This year’s Adelaide Festival will see the Australian premiere of works by Hofesh Schechter, Crystal Pite, Jiri Kylian and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. The four works will be presented by American dance company Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet. It will be the company’s Australian debut.
Violet Kid by Hofesh Schechter, Ten Duets on a Theme of Rescue by Crystal Pite and Indigo Rose by Jiri Kylian will be presented as a triple bull on Friday 6 and Sunday 8 March. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Orbo Novo will be presented on Saturday 7 and Sunday 8 March.
Created in 2011, Schechter’s Violet Kid has the feeling of a pot about to come to boil, bubbling with a youthful and visceral energy. In a series of vignettes set against Shechter’s own percussive soundtrack, 14 dancers shift constantly in restless groups and pairs, pulsating with incessant rhythm, struggling for harmony in a complex world. The group dances a frenetic tango, rock out, twist, stomp, crawl and shake, fuelled by teenage angst and intensity.
Crystal Pite’s Ten Duets on a Theme of Rescue is a series of sombre yet reverent portraits; a chain of distinct but overlapping encounters, duets where neither the rescued or the rescuer are saved, arresting and moving, with careful consideration of space and intimacy between dancers. Pite’s theatrical sensibility is manifested in this emotional and poetic work performed to highlights of Cliff Martinez’s score for the movie Solaris.
Indigo Rose by Jiri Kylian was created in 1998 and is a tribute to the transient nature of youth and human relationships in a series of juxtapositions – quick, highly articulated motions and fluid lyricism. A furl of white silk allows dancers to perform a cheeky shadow play. A series of tender duets and agile solos are set against digital projections of the dancers themselves.
Cherkaoui’s Orbo Novo is an exploration of connectedness. Meaning “new world”, Orbo Novo is inspired by neuroanatomist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s memoir My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey documenting her own stroke and subsequent discovery of peace and euphoria.
The duality of the human mind is made manifest by Cedar Lake’s dancers. Tall mobile lattice walls facilitate expressions of entrapment, freedom, isolation, unity and the borders and limits of the mind. The dancers speak Taylor’s words while physically embodying brain waves and misfiring synapses in a series of sharp gestures and flowing motions. In solos, duets and unisons, dancers search for balance in a kinetic landscape of juxtaposition – fragility and strength, triumph and surrender.
For more information about this program and the rest of the Adelaide Festival head to www.adelaidefestival.com.au
Above: Orbo Novo. Photo: Julieta Cervantes. Adelaide Festival of Arts.