Review: MADE and TASDANCE
MADE (Mature Artists Dance Experience)
Hobart Town Hall
September 2-4
There are many ghosts present in this work. They laugh and linger, stamp and swirl. Their memory is brought to life through the sensitive touch of Australian director and choreographer Grace Pundyk and the dancers of MADE. Heirloom is a moving piece, which draws us into the world and life-journeys of a group of Polish women who were deported to Soviet Siberia in the 1940s.
Drawing on Pundyk’s interdisciplinary research and practice, each dancer wears one of her unique flower headdresses inspired by traditional Eastern European "wianek" (which translates from Polish as “wreath”). Made from natural Australian fibres, Pundyk’s headdresses link this dance to her rarely-spoken-of grandmother and to a lifestyle which celebrated women’s inheritance through textiles.
Opening the work, haunting female voices fill the formal space of the elaborate colonial-era town hall. The audience sits around the edges staring into the rough pile of sticks gathered on the polished timber floor. Youthful friendship shines through during the entrance of three flower-makers who sit holding the space at one end of the room for most of the dance. From the opposite end, a procession enters following the slow, regal progress of one dancer, Laura Della Pasqua, cocooned in large sheets of creamy-white starched muslin. Those who accompany her wear tabards of cloth bearing the motifs of Australiana derived from souvenir tea towels. After a lineal sequence of high steps and lunges, these "hand maidens" assist the unwrapping of the solo dancer as she discards her cloth "skin".
In a pattern which repeats throughout the work, the dancers group into quartets. They shift from sections where their quartet’s individual and sometime mischievous characteristics are highlighted, to larger sequences within a more traditional circular form. Playful and celebratory moments draw on the interactions between dancers with small running steps and rhythmically strong group patterns.
The focus on groupings is also reflected in the shifting of the sticks, sometimes in small piles, later used to corral the dancers as their celebratory movements are restricted. The transition in mood is palpable. A solo dancer, Aska Smietanska, speaks out in Polish; a previously light-hearted quartet is concealed by fragile cloud-like masks. The sound of the sticks being dragged and stacked and the removal of the headdresses shifts the dance to more pedestrian movement and tableaux. The ghosts are present in the piles and in the frantically delivered text. Trauma has occurred, but there are survivors, and this inheritance is gifted through the textiles and the dance.
COLLISION
Jo Lloyd and Tasdance in collaboration with cast of 26 dancers (including artistic team from Tasdance and GUTS Dance)
September 15-17
QVMAG Inveresk, Launceston
Featuring a monumental sculpture by blacksmith Pete Mattila, this iteration of Collision makes a big statement by Tasdance in partnership with GUTS Dance (from Alice Springs) It seems this project has been growing over several years both conceptually and practically. The same large space hosted Jo Lloyd and Deanne Butterworth’s Double Double (their own production) during MONA FOMA in the summer of 2019. In that precursor, the large concrete gallery was divided diagonally by a timber screen; each dancer accompanied by a kit drummer on either side before further interaction.
Watching Collision in 2022 is more like viewing a two-tone grey football pitch divided by a massive triumphal arch. Mattila’s metal sculpture is complete with symmetrical sentry boxes and ornate dangly bits. The 26 dancers move around and through the arch. Otherwise, there is little interaction with it. It does, however, create a strong visual barrier which almost forces the audience to move around the perimeter of the space, though without ever being able to see everything that is happening.
There are many options for everyone in this structured improvisation, the rules of which have developed over more than 12 months. During the initial creative development in February, 2021, Lloyd, Andrew Treloar, Michael O’Neill and the six original dancers (Tasdance Creative Associates Gabriel Comerford, Jenni Large, Amber McCartney, Kyall Shanks and GUTS Dance Co-Artistic Directors Madeleine Krenek and Frankie Snowdon) began the development of a movement score, which would be developed into short segments of film (snippets of which featuring in small screens during the current performance). In the next iteration, cancelled after only one show due to COVID, Collision developed into a live show at The Unconformity festival on the west coast of lutrawita Tasmania, with the same six performers.
Move forward to 2022, and the work has grown, with 20 performers (chosen by EOI) added to the core performers. This move is a direct consequence of conversations about improving the capacity of small organisations to share resources and have a larger ensemble. The additional group encompasses recently graduated and more experienced independent dancers, including Isabella Stone, Mason Kelly, Jenn Ma, Emma Riches, David Prakash and Feras Shaheen, who arrived four days before the opening performance. This breadth of experience was palpable and soon emerged as the excitement of this piece.
As the audience enters, the dancers are spread fairly evenly across in the halves. They seem both defiantly oblivious and intensely aware of the other performers. Hyper vigilance becomes a theme for all that follows. The smallest change in any performer's position becomes the source of a response; and so the game play/plan begins. Initially the core dancers appear to lead these small but seismic shifts, then others take the lead. The interplay is fascinating.
Although we are not party to the rules of this elaborate group improvisation, in the online program and promotional material we are offered the following:
"I can wear what you wear and become you, someone else can be me.
The undertaking of this stillness is epic.
This encounter is both brief and permanent.
A perfect ordeal."
As this implies (and also reminiscent of Double Double), there is a focus on both movement and clothing (designed by Andrew Treloar); individuality with a dash of envy; gifts and furtive thefts in both modes of embodied expression.
Offered in two lengths of longform improvisation, this work is ultimately designed for audiences to drop in and out or stay for the whole time: most stay. Duane Morrison’s musical composition also seems to come and go with sections of calm interspersed with more aggressive aural action. It is not clear whether these changes have any direct impact on proceedings, but certainly other cues focus the movement as groups form around specific features in the space and duos form break and reform in unique but predicted ways.
There are some wonderful cameo performances, but the strength and fascination of the work is in the dynamics within the ensemble. Although also a durational piece there seems less pressure to witness pure endurance than in Double Double. Detail and individuality abound and sustain.
- LESLEY GRAHAM
Like this review? Want to keep up with all the performances around the country? Sign up to our e-news - it's free! Just go to our homepage.