FASTER
State Theatre, Melbourne
March 17
The Australian Ballet kicked off its season with a triple bill entitled “Faster”, conjuring up visions of frenetic activity, extreme athleticism, and, potentially, the wish for “Slower”. Fortunately, speed was not the only element on show in this program, though it did remain the primary concept engaged with, without giving pause to reflect what is all this speed for?
David Bintley's Faster was by far the slightest and least innovative work in a program that hardly presented anything in the nature of new directions in modern ballet for the 21st century. Choreographed for the 2012 London Olympics, Faster is seen best in that context, providing good family friendly entertainment. Bintley brings together a mishmash of hybrid disciplines under headings such as aerials, fighters, throwers, and synchro, finishing with an extended running section. The cameos are all lightly sketched with only the centrepiece duet for the Fighters (Ako Kondo and Andrew Killian) attempting anything beyond the surface pizzazz in its drawn-out take on injury and recovery. Chengwu Guo lights up the stage with his spectacular leaps on each appearance.
Squander and Glory, by local Melbourne choreographer Tim Harbour, more than held its own in terms of choreographic inventiveness. This is creative and interesting choreography boasting a wealth of ideas and a refreshing emphasis on arms. Since much of the choreography revolves around moving groups of dancers, sometimes in intricate counterpoint, sometimes in synchronized wavelike motion, the use of a mirror as backdrop was particularly effective, multiplying the number of dancers on stage and adding to the complexity of the patterns created. A hologram of a sculpture reminiscent of the infamous "Yellow Peril" dominates the set, while costumes and lighting contribute to the overall effect.
At one stage the audience is lit up and mirrored as well, a clever conceit aiming to draw audience and performers into the one entity they can at times ideally become. Here though it stays at the level of a clever gesture, without engaging deeper layers of audience complicity as can happen in Pina Bausch’s use of the device.
The ensemble danced with great precision and togetherness, with Jarryd Madden, Leanne Stojmenov, Kevin Jackson and Vivienne Wong standing out in this and the following Infra. In general, the demands of these modern “leotard ballets” suit the talents and training of the current Australian Ballet dancers very well.
Michael Gordon's music is relentless and discordant and does little to enhance the experience of the work.
Whereas Squander and Glory is mostly about moving a body of dancers around the stage, Wayne McGregor's Infra is mostly about duets, two bodies moving together, reaching for intimacy. McGregor's pas de deux choreography is sophisticated, creating great shapes and calling for extreme flexibility of limbs and spine combined with strength. Infra is also imbued with more sensitivity than one is accustomed to seeing in McGregor's ballets. It works as a series of vignettes composed of demanding though largely static pas de deux, with the duet for two women holding the attention most fully. While all the dancers coped superbly with the technical demands, Robyn Hendricks stood out for infusing her role with something extra in the way of presence giving rise to an additional emotional charge not always present. Towards the end Julian Opie's group of walking figures on an LED screen above the dancers finally disappear from view leaving the dancers to dominate the stage. The walkers, caught in the anonymity and isolation of city life, can take the viewer’s attention away from the dancing couples who become a backdrop for the hypnotic monotony of the figures processing across the screen. Perhaps this is symptomatic of our current obsession with screens distracting us from the real human bodies and souls surrounding us.
Max Richter's meditative score is a welcome change from the grating minimalist repetitions of Michael Gordon and the dissonant relentlessness of Matthew Hindson in the first two works. Richter's music allowed emotional complexities to be hinted at in a piece which was at least reaching for human connection.
This notwithstanding, most of the evening was both a celebration of impossibly perfect bodies and a contribution to our current fetish with speed at the cost of all else. It was also a program which harkened back to the end of the 20th century stylistically, raising the question as to where the true innovations of this century are going to come from in dance. With the partial exception of Infra this is ballet primarily as physical prowess which the dancers have in spades. But surely what distinguishes dancers from athletes and gymnasts is the fact that they are artists above and beyond their skill, human beings who dance before being “very athletic animals” (to quote McGregor). One can only look forward to seeing how the dancers' talents will manifest in other settings and other contexts.
- IRINA KUZMINSKY
'Faster' runs in Melbourne till March 27 and in Sydney from April 7 to 26.