Theatre Royal, Hobart, August 2
Artistic director Annie Greig has again set a thematic challenge for Tasdance’s main stage theatre season. As with others of her curatorial shows, “Voltage” brings choreographers from quite distinct backgrounds to work over several intense periods with Tasmania’s only fully professional company. The advantages of this approach are clear in this relatively isolated state. While only having to support one professional company, Tasmanian audiences and the dancers themselves are exposed to a range of work by emerging and established choreographers. The risk is that the development can be rushed. All of this can be exaggerated by the perils of short contracts and project funding.
While over recent years Grieg has succeeded in building a fairly regular company; “Voltage” brings a group with a majority of recent graduates to the stage.
For this program Greig commissioned new works from Larissa McGowan and Anna Smith, giving audiences a mix of new and familiar. Some of the dancers are comfortable with the specific demands of each choreographer; others have been on a steep learning curve. This is a wonderful opportunity for a new-look Tasdance and Grieg seems to be aware of the potential, introducing designer Frog Peck of Bluebottle and a new level of collaboration in design. The impact is exciting.
Transducer, by McGowan, exposes the dancers to close observation. Based on the simple premise of energy made visible, the work directly links qualities of movement, sound (by Charlie Chan) and light. From ripples to slaps, energy bounces and slides around the stage, which is framed by an asymmetrical container. Very different approaches to movement are apparent and some of the interest is in the individual response of each body to McGowan’s challenge. Jenni Large and Brianna Kell are fierce and fiery, while Timothy Walsh, Ben Chapman and Tobiah Booth-Remmers, with a lighter thrown style, are softer and provide a hint of humour. Sarah Fiddaman embodies the new material, working with the mixture of tension and release in extended solos.
With A Human Calculation, Anna Smith offers a more gentle experience, yet its message is no less intense and concerning. Motivated by the American futurist Ray Kurzweil’s concept of the “point of singularity”, Smith alludes to a future where humans are taken over by technology. Peck’s design is integral to the mystery. A pegboard wall mid stage as the source of light gives the illusion of a shallow corridor in which paper-clad bodies appear as flattened cut-outs. Through a law of accelerating returns, the dancers build simple gestures into intense activity and spiraling forms, while others emerge from the depths of the space, bathed in a digital green-lit soup. Individual identities are obscured in the heavy haze and silhouetted forms and Smith’s use of repetition and development is echoed in the black costumes, which segment and break up the integrity of each body.
- LESLEY GRAHAM