Collusion: Muscle Memory
Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts, 17 August
"Muscle Memory" is another collaboration between designer Benjamin Greaves, choreographer Gareth Belling, and an awarding winning group of chamber music musicians, which together are collectively known as Collusion.
In "Muscle Memory" Belling has revisited five small chamber works he originally choreographed for Queensland Ballet (QB), and has remounted them on the QB Pre-Professional Year dancers. While this time the musicians play live on stage, (an enriching bonus for both dancers and audience), the choreography, (some of it created on the company’s principal dancers), is largely unchanged, presenting technical and interpretative challenges for the young dancers that they largely met.
Three group works are intersected by two duets, thematically ranging from the abstract to an exploration of the human condition. Belling’s choreography belongs squarely in the classical domain, while creatively exploring a contemporary aesthetic, delivering crisp, clearly defined movement that is very much in harmony with the music. Two casts alternate for each work.
The two duets are carefully crafted. Mourning Song, created in 2006, shows Belling’s early promise as a choreographer. It is the only piece where the musicians, in this case a cellist and violinist, are downstage left – otherwise they are upstage centre. A reflection on the loss of a loved one, whose memory returns, it begins with a luscious solo, which was sensitively danced by Libby-Rose Neiderer.
Daniel Kempson partnered both Neiderer (as her ‘memory’), as well as Hannah Clark in Transference – a quirky piece that playfully explores the idea of transference of heat, emotions and movement between two dancers. The focus is an obstinately upturned white tutu, stitched to stand up around Clark’s torso like a tulip. A barelegged Clark, en demi-pointe, and showing beautiful use of her back and arms, at times coquettishly used the tutu’s skirt, as if peeking out from behind a fan.
The opening and closing group works showed the diversity in the program. Urban Myths (2007) has the myth of the ‘perfect marriage’ at its centre. As the lead couple, Meg Williams and Charles Herkes were convincing, dramatically and technically, in this work for three couples. Given their youth, and the dark subject matter of domestic violence, they all acquitted themselves well.
Refraction (2009), a work for eight dancers, evokes the baroque with the women’s short white tutus of tubular coils and the men in white bustier styled tops and shorts. Originally created to Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso No. 1, but recomposed by Philip Earnes as a piano quintet, this is also a playful work where the movement has been created with reference to the behaviour of light through different mediums, and the order of colours on the spectrum. Saskia Harman featured with Thomas Dilley this performance, showing light as a feather ballon.
The middle work, Transition Sequence for eight dancers, was conceived in 2011 during a JUMP mentorship with choreographer Nils Christie. It has crisply articulated, angular movement that moves fluidly as the dancers group, disperse and regroup into different configurations. Dancers are again barelegged, in structured tunics of grey chiffon (designed, as were all the costumes, by Noelene Hill). The construction of the piece is tied closely to the Carl Vine String Quartet No 3, with clean, classically based movement traversing the floor effortlessly, exploring all levels and revealing beautiful moving shapes. Patterns of angled arms and legs are created by the use of canon. The two lead couples, Neiderer and Herkes, with Williams and Shaun Curtis were solid in duets of lifts, and supported turns where bodies intertwined effortlessly. An athletic section for the men showed high extensions and leaps - a real workout in a program that otherwise somewhat favoured the women.
"Muscle Memory" was cleverly conceived to display the up and coming talent at QB, and the talent was definitely there, but it was also a delightful retrospective look at the works of the prolific Belling.
– DENISE RICHARDSON