Leigh Warren Dance: Not According to Plan -
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre, 20 September -
Not According to Plan is the strongest work Leigh Warren has made in several years. Fittingly, since it is premiering as part of Adelaide’s annual OzAsia Festival, Warren has assembled a pan-Asian cast of collaborators to make a work inspired by the astonishing life story of Cambodian-born dancer and choreographer Xiao Xiong Zhang. Set design is by Malaysian born Adelaide furniture designer Khai Liew, costumes are by Australian-Vietnamese Alistair Trung, music is by Malaysian composer Jerome Kugan, with local input from Helen Fuller providing projections and Warren’s regular collaborator, Geoff Cobham, doing lighting. Star performer Xiao-Xiong Zhang, who is now Associate Professor of Dance in Taipei but was for many years an Adelaide-based dancer and still teaches regularly at AC Arts here, has brought two wonderful dancers with him from Taipei, Chien-Wei Wu and Yuan-Li Wang, who perform alongside Adelaide’s own Aidan Munn and Rebecca Jones.
The first section, “bloodline”, opens with the stage swathed in an enormous white drape and Zhang sitting on one of several mounds regarding Wu and Wang, whose sinuous movements are accentuated by the veils of silver and maroon silk they wear. Meanwhile, a river-like projection of light gradually unfolds across a screen at the back of the stage. There follows a duet by Jones and Munn, both dressed in Trung’s gorgeous red and black floor-length tunics, which features some lovely lifts but is slightly too long and could be more tightly focused.
For the middle section, “dreamscape”, the white drape is pulled away to reveal a wooden table-like object, and two wooden slit-drum-like objects. The soundscape, previously taped rain and Chinese folk music, now morphs into electronica. Zhang becomes an active participant in this section, which recalls significant moments from his life, such as the parting from his mother at the railway station when the beginning of the Cambodian holocaust prompted his parents to send the thirteen-year-old boy off alone to live in China, where he survived the Cultural Revolution. We hear Zhang’s taped recollection of his mother telling him he must not cry, and then he sings unaccompanied in Chinese. No translations are given here or for any of the other spoken Chinese or projected calligraphy in the work, which is slightly frustrating.
The bald Wu, dressed in a long Chinese style grey tunic, then enters, and his solo and duet with Zhang are highlights. Wu is a superb dancer, whippet thin and extremely lithe and precise in his movements, which encompass both Western styles and Eastern movement styles. Zhang sits calmly inside a ring of light as Wu, perhaps a version of his younger self, spins and dashes around him. Zhang then joins Wu, revealing that despite his 55 years, he is still a fine dancer, and their duet becomes increasingly fast, precise and complex. The section closes with Jones and Wang’s tender duet, expressing painful emotions through exquisite upper bodywork.
“Beauty”, the final section, reflects on aspects of Zhang’s life in Australia, after he is reunited with his Cambodian family, all now refugees. The racism they are exposed to, Zhang’s decision to become a dancer against his mother’s wishes, and his love of a Burmese girl are all conveyed through voice over, music and movement. Three highlights in this section are the duet Zhang dances with Wang, who is marvellously fluid and strong, the extended solo for her that segues out of this, and the almost ecstatic dance for Zhang with Munn. The piece ends with a symbolic movement of acceptance, as the whole cast swathed in veils, advances towards the audience.
This is a multi-layered work that contains an abundance of visual pleasures—far too many to take in at one sitting—but in which each aspect of the work comes together to form a powerful unity. Without falling into a linear narrative, it captures elements of Zhang’s life story, as well as making a broader comment about the arbitrary nature of this life, in which, for most of us, things don’t always go according to plan.
- Maggie Tonkin