Red Moon Rising: Deluge -
Brisbane Powerhouse, 18 September -
Queensland Opera: The Perfect American -
Concert Hall QPAC, 20 September -
Deluge is the product of transcultural collaborations between Korean and Australian artists. Directed by Jeremy Neideck, one of the performers and founder of the dance theatre company Red Moon Rising, Deluge is also cross disciplinary, featuring elements of contemporary dance, physical theatre, butoh, martial arts and pansori, traditional Korean opera. It features seven performers.
A chance encounter with a couple of women who had lost a family member in the 2011 Lockyer Valley floods was the catalyst for Neideck to explore the emotional and physical effects on the human body of large volumes of water, tying it in to the inherently Korean concept of Han – a collective feeling of oppression and isolation in the face of insurmountable odds.
The premise of Deluge is therefore interesting, and no doubt a second viewing would reveal further insights into the work. However, as a piece of theatre Deluge needs editing to fully reveal those moments that are most visually and aurally absorbing.
The ceremony of making tea for the audience is a delightful opening idea that could have been effectively communicated in five minutes, rather than fifteen. And the subsequent endless minutes as the performers remove - one by one - a multitude of empty containers spread across the space, were also tedious.
However, the preamble over, Deluge emerges a richly textured and striking looking work. Several tall pillars framing the industrial brickwork of the back wall are effectively lit to give the space an otherworldly look. At one breathtaking, but brief moment, a river of emerald green laser light cuts through the haze filled space.
The soundscape of rolling thunder, bells and the occasional birdsong is persistently ominous, augmented at times by the wailing and open-mouthed sighing, the shuddering and the sharp intakes of breath of the performers.
There is little discernible dance in Deluge; rather the movement, mainly of the upper body, is minimalistic and often so slow it can barely be seen. This was quite absorbing in one section as, imperceptibly a sliding from one foot to the next slowly propelled the performers towards the centre of the stage. However, a section of repetitive running across the space into floor rolls was less skilfully executed.
Deluge will also feature at the Seoul International Dance Festival in October.
The Philip Glass opera, The Perfect American, co-presented by Opera Queensland, was a Brisbane Festival highlight, especially as Brisbane is only the third city in the world to ever host the work. With a libretto by Rudolf Wurlitzer drawn from a loosely biographical play by Peter Stephan Jungk about the last months of Walt Disney’s life, The Perfect American is both intimate and epic. It is intimate in that the action takes place mostly on a circular raised platform centre stage, and is often reflective as a dying Disney looks back on his life, but epic in that sweeping around the action is a production design that is bold and daringly innovative.
Inspired by the many cinematic innovations Disney patented, designer Dan Porta has fashioned a giant gantry of two rotating arms centred above the stage that constantly project drawn images onto flowing ‘paper’ screens, creating an ephemeral world of moving black and white sketches. In fact the whole set is a series of various unfolding sketch-books and billowing sketch paper illuminated by these elemental drawings.
The Glass score, played by the Queensland Orchestra with its usual finesse, is quite unusually lush. English bass-baritone, Christopher Purves, who created the role, captured the turmoils of Disney's contrary nature with poignancy.
Dancers from Expressions Dance Company together with performers from the Improbable Skills Ensemble acted as a sort of dance Greek chorus, (although there was no dance to speak of), effectively framing the central action but also moving and rearranging the peripheral settings.
Uniformly dressed as illustrators in white shirts, brown checked pants and vests and all sporting visors and identical glasses, the chorus uses stylised movement and other conventions such as canon, to wave giant quill pens or sketch pads, and in a dream sequence morph into rabbits, complete with rabbit heads, hopping on all fours around Disney’s hospital bed.
All in all a rather fantastical production, but the star was the design.
- DENISE RICHARDSON