Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre. May 17.
While Leigh Warren has always been noted for his collaborations, they’ve mostly been with musicians or designers, rather than with media artists. Pari passu...touch marks a new development, because technologies are as central to the work as the touch mentioned in its title. Media artist Adam Synnott, who is also a frequent dancer in Warren’s troupe, here takes on the dual role of composer and projection designer, and his superbly imaginative projections and techno-wizardry are at the heart of this piece.
Mary Moore’s set is stark and simple: an oval white tarquette at the back of which stand a couple of two metre high curved screens. The work is divided into three sections, labelled in the program as random, tangled and synchronic. Random begins with an industrial soundscape, dim lighting and grayish projections appearing across the screens: a swirling marble-like pattern which morphs into something smoother, molten rock, perhaps, then into an image of water with lapping waves. A blob on the screen is gradually transformed into a miniature human figure that increases in size as it walks towards us. This dissipates and is replaced by the bodies of the four dancers, Bec Jones, Jesse Martine, Lisa Griffiths and Timothy Farrar, behind the interactive screens. An array of truly amazing effects is generated by the dancers’ touch, body heat and movement in relation to the screens. Force fields with magnetic type waves appear, golden stars shoot out in clusters, geometric lines with dots multiply, a fluid, scarf-like shape unravels, and most intriguingly, apparently three-dimensional minute boxes bob around within the body of the screen itself, moving away from the body heat of the dancers. The dancers, by now in front of the screen, embark on a series of solos, before the human figure once again appears on the screen, this time retreating into the distance.
In the second section, Tangled, the screens play a less prominent role, the lighting switches to orange, and the industrial noise is replaced by a violin. This section is structured as a series of duets in which the dancers explore the infinite ways humans can touch each other. Bec Jones and Jesse Martin alternate between tension and tenderness, frequently pushing each other away, whereas Lisa Griffiths and Timothy Farrar have a more romantic coupling, with some lovely lifts and playful weight transfers.
The final section, Synchronic, features a single image of a swirling, multi-coloured vortex on the screens, and a pulsating beat that gradually accelerates. The dancers, clad by Alistair Trung in black and white striped shorts with filmy black and white tunics, really work up a sweat in a repetitive walking pattern of strait lines, circles and frequent changes of direction. One by one they break away from the group and embark on frenetic solos filled with percussive angular arm movements, only to be drawn back into the walking pattern. Lisa Griffiths is particularly outstanding here, the precision and definition of her movements never failing, despite the insistent demands made upon her as the leader of this section. Finally, the beat becomes ever more insistent and the dancers collapse in a huddle as darkness descends.
The opening night performance was slightly ragged, with some timing issues and also a technological glitch, and the relationship between the sections could perhaps be more clearly articulated, as could the relationship between "Pari passu", which means ‘on an equal footing’, and touch. Nevertheless Pari passu...touch is a very interesting work that would benefit from further development. It’s great to see Warren undaunted by recent funding cuts and striking out in a new direction.
- MAGGIE TONKIN