, which closed down in 2014. Keegan-Dolan’s present company has the name MKD Dance.
The opportunity came via a casting call on Keegan-Dolan’s Facebook page for ‘a woman aged between … 60 and 70.’ The notice went on: ‘The Mother needs a powerful presence and ideally she should have long white hair.’ Dalman is now in her eighties so didn’t fit exactly into the age range. But she certainly has presence and long white hair. She got the role.
This Swan Lake, danced to an original score based on traditional Irish and Nordic folk music played live on fiddle, nyckelharpa, cello, voice and percussion, will premiere as part of the 2016 Dublin Theatre Festival. Its Dublin season will be from 28 September to 8 October, after which it goes to Aarhus in Denmark and then to Sadler’s Wells, London, with 2017 seasons planned for Stuttgart and Luxembourg with other venues in the planning stage.
News from James Batchelor
James Batchelor is currently working at Tasdance in Launceston on Deepspace, a production emerging from his expedition to Antarctica on board the RV Investigator earlier this year. His Tasdance residency is supported by the Australia Council and is being conducted in conjunction with visual artist Annalise Rees (also part of the Investigator expedition), performer Amber McCartney and sound artist Morgan Hickinbotham. Later this year there will be another development at Arts House in Melbourne as part of the CultureLAB program. The work is set to premiere in 2017.
Read my previous post on the Investigator expedition here. Footage of Batchelor’s work on board the Investigator is below.
Joseph Skelton, Royal New Zealand Ballet
Having had the pleasure of seeing Royal New Zealand Ballet in performance recently, I was interested to learn that RNZB dancer Joseph Skelton will be appearing as guest artist with the Australian Ballet shortly. He will dance the leading role of Albrecht in a New South Wales regional tour of Giselle. ‘The Regional Tour’ appears to be a new name for the Dancers Company, which name seems to have quietly left the vocabulary of the Australian Ballet. The Australian Ballet website notes that this production will feature ‘artists from The Australian Ballet and graduating students from The Australian Ballet School.’
Whatever is behind the mysterious name change, Joseph Skelton’s performances will be worth watching. In Wellington earlier this month, I admired his performances in the Stiefel/Kobborg production of Giselle. I saw him in the peasant pas de deux (with Bronte Kelly), and as the Older Albrecht (a character unique to the Stiefel/Kobborg production), where his quiet but commanding presence was impressive.
For those who love musicals with lots of dance, a new production of Mamma Mia will be part of the 2017 Australian musical theatre scene. The Canberra Theatre Centre has just announced that the Australian premiere of the new production will be in Canberra in November 2017 ahead of performances in other Australian cities. No details yet of cast or creatives (who will be the choreographer?). More information when it becomes available.
Press for August 2016
‘Strings attached.’ Preview of the debut performance by the Australian Dance Party. The Canberra Times—Panorama, 13 August 2016, p. 15. Online version.
James Batchelor’s Island is a fascinating look at what dance can encompass when it becomes an immersive experience. The work is performed by three dancers, Batchelor himself along with Amber McCartney and Rebecca Lee, and it deals largely with perception. I have to admit to feeling slightly frustrated by dance that purports to deal with highly abstract notions. Often it’s only the words on the program that have anything to say on the subject while the dance is just a series of steps. But Island is different.
The first hint that Island might be an interesting work comes early, as we enter the performing space in fact. Architect Ella Leoncio is the designer. She has decorated the small black box space that is the Courtyard Theatre of the Canberra Theatre Centre with bright white tape stretched in lines and geometric patterns across the floor and up the walls. A bank of mirrors is attached to one wall, six movable glass (or perspex?) screens are arranged in the centre of the space in two groups of three and six circles of small bright lights are on the floor. What we don’t know immediately is that some of the screens are slightly convex/concave, a little like those Coney Island-style mirrors that distort the image of those who look into them.
The work itself is in three parts performed without interval. It begins with a solo for Lee, which is followed by a duet for Batchelor and McCartney. All three dancers join together for the final section. Batchelor’s choreography exists in many small movements, sometimes quite subtle, other times forceful in response to Morgan Hickinbotham’s score, which is confronting and yet listenable in its diversity of sounds. I especially enjoyed the performance of McCartney who had absorbed Batchelor’s movement style and added something of her own—a strength of purpose perhaps? Her dancing was certainly strong and well-defined.
But what makes Island so interesting is that the audience is encouraged to walk around the space and see the dance/installation from different viewpoints. Again this is something that I usually find annoying as it is more often than not a meaningless exercise. On this occasion however, the mirrors and screens, which were moved into different positions at the end of each section, came into their own. There were some totally absorbing perspectives on Batchelor’s choreography. Depending on where one went it looked enlarged, minimised, stretched out, and any other number of shape distortions. Occasionally Leoncio’s striped walls and floor became an integral part of the dance when they too were reflected into the screens. Then as a foil there was the clean, precise look of dance undistorted when one moved to other positions. Not everyone in the audience was on the move, which was a real shame because they missed a lot.
Leoncio continued her black and white theme in her costumes and make-up with the white extending beyond the costumes themselves to hair, face and even fingernails in some cases.
I really enjoyed this show. Batchelor has an enquiring mind and his work is definitely worth looking at and analysing.
