Co3: re:Loaded 2015 -
Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre WA, 28 October -
An exceptionally enthusiastic and supportive audience welcomed and cheered Western Australia's new contemporary dance company Co3 on the opening night of its first production “re:Loaded 2015”, which featured works by choreographers Larissa McGowan, Gavin Webber and artistic director Raewyn Hill. "re:Loaded 2015" also included performances by 53 dancers from CoYouth Ensemble (for dancers from 7 to 18 years of age). Co3 emerged from the ashes of Buzz Dance Theatre and STEPS Youth Dance Company and both these companies made significant contributions to the development of contemporary dance, especially in the youth, education and community sectors in Western Australia.
After a pre-show foyer 'glimpse' of Co:Youth Ensemble in Glimpse to Marco Shuttle's Fanfara, the program opened with Larissa McGowan’s 2012 work Transducer. In McGowan's intensely physical choreographic language, Transducer explores how "we drive our emotions through language and physicality" and how energy becomes "visible" in our interactions. To Charlie Chan's electronic soundscape, six Co:3 dancers (Katherine Gurr, Mitch Harvey, Russell Thorpe, Ella-Rose Trew, Matthew Tupper and Zoe Wozniak) were striking in vivid orange skirts, tops, leggings and shorts against a white background and floor, and illuminated by strobe and flickering overhead lights. Transducer sees couples spar ferociously, sequences of convulsing and twitching are disturbing and one dancer silently 'roars' menacingly at another. Visible energy, it appears, can be aggressive, disordered and involuntary.
More Glimpse followed in a light-hearted interlude as Co:Youth dancers appeared from within the auditorium and gradually made their way onto the stage, finishing to the uplifting pop song “Can’t Hold Us.”
Changing the mood was Gavin Webber’s new work What’s Left, set to Ben Ely's distinctive music. Webber cites Naomi Klein's book This Changes Everything as the starting-point for this work and What’s Left focuses on the complexity of emotions that surround the issue of climate change. A sparse, visually arresting design (no designer credited) with a darkened stage, silvery upright poles placed around it and high security-fencing across the back created an uneasiness as, under a single beam of light, a woman (Talitha Maslin) in casual dress becomes more and more agitated as she waves her arms, then jumps in the air to attract attention. Audible sounds of exhaustion can be heard as she begins to shake. Oblivious to her distress, two smartly dressed males (Andrew Searle and Zachary Lopez) spar, push each other and use poles to prod and manoeuvre each other. Collecting up the poles, the woman places them side by side forming a sort of life-raft but the men dismantle it and return the poles to their original upright positions. Fine performances in this absorbing, elusive work exposed emotions of desperation, anger, futility and bleakness.
After interval, Co:Youth Ensemble's Toros, devised by the young dancers themselves, is a re-imagining of Raewyn Hill’s 2012 Fugue. Framed by a beautifully lit cyclorama, black borders and on a white floor, the dancers, dressed in black, showed good precision and use of the space, the floor, line formations and effective use of hands and arms, occasionally counting aloud and driven on relentlessly by the musical insistence of Ravel's Boléro.
The nine Co3 dancers then blended seamlessly into the Toros group before the youngsters exited and Hill’s Carnivale began. Crouched in a huddle and moving in unison with a grim intensity, as though propelled by an unseen force, the flowing fabric of their black skirts, culottes, shorts and black tops appears to expand the group. Formation is maintained as the music, a remixed sound track of Ravel's Boléro with Eden Mulholland's effective percussive additions, creates its own momentum. With Andrew Searle brilliantly heading the pack, the dancers displayed commendable endurance and physical agility as they lunged and charged to a rousing musical climax.
- Margaret Mercer
All photos by Ashley de Prazer. Click on thumbnails for captions. Top photo: Carnivale by Raewyn Hill.