Kristina Chan: Mountain

Campbelltown Arts Centre
13 April 

Mountain is the second instalment in a trilogy of works conceived by dancer and choreographer Kristina Chan. Whereas the first work of the trilogy, A Faint Existence, is an hour-long solo, Mountain is a 40-minute work for three dancers, choreographed and performed by independent artists Kristina Chan, Melanie Palomares and Marnie Palomares. Like A Faint Existence, Mountain deals broadly with the effects of climate change but does so in subtle scenes which are open to interpretation, requiring the audience to engage imaginatively with the material in order to “read” their own interpretation of it.

It starts off slowly. The aforementioned three dancers in white have taken their places on an unadorned stage before we, the audience, start to file in. Alternately standing and crouching, their movements start out small while we take in their changing forms within the bare minimalism of the set and lighting design. Interestingly, the performance space is traversed by tautly strung fishing lines that run horizontally from one side of the stage to another. They provide a just visible framework that the dancers move around and between, sometimes leaning back onto and becoming partially entwined within.

This first section has a meditative quality that is suddenly broken by the onset of the second. James Brown’s sound design (a combination of industrial and natural sounds) dramatically increases in volume to signal unforeseen alarm, while a loud banging, clanging noise (perhaps the sound of metal on metal) is more than an aural experience. We, the audience, could feel the tiny reverberations of each strike through the chairs we were seated on. Subsequently, the dancers take turns dragging each other across the stage; as soon as the one pulling lies down and stops moving, their roles are reversed, with the prone dancer slowly coming to life and becoming the active puller.

This happens again and again - such heavily weighted movements demonstrating the considerable strength of each performer. In one memorable image, the slightly built Chan pulls the seemingly lifeless bodies of both Marnie and Melanie Palomares across the floor at the same time, leaning away from their bodies at a considerable angle in order to gain sufficient force. For me, this evoked the image of a mountain climber leaning into a heavy wind or a steep slope in order to stay upright and Mountain’s use of weighted, opposing forces seemed like a type of moving sculpture under the changing tones and colours of Matthew Marshall’s lighting design. The sense of time passing is implied as the angle of the lighting overhead changes to create shadows of the dancers’ moving bodies, growing longer as the work progresses.

In the closing scene, an intense strobe lighting effect masks Chan’s removal of her costume, leaving her curled up on the floor, naked and vulnerable, when the lighting subsides.

This is a work filled with imagery that lodges in your subconscious, triggering visual and experiential associations that would be less powerful were they drawn more deliberately and consciously in a straightforward narrative.

- GERALDINE HIGGINSON

Kristina Chan's 'A Faint Existence' will be performed at the Sydney Opera House from May 10 to 13 as part of the 'Unwrapped' series of contemporary works, which runs from May 9 to 13. For details, go here.