Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide, September 26.
Dan Jaber is the first choreographer commissioned to make a full-length work on ADT since Garry Stewart became artistic director back in 1999. For almost 10 years Jaber has been a dancer in the company, which has thus far featured Stewart’s choreography exclusively. The test for Jaber, just as with any choreographer emerging from under the wing of another, is to show that he an individual voice and aesthetic. On this score, Nought succeeds brilliantly.
The seven dancers from ADT, four women and three men, are warming up as the audience enters the performance space, which consists of a white floor in the open space of the very bright, white-walled Samstag museum. The audience is seated along two sides of the large rectangular floor in extremely close proximity to the dancers. Dressed in an assortment of flesh-coloured shorts, skirts, chiffon tops and socks by fashion designer Catherine Ziersch, the dancers continue stretching and marking movement sequences until a sudden electronic noise sounds, and what is seemingly the real piece begins. Dancer Kimball Wong shouts out “One”, and very complex sequences of movements ensue. As the piece progresses, the dancers take turns to call out the numbers from one to eight, which, along with Thomas Jeker’s minimalist electronic score, act as cues for changes of sequence.
That said, the actual movement structure is almost impossible to describe, because the seven dancers are all on stage in almost constant motion throughout, and they form and reform in an endless succession of intricate combinations. Jaber draws on a range of contemporary and ballet movements: posé turns, developpés à la seconde and pointe work are interwoven with headstands, barrel jumps and contact improvisation. Several motifs reoccur repeatedly, such as the characteristic pose of left hand grasping the right elbow with the right hand holding the side of the face, and straight arm movements reminiscent of semaphore code. Nathalie Allen performs an extremely precise balletic solo superbly, and Samantha Hines performs a shuddering, convulsive sequence with great control. There is a long pause - too long - whilst the five dancers line up at the back of the stage to await the entry of Allen and Jessica Hesketh, who go off for a costume change and return in whitish unitards with striking black embroidery and black pointe shoes to perform a balletic duet. But otherwise the motion keeps going relentlessly.
Being so close means that throughout the performance the audience becomes acutely conscious of the dancers as labouring bodies; we hear their increasingly strained breathing, see, smell (and even at time get showered with) their sweat, and see the muscular effort required at first hand. This, coupled with hearing the dancers counting aloud, has the effect of making the work of dancing - all that is usually hidden - highly visible. When Samantha Hines brings a mike onstage at the close of the piece and starts reciting some text by French philosopher Michael Serres about the dancer being a number, an unknown quantity, it becomes clear that this forced intimacy is an intentional strategy to make us aware, not only of the intense effort involved in dancing, but also the incredibly abstract nature of the art form.
The dancers are superb throughout, especially Kimball Wong, Natalie Allen and Jessica Hesketh, and the score, costuming and lighting (by Bosco Shaw) are beautifully integrated. With Nought, Jaber has made a challenging work for both dancers and audience alike, and demonstrated unequivocally that he has his own choreographic style. This is a work that deserves further showings; hopefully ADT will be able to tour it in the not too distant future.
- Maggie Tonkin