Review: 7 Dances for 7 People
Trà Mi Dinh
Northcote Town Hall Arts Centre, Melbourne/Naarm, Thursday 10 September 2026
Review by Belle Beasley
Last Thursday saw the premiere of 7 dances for 7 people by Melbourne-based dancer and choreographer Trà Mi Dinh at Darebin Arts Speakeasy in Northcote. Originally conceived as Seven Dances for Two People in 2024 (for Lucy Guerin Inc’s PIECES season), Dinh has developed the work as a full-length piece featuring seven contemporary dance artists: Melissa Yvonne Pham, Rachel Coulson, Arabella Frahn Starkie, Marni Green, Deanne Butterworth, Emma Riches, and Dinh herself. Presented as part of Darebin Fuse Festival, 7 dances for 7 people explores the historical, cultural, and symbolic significance of the number seven. Growing up in a Buddhist household, a religion in which seven is a lucky number, Dinh holds a unique personal perspective from which to explore how the number seven can offer new approaches to dance. Particularly compelling in 7 dances for 7 people is the reference to seven as the numeral which unites the spiritual (3) and the physical (4) thus offering a rich terrain for reconsidering the metaphysics of dance. As such, 7 dances for 7 people proposed a world in which choreography functions as a vehicle for ritual, transcendence and mystery.
The work opened to a softly lit and mostly bare stage. The darkness of the stage was accented by plumes of smoke, disrupted only by the presence of a large, white, partially floating rock downstage right – the sculptural contribution of the costume and set designer Geoffrey Watson. Out of the mist we spot two dancers emerging, hands linked, bouncing softly side to side. They are clothed in Watson’s breathy A-line costumes, and awash in subtle lighting by Rachel Rui Qian Lee. In the silence, an eerie cymbal-like hiss initiates sound designer Tilman Robinson’s score which utilises asymmetrical 7/8 time signatures.
The women move like tendrils of smoke, wafting and spiralling from one form to another. They flow, crest and dissolve, materialising for a moment then dematerialising just as quickly. Another two dancers momentarily join the scene before splitting off in their own rhythms. The dancers begin interweaving through combinations of solos, duos and trios as the full cast enters the stage. Movements are minute, airy, and syncopated – pathways are flowed through effortlessly until finding conclusion in a hard-edge bounce which activates a reverb in the body and sees the movement reversed. The choreography is enacted with a disassociated quality that signals an out-of-body experience, less intentional than the result of the otherworldly forces. As the rhythm picks up, legs float upwards, feet come off the ground, and movements become bigger, without losing trance-like aplomb.
As the dancers’ forms are unveiled by the smoke and they begin to flow through movements, it becomes apparent that an aspect of the choreography’s evocation of transcendence lies in its gesturing to classical forms and pathways. While eschewing strict classical technique, interspersed throughout movement we discern the echo of pas de chat, ballotées, and chassé pas de bourées. At moments, demi-pointes are so high the dancers seem to be floating. These balletic gestures are plucked from historical context to take on new lives as words making up Dinh’s particular movement language, which interweaves inherited histories and contemporary sensibilities. Dinh’s incorporation of classical steps and balletic technique gives 7 dances for 7 people a feeling of excavation, like uncovering the wonders of an archaeological dig, untouched by humans for centuries.
One highlight of the work was Deanne Butterworth’s Bauschian, Rite of Spring-esque solo. Moving like a flame, Butterworth pulsed, flickered, quivered, and burned across the stage, alighting everything in her path. Conjuring ecstasy verging on self-destruction, Butterworth’s dance highlighted the potential of Dinh’s movement language to generate a powerful state of dissociation which slips easily and convincingly into mania.
Nearing the end of the work the women form a straight line across the downstage, materialising as hieroglyphs suspended at various points of a movement. While Coulson waits on her knees, face down, hands in prayer, the rest of the cast search for and find form, bouncing into shapes which are then reverbed and crumble away. This sequence dissolves and soon the smell of palo santo begins to waft through the theatre as dancers slowly walk onto stage holding sticks of burning incense. The incense presents the final chapter in the work’s gradual climax, as a sort of immaterial yet richly spiritually coded additive which increases the overall intensity of the space. Each dancer carries their incense with focus and determination, eventually placing the sticks into the backside of the rock one by one before exiting the stage. All that is left is the smouldering rock which has now become a sort of shamanic deity, a solid and unmoving object anchoring the rippling smoke.
While centring 7 dances for 7 people on a number affords Dinh access to mathematical and geometrical concepts that inform choreographic tools, the diverse cultural, historical, and spiritual associations of the number seven also create connection with an expansive vocabulary of movements that are as symbolically rich as they are culturally coded. The strength of this theme also signals to a possibility for the work to continue developing – in excavating a concept laden with references ostensibly so far removed from quotidian Melbourne dance scene, this offers an opportunity for Dinh to really mess with the format. Though pushing boundaries in its choreographic forms and qualities, 7 dances for 7 people still relied on choreographic tropes widely seen in contemporary dance. Movement was pushed to new places, but the overall structure of the work remained within a recognisable format. If venturing as far as to bring incense on stage, why not push it even further and incorporate chakra-charged gems, a monk, a temple, or find a way to enact the work over seven hours and seven days? Dinh has a strong choreographic voice and the grandness of vision to innovate. The overall success of this work should encourage her to go even further off script.
Trà Mi Dinh’s 7 dances for 7 people runs at Darebin Arts Speakeasy 9-19 September. Get tickets here.
-Belle Beasley