Queensland University of Technology: “Dance 14”

Queensland University of Technology: “Dance 14” -
Gardens Theatre, 4 November -

The 2014 QUT Dance graduation season, "Dance 14", celebrated both the achievements of the third year graduating students as well as the learning journey of those yet to graduate – the first and second years. With the program’s composition much like last year’s, it featured excerpts from the contemporary dance oeuvre of Australian choreographers, but also four key works created especially on the dancers.

It was a diverse collection, travelling across the spectrum of dance styles from jazz to neo-classical; some working better than others to showcase the dancers, but all no doubt devised to enrich their pre-professional learning experience.

The graduating third years dominated the program, performing all three repertoire selections, as well as two works specifically choreographed for the group.

A short solo from Natalie Weir’s Where the Heart Is, expressing a mother’s grief as her son leaves home, was clearly interpreted by Natalie Kolobaric, although out of context and placed between two larger works, it sat awkwardly in the program.  

Two longer pieces by Graeme Murphy were a better fit. The duet from Murphy’s Air and Other Invisible Forces, where a large tube of inflated white silk blowing across the stage almost becomes a third dancer, is quite mesmerising, with movement that loosely references the oriental, beautifully performed by Tzu Yu Pan and Charles Ball.

The second Murphy piece – this time from Salomé – is shorter but no less effective; rhythmic, percussive movement punctuated by clapping, danced by six of the eight graduates with crisp precision.

The first and second year students opened the first and second halves of the program respectively. Jack Chambers’s Until Late… was a classy start, in two distinctly different movements. The first to Tape Five’s “Tango for a Spy” is a loose but sassy interpretation of the tango. The dancers then remove flowing purple skirts to reveal bright yellow shorts, underscoring the segué from tango to jazz; a hot number showing influences from Fosse to Jackson.

The twenty-two first years were tightly together with sharply articulated hands, arms and heads punctuating the well-orchestrated movement. While the dancers might not yet all realise that this style of routine can never pack enough punch, it was nevertheless a great opening to the programme.

The second year students performed In-Script-ed choreographed by dance lecturer Dr Jenny Roche. The idea of Palimpsest, (a manuscript that is wiped clean to be rewritten over, while still revealing the original text beneath), inspired the piece, performed in front of changing projections of aged manuscripts. It is of quite loosely framed movement, often performed in unison. Program notes suggest that this work, which was created in collaboration with the dancers, is very much about the process.  While effectively performed, it did not seem to extend the dancers’ movement vocabulary to any large degree.

The third year dancers concluded the program with Trailing Touch, a neoclassical piece by Vanessa Mafe Keane. Dressed in lilac coloured romantic half-tutus they all showed lovely breadth of movement in the upper body and arms, in a very expressive and lyrical work that explores the idea of imperfect and transient patterns.

Gavin Webber’s My Number is… was perhaps the most entertaining work of the program. Although a little long, individual vignettes by the graduates allowed each to promote their strengths to the audience, much as in an audition. All delivered their lines with conviction, (who says dancers can’t speak), especially the recitation of ‘put-down advice’ offered by well-meaning friends and family. It showed the graduates’ strengths not simply as dancers but as potential artists – a diversely talented bunch. One can only wish them all the very best.

– DENISE RICHARDSON