Expressions Dance Company: When Time Stops -
Playhouse, QPAC, 20 May -
Expressions Dance Company’s (EDC) award winning work When Time Stops premiered in September 2013. With several new dancers in the company, and choreographer Natalie Weir in her eighth year as artistic director, now was understandably a good time to restage it.
When Time Stops has as its central character a woman experiencing flashbacks of memory at the very last moments of her life. Set by Weir within the spiritual context of the legend of ‘the ferryman’, the transporter of souls to the after-life, these memories, including a first kiss, a dysfunctional relationship, and a near-death experience are abstractly woven into an exquisite fabric of movement, colour, and sound that still enthralls.
Again, the inspired collaboration of Weir, composer Iain Grandage, set designer Bill Haycock and lighting designer David Walters delivers theatrical magic. The Helpmann awarded score, played live by the musicians of the Camerata of St John’s, under the direction of Brendan Joyce, richly underscores the work’s expressive line, while Haycock’s bold design of angled walls, claustrophobically tipping into the space and arranged against a black night sky, is masterfully lit by Walters, creating a striking looking work of blues, greys and soft bleached pinks.
Weir has tweaked the work – it seemed tighter than I remembered – but the movement is still sparsely fashioned, clearly expressed, and always driven by meaning. The marriage of music and movement produces moments of sweet, but powerful urgency, when the dancers surge on and of the stage for instance, in counterpoint to slower, gentler moments, such as when the sound of lapping water forms part of the soundscape.
New EDC dancers bring fresh dimensions to the work, however Thomas Gundry Greenfield, reprising his role as The Ferryman, again anchored the drama convincingly with a restrained, but tension-laden presence. The opening images of his steady ‘rowing’, only the rippled muscularity of his back visible to the audience, made a powerful beginning.
Michelle Barnett, in her first leading role as The Woman, showed a depth and breadth to her interpretation, which, underpinned by impeccable technique, can only grow with each performance.
“First Kiss”, with Rebecca Hall and Benjamin Chapman (reprising the role), perfectly captured the tender playfulness of young love, in a technically clean, but poetic coupling, while guest artist Xiao Zhiren (Guangdong Modern Dance Company) manipulated time, represented by a small silver ball, with fluid dexterity in contorted movements that cut through the air with clarity and precision.
The loose-limbed and commandingly tall Jake McLarnon (also guesting this season) voraciously consumed the space in “Repercussions”, contrasting with the diminutive Cloudia Elder, who showed further development as a dancer of extraordinary facility with tightly wound movement that nevertheless flowed seamlessly down and up from the floor. All the EDC dancers were, in fact, fearless, particularly in the execution of the multitudinous lifts and throws that pepper much of this work, and are a Weir trademark.
Not surprisingly it was Elise May, reprising her role in “Cardiac”, who again mesmerised with the intensity of her performance in this poignant duet. The image of Gundry Greenfield unrelentingly ‘administering CPR’, as she slips out from and back under his hands, ‘lingering’ between life and death, revealed an even greater depth to her interpretation.
The twelve musicians of the Camerata of St John’s, two cellists, a bass player and nine violinists, weave another vital expressive thread through the work, as like minstrels they move in different groupings into and out of the space. Their presence is therefore both visually and aurally potent.
The work ends as it begins, with striking imagery and the poetic yearning of the strings. When Time Stops is a carefully crafted, hour-long gem, with all its elements in exquisite harmony. It’s a must see and deserves to tour interstate.
– Denise Richardson
When Time Stops plays QPAC until 28 May.