Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Thursday 6th August 2015
Sydney
Dance Company's
De Novo is a trio of very diverse works by three different choreographers. 'De novo' means 'anew' or 'afresh' and is a common legal term meaning to review a case from the start as though nothing was known about it and no decision and judgement had been made. That is what the three choreographers aim to do in this programme, to put aside any conceptions of what a piece of contemporary dance should be, and how it should be made to meet the usual expectations, and reinvent the form.
The first of the three works,
Emergence, choreographed by the company's artistic director,
Rafael Bonachela, has a feeling of exploration of the form, reassessing basics, techniques, methods and processes. The approach to creating contemporary dance is given that de novo review. A number of contrasting movements suggest working through ideas, discovering a trigger, and moving on to an expanded idea, building the work as it progresses.
The score is by composer, Nick Wales, and singer-songwriter, Sarah Blasko, with costumes by Dion Lee, an Australian fashion designer, and a complex lighting plot by
Benjamin Cisterne, involving illuminated strips that rise and fall. This is a challenge for an audience to keep track of all that is happening, along with trying to absorb the lyrics, and engage with the dancing. Bonachela makes great uses of the forces available to him, using the full ensemble sparingly and juxtaposing it against various smaller combinations.
There are so many fascinating ideas running through this work that it would longer to discuss them than it took to see the performance, particularly due to the interaction and interdependence between all of the elements involved in every stage of the piece. This was the longest work on the programme, taking up the entire first half. The other two works were shorter and followed the interval.
Adelaide's own Larissa McGowan opened the second half of the programme with
Fanatic, a piece that has two casts taking turns each night. Janessa Dufty, Cass Mortimer Eipper, and Bernard Knauer, or Jesse Scales, Richard Cilli, and David Mack get to work very hard, but have a lot of fun at the same time with this quirky piece. The original concept was the result of collaboration with Sam Haren and Steve Mayhew. The lighting for this work was also by
Benjamin Cisterne, and was another most effective and striking plot.
Line up any number of science fiction fans and they will all tell you which films and televisions shows are the best, and which the worst and then, in excruciating detail, why that is so. No two of them, however, will totally agree on anything, and what one loves, another is just as likely to hate. Some canny, or misguided, film executive, noticing the success of the Alien and Predator films, decided that it would be an economically sound idea to pit the two monsters against one another, as the Japanese had done decades before, and Alien vs. Predator was the offspring.
There are no lofty ideals, or deep meanings embedded within this work, which patrons are supposedly left to ponder later, but never bother to do so. Any pretentious ambitions were discarded right at the start in this extremely funny argument in contemporary dance between fans who disagree about whether or not the two creatures should have been brought together. This is about the fans, not the films and it is obvious to the audience immediately the work begins that they are not only permitted, but expected to laugh out loud, and they certainly do.
An eclectic collection of snippets of music and dialogue from the films, as well as other iconic film themes, along with film audience comments, were put together by Steve Mayhew to create a score for the work. It is a most frenetic piece, the cast playing film fans, monsters, and Ellen Ripley, the central character of the Alien films.
From exaggerated hand and arm movements, amplifying the spoken word, to angular and grotesque movements to create the impression of the monsters and recreate the action from the films, this is a demanding piece on the dancers. It is easy, while laughing, to overlook the technical excellence inherent in this work. It is also a credit to McGowan and, having seen her development as a dancer and then a choreographer over the years, it is encouraging to see her being recognised by a wider audience through her work with this company.
Swedish choreographer, Alexander Ekman's work,
Cacti, closes the evening. The term 'post-modernist' is used about, and even within the work but, to my mind it was absurdist and, in fact, even surreal. The performers do, you must understand, dance with large potted cacti during the work. Yes, cacti, those spiky green plants. How do they dance with cacti? Very carefully, naturally.
This work features a string quartet on stage: Vivien Jeffery, Liisa Pallandi,
James Eccles, and Geoffrey Gartner, as well as a recorded full orchestral score. Aside from the original music, the score included compositions by Beethoven, Haydn, and Schubert.
The dancers first appear sitting on square plinths of three differing heights, and playing percussive beats on them to accompany the string quartet. These plinths are used as the set, being stood on edge, and leaned against one another at various time during the work. The quartet is also required to move whilst playing, so the four members must memorise their parts. The poor cellist has the harder job, as the cello was never intended to be played on the move.
Ekman explains that he is addressing art criticism in this work, frustrated with critics imposing their own views of the meaning onto his works. Although he feels that everybody should interpret art in their own way, there is that dichotomy in that a critic is expected to write about a piece of art that they are seeing and so, understandably, critics express what it meant to them, as I have done in this review. Without that individual opinion, there would be little to say.
That aside, this work is wonderfully subversive and full of inventive variations. One section that stands out is a pas de deux during which we hear, courtesy of a voice over, the hilarious conversation that the two might be having as they go through their routine, giving a totally different interpretation to any pretentious nonsense that might have been considered in attempting to explain what that section might have meant. This, of course, is what Ekman is trying to explain in this work
The evening was a fascinating re-evaluation of the current state of contemporary dance through the medium itself and the incisive and innovative minds of the three choreographers.
Photo by Wendell Teodoro
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