Sydney Opera House
August-September
A man in street clothes walks onto the stage from the audience, faces the black backcloth and, ignoring us, starts to undress. One by one the rest of the cast of nine dancers follow. Down to their sleek and colourful underwear, they wrap themselves in apricot blankets and find a place to stand, staring out into the auditorium or pensively downward.
Thus begins Alain Platel's remarkable work Out of Context - for Pina, a tribute to his mentor Pina Bausch, the inspirational dance theatre choreographer who died last year. C de la B director Platel practised originally as a therapist with disabled children, formed his phenomenally successful company on a dare and is now (decades later) one of Europe's most beloved choreographers, albeit still not a dancemaker himself. He works with a group of longtime collaborators, for this season three women and six men (plus a guest cameo from Lutz Foerster, one of Bausch's longtime dancers). Between them they have evolved a quite astonishingly expressive body language that has arguably stretched the boundaries of performative movement.
Platel's stated search for "a language of movement connected to the unconscious" encourages his highly-accomplished dancers to an extraordinary melange of dance techniques supporting the full convulsive repertoire of spasms, tics, reflexive gestures, twitches, face-pulling and silly walks - along with plenty of vocalisation. The result is a loving but thoroughgoing expose of the psyches of the performers. So far, so very Pina.
As the work proceeds we are drawn into what Platel calls "a gathering of people in search of an essence they can't find". The soundtrack is a piecemeal accompaniment half-generated through the two microphones onstage. To a pulsating beat, a shifting dynamic of encounters occurs around the space as dancers alternate singing classic snatches of dancefloor pop into the mics and bouncing off into tangents or paroxysms or virtuosic choreography laced with pop-culture parodies and classical references. It's sexy, scary, funny and fascinating.
I've commented before on the periodically fashionable oddity of highly athletic bodies playing with spasticity, but here is perhaps the original inspiration, and it's no mere play. Platel's dancers enter into a raw, sometimes animal condition, inner children on display, undisguised by the niceties of adult manners. The fact that these children are inner aspects of highly-charged adults only makes them all the more vulnerable - and all the more compelling. Ringleader Romeu Runa was adorable, Rosalba Torres Guerrero impressive. Ross McCormack rocking out astride an occupied theatre seat was glorious; by the time it came to Hyo Seung Ye belting out a French power ballad I was laughing at the shameless thrills running up my spine. The joy continued through the mature Forster's poignant performance in sign language of the jazz standard The Man I Love - look it up on YouTube.
Towards the end Runa came to the front of the stage and addressed us. "Can you please put your right arm up... please?" As our hands rose he asked, "Who wants to dance with me?" In a Q&A after the performance, Platel told of some remarkable things that had happened in various countries at this point in the show.
At the end, the dancers fold and stack their blankets again, dress, and leave the stage one by one via the auditorium. The melancholy strains of Prince's classic Nothing Compares 2 U play on as we all stare at the empty stage, remembering Pina, and savouring the highlights of this hilarious, tragic, beautiful, frank and fearless foray created in her name.
- JACQUELINE PASCOE
'Out of Contest' also appeared at the Brisbane Festival on September 3 and 4.