Bay 20, Carriageworks
Reviewed November 30, 2022
Now in its ninth season, Sydney Dance Company’s "New Breed" program continues to be an opportunity to see SDC’s talented dancers in a selection of shorter, more experimental works by up-and-coming choreographers including company dancers keen to make their own works. It is to be expected that a program of this nature has the potential to be rather hit and miss, but this year’s selection of new works leant too heavily towards the latter, making for a somewhat obtuse evening of contemporary dance. Taken as a whole, this was certainly a program of works that challenged their audience, but without - I would argue - offering much in return.
The program opened with independent dance artist and choreographer Sophie Ndaba’s The Veil of Separation. Despite having an excessively long introductory section (in which light projected through the hanging cloth revealing the bodies behind it), once the six dancers got moving there was some interesting movement on display. Ndaba’s choreography of the duo and trio sections of this work were particularly inventive and well structured. It was good to have the opportunity to see newer dancers Lucy Angel, Connor McMahon and Chris Mills up close among a relatively small cast. Tamara Bouman danced with conviction and clarity, while Jesse Scales and Luke Hayward stood out in a duet. The central fabric or veil was a useful visual device for conveying the ideas of division and separation at the heart of this work and was beautifully lit by Alexander Berlage. Congratulations to Aleisa Jelbart and Guy Harding for their actualisation of this set design.
The cast of nine dancers in independent dance artist and choreographer Jenni Large’s S U C K E R wear strikingly eye-catching costumes - sleeveless velvet unitards with matching opera length gloves and wigs of long hair in matching shades of hot pink and bright red. In the program notes Large describes the atmosphere as being “pulled into a discordant cult-like nightclub” and in her engaging video introduction refers to the cinematic tropes of horror movie and vampire genres. S U C K E R is a challenging work to sit through, not so much because it is particularly outrageous, offensive or oversexualised but because it gave a cast of talented dancers very little of interest to do in almost 20 minutes onstage. From grounded yet repetitive rocking movements performed in a lunge position to semi-provocative poses on the floor with exaggerated pouts, the choreography appears trite and ridiculous. In this sense I suppose it was an effective parody of cinematic tropes in the horror and vampire genres – just one that felt tedious rather than humorous or revealing.
SDC company dancer Luke Hayward’s self-choreographed solo The Remnants of was only 13 minutes long but felt much longer. It begins with the artist expressionless and motionless, standing facing the audience in his underwear for at least a minute. His clothes are scattered across four small stools and as the work progresses he gradually gets dressed piece by piece. In the program Hayward describes this work as a self-reflection and expression of the past few years, and was presumably referring more directly to the futility and monotony of cancelled performances and the reduced human contact of lockdown periods during the pandemic. The dramatic highlight was his attempt to crush grapes between two stools (home-made wine anyone?!) and this did get a laugh from the audience. While I can understand how the repetition of broken up phrases of spoken text (from Nick Holland’s poem I Remember) that accompany the repetition of broken up phrases of largely seated movements in the latter half of this piece reflects the cut-up technique of Dadaism Hayward refers to in the program notes – ultimately this work felt like a test of endurance that provided no real insight.
The last work of the program, former SDC dancer and current Rehearsal Associate Charmene Yap’s Drunk Tank Pink had the largest cast of the evening with 14 dancers and a blank square screen that changed colour throughout the piece. The dancers were drawn intermittently to the screen in a reference to the starting point for this work - a social research experiment in the 70s that found a particular shade of pink had a temporary calming effect on violent prisoners. The work itself was pleasantly watchable without being outstanding, although to be fair it probably didn’t benefit from being placed last in the program. At times Yap’s movement showcased the individualised and inwardly focussed tics and tremors that are representative of psychological distress, contrasting effectively with the final section in which smaller groups of dancers travelled more vigorously across the stage in a unified display of kinetic energy and exuberance.
Alexander Berlage (set design) and Aleisa Jelbart (costume design) were responsible for the design elements of all four works (with the additional credit of Annie Robinson for the costume design of The remnants of). The Veil of Separation, S U C K E R and Drunk Tank Pink all featured music by young Australian composers and musicians; Blue Pools - Tim Ayre and Jack Glass, Anna Whitaker and Alyx Dennison.
- GERALDINE HIGGINSON
'New Breed' continues until December 17.