Sydney Dance Company: "Contemporary Women", Spring Dance Festival

Sydney Dance Company: “Contemporary Women”, Spring Dance Festival -
Playhouse, Sydney Opera House, 1 September -

This year’s curator of the Spring Dance Festival was Sydney Dance Company’s artistic director Rafael Bonachela. It was no surprise, then, to see the company taking part via “Contemporary Women”, a program co-commissioned by the Sydney Opera House and SDC. The mixed bill included four new works from different choreographers across Australia with the unifying factor, as advertised, being their gender.  It was all about the choreography and the dancers themselves with design elements kept to a minimum.  The stage was stripped back and costumes were non-specific, everyday clothes (dresses, jeans, singlets etc.) in all but one of the works so lighting designer Benjamin Cisterne did a great job evoking the varied atmospheres required as the evening progressed.

First up was Desire, choreographed by Brisbane based Lisa Wilson, which is about “the internal forces that drive us or make us falter” according to the program. It begins with a series of slow moving duets that utilise interesting and unusual shapes and lines in their portrayal of a sometimes dangerous love. One recurring motif has a possessive, almost predatory feel to it as one dancer hooks a leg over their prone partner pulling them closer.  But this lyrical work doesn’t really come alive until a sharper dynamic is introduced in an energetic trio for three men. Later on in the program Yield, by Emily Amisano, focused on the ups and downs of relationships. This whimsical piece has a playful, tender quality. As with Desire, Yield is essentially a lyrical work but is the weaker of the two in its lack of structure and direction.

Dream Lucid was choreographed by Stephanie Lake, who was recently awarded the 2012 Ausdance Peggy van Praagh Choreographic Fellowship at the Australian Dance Awards.  Her movement is mostly jerky and spasmodic, as befits the underlying theme of individuality versus conformity, with dancers manipulating each other’s movement with their own, as if strings are attached between puppet and master. The costume choices were a little perplexing and looked quite dated, with shiny nylon footless unitards for the women while men wore tights made out of the same fabric paired with what looked like velour sweaters. Nevertheless they did function as a uniform enabling the dancers to be identified as a heavily regulated group.

Larissa McGowan’s Fanatic was a breath of fresh air and the highlight of the evening. It is based on fans of the Alien and Predator movies venting their opinions over YouTube, but you don’t need to be a sci-fi geek to get it. The jokes come thick and fast as dancers lip synch some classic lines from the films and engage in faux battle with each other.  It is helped enormously by a soundscape constructed by Steve Mayhew that combines excerpts from both movies with additional music and spoken text, but it is the movement that fascinates - hard hitting and sinuously athletic. Natalie Allen was a standout dancer in this work. While all SDC dancers showed excellent mastery of movement Allen has a striking clarity of purpose and expression that draws the viewer’s eye.

- GERALDINE HIGGINSON