Adelaide College of the Arts: Graduation Performance

Adelaide College of the Arts: Graduation Performance -
Light Square, Adelaide, 3 December -

Graduation performances have a special feeling.  The students hope they will be exchanging the hard, often enjoyable, slog of studio, study and classes for the competitive world of satisfying, rewarding and remunerative work.  Adelaide TAFE dance students have plenty of successful examples to inspire them  – Lisa Griffiths, Adam Synott, Tom Greenfield, Daniel Jaber and Tara Robertson among them.   Since graduation performances are the dance industry’s hunting ground, the students push themselves that little bit farther, seeking to excel even their best, and this was clearly evident in the first half of a program entitled “A Dance Double Bill”.

This first half gave us lecturer Peter Sheedy’s Wood, Steel and Hollow Water.  Anto Dal Santo’s fine set divided the performance space in three, the centre with a wooden floor, behind it a high wall with entrances right and left. But to begin, dimly-lit figures enter downstage right and we are in an aquatic world.  Three dancers are seated on chairs, with projections of bubbles rising about them.  They begin stretching, extending their legs, turning at the same time.  Released from sitting, they move to the opposite side of the stage, the projection widens, the bubbles become more like amoeba, and the dancers are flexing, gyrating, simultaneously extending their legs, a movement repeated time and again throughout the piece, and indeed too often.

A change in lighting and sound – now loud, raucous, blasting, maybe rough wind and water; the movement becomes more linear, and the two men of the cast are employed in lifts.  The trembling of hands signals fear and distress and one girl is left alone, cringing in the upper corner.   The third section moves centre stage, the cast running in a circle, couples meeting and parting until two stay, and the four of them have a pleasantly lyrical interlude – it’s Sheedy’s best choreography of the night.  Gradually the rest enter for a final ensemble, ending with arms upstretched in the darkening light.  

Dal Santo’s simple trunks and tops allowed maximum freedom of movement. Molly Breuker’s careful lighting, while suitable for a professional production, was often too dark; when students are on show like this, they need to be clearly seen.  The dancers had good control of balance, worked very well as an ensemble, and sustained the generally fast pace of the work without strain.  The diminutive, blonde Ruby Dolman was the outstanding cast member.

After interval the audience entered to a proscenium arch stage, a sinister forest of bare trees as a backdrop and a property tree with a dangling apple.  The work, Skinning the Tale (sic), is a mixture of bits and pieces from fairy tales – Snow White, Red Riding Hood and others.  There’s a coven of witches, a monster now and then, and a lot of running about backwards and forward across the stage, and a girl - who plucks the apple early on - wandering in and out munching it.  The dancers may be having a fun time, but any technical refinement observable in the first part of the program is rarely evident here.  The whole piece is an unfortunate exercise in triviality.  The choreography and concepts are the work of the cast, directed by staff members Sheedy and Lisa Heaven, and there’s little to be said in its favour.  

This is not the sort of production that displays the excellence of young students being assessed by possible employers.  They need good choreography, with well-chosen music, to support them.  Is there is insufficient funding to bring in outside chorographers, as was once the case?  If so, it would be better to present the dancers in an onstage class rather than a self-concocted mishmash like this.  

- Alan Brissenden