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Dance Massive 2017

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Stellar Project review: Dancers look to the skies for answers in work with universal themes Jordan Beth Vincent Published: March 20, 2017 - 5:05PM

DANCE MASSIVE STELLAR PROJECT ★★★ Prue Lang Dancehouse, Carlton North Until March 21 Imagine creating a dance about the universe. Do you begin with science – complex mathematical equations and theories – or with philosophy, art, the human body – or even, perhaps, the daily horoscopes – for guidance? Prue Lang's new work Stellar Project touches on all of these themes. As with her previous work in this series (2015's Space Project), Stellar Project is a work that digs into what we do not understand from many angles and perspectives. This complexity of intention lends itself to contemporary dance quite well, and the movement that Lang has developed for her ﬁve dancers exploits the fact that dance can be many things at the same time, and perhaps – like our universe – be many things that we simply do not have the language to describe. Mark Pederson's sound design draws initially on the familiar noise of city life. Sirens wail and birds chirp as the dancers' focus is drawn repeatedly up to the sky above them. They seem to be looking beyond the clouds, and the score eventually charts the shift from known to undiscovered through its increasing abstraction. The dancers (Mikaela Carr, Benjamin Hancock, Lauren Langlois, Amber McCartney, Harrison Ritchie-Jones) play what seem like parlour games, shouting out the "answers" as a way to assign meaning to the movement, as though reciting from Wikipedia. Here it is as though Lang is drawing attention to the fact that our understanding is insigniﬁcant and, quite frankly, inadequate. Stellar Project is ambitious in the ideas that it is grappling with, but it is presented in a way that makes the exploration and experimentation a visible scaffolding in performance. The dancers even wear tracksuit pants, as though to underline that our thinking is evolving and unresolved – this is a project under construction and still questioning its place in this world. This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/stage/melbourne-stage/stellar-project-review-dancers-look-to-the-skies-foranswers-in-work-with-universal-themes-20170320-gv21mh.html

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Bodied Assemblies review: Dancers twerk in the dark in provocative new work Jordan Beth Vincent Published: March 15, 2017 - 11:51AM

DANCE MASSIVE BODIED ASSEMBLIES ★★★ Dancehouse Until March 17 Almost as though they are at a rave surrounded by crowds, the dancers keep dancing in the dark and in silence. There is more to this movement than just a few gestures or carefully disciplined steps; rather, exuberant dancing that shakes the bodies and occasionally prompts the performers to smile at the sheer audacity of twerking in silence. The three dancers move simultaneously but not necessarily together, almost as though each has a perimeter of space across which communication is possible, but touch is not. Only a few moments earlier, there was light and sound throughout the room: percussion pounded out on a drum kit. This moment of freedom is a long time coming in Sydney-based Rhiannon Newton's Bodied Assemblies. This is a work that asks us to be patient through its slow development: to breathe with the dancers as, lost in introspection, they slowly unfurl from the floor, to follow the lines of communication from dancer to dancer as they practice word association exercises, and to find meaning in the repetitive wind-ups from stillness to movement. Most challenging, however, are the tasks that Newton has set for the work: to use movement and sound to explore the notion of being assembled – simultaneously one of the collective while yet still an individual. With performances by dancers Bhenji Ra, Ivey Wawn and Julian Renlong Wong (and composition by Bree van Reyk with percussion performed by Leah Scholes), Bodied Assemblies is one of the first works to premiere as part of this year's Dance Massive. In many ways, this work is emblematic of the experimentation of independent contemporary dance in that it offers a provocation as much as a performance. This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/stage/melbourne-stage/bodied-assemblies-review-dancers-twerk-in-the-darkin-provocative-new-work-20170315-guyczr.html

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DANCE MASSIVE 2017

Experience into dance: translation and failure Andrew Fuhrmann

Deep Sea Dances, Rebecca Jensen and ensemble, Dance Massive 2017 photo Gregory Lorenzutti

The American writer Claudia La Rocco, currently a columnist for Artforum, was in Melbourne recently as a guest of Dancehouse, running a series of workshops on writing and performance. In The Best Most Useless Dress, a collection of her essays, reviews and hybrid responses, there is a long essayistic poem called "On Taste" which describes her participation in a collaborative dance performance that premiered at the BFI Gallery in Miami in 2012. It opens with these lines:

The carpet is impossibly white? The tower is a double crescent There is a way in which the translator must love failure? The thin line of light splitting the morning sky

Primal myth magic Jodie McNeilly: Victoria Hunt, Tangi Wai The Cry Of Water : RT 130

Certainly critics must be, on some level, fascinated with the difficulty of translating the experience of a performance into words. This is uncontroversial. But what about choreographers? Is the love of failure the

dance massive: intro keith gallasch : RT 90

same? Are they, too, driven by the impossibility of a perfect translation from life into art?

realtime tv: stephanie lake, dual : RT feature Tangi Wai, Victoria Hunt, Dance Massive 2017

realtime tv: stephanie lake, dual, dance massive 2013 :

photo Bryony Jackson

Victoria Hunt, Tangi Wai…The Cry of the Water Tangi Wai is a dim and distant and sometimes disappearing work. Everything happens in darkness and a long way from the audience. This could signal a kind of emergence, as though the Maori mythology and cosmology invoked by director and choreographer Victoria Hunt were rising from the deep past into the present; but it could equally be the opposite, a mourning song for old spirits now departed. Everything here is so indistinct and overshadowed that either reading is possible. This is a work which demands a speculative leap to finish the translation. It begins with a complete blackout. Then there is a single white light, some 30 metres away at the other end of the vast Meat Market pavilion. More lights begin to flicker around the space. There is a low rumble, which slowly builds in intensity. Eventually, we see a woman in the distance, surrounded by clouds of watery mist, long bars of white light sliding over her and moving toward the audience. At this point Tangi Wai begins to look like a kind of birth story. The woman thrashes around, partially naked, a kinetic solo suggesting either ecstasy or agony. The bands of light come faster and faster, like peristaltic contractions. We glimpse something that might be an umbilical cord—and then there is more darkness. In the next scene, a new dancer creeps mouselike across the stage, zigzagging toward the audience. Is this the child that was promised? The program notes provide some insight into the kind of traditional materials that Victoria Hunt is working with. Under the heading "Progeny,” she writes: Lifting out of the bones, flesh and skin like thin streams of mist, floating into the atmosphere. The terrifying and merciful portal of Hinenuitepo. Hinenuitepo, goddess of night and earth, is the ruler of the underworld in Maori mythology. The note doesn't clarify the spectacle, but it does suggest something of the great mystery that stands between the mythology and our

RT feature

sense of Hunt's stage translation.

Creature, József Trefeli and Gábor Varga, Dance Massive 2017 photo Gregory Lorenzutti

József Trefeli and Gábor Varga, Creature Stomp. Ting. Stomp. Ting. In they come, József Trefeli and Gábor Varga, wearing big black pumps with little bells on them. The audience sits in a square around them. Immediately, the two performers begin arranging and rearranging various accessories used in traditional European folk dances, including long sticks and stock whips, creating runic figures at the centre of the square. As they work they also dance, with much energetic stamping and scuffing and clapping. All this is a long—but delightful—prelude to the revelation of two creatures. It is a costume transformation. Trefeli and Varga climb into matching bodysuits covered with short streamers and place long brown cylinders over their heads. These costumes appear to be made from recycled materials; fragments of old typography, for example, can be seen on the streamers, as if a banner of some kind had been cut into strips. And, indeed, the whole performance can be read as a kind of salvage operation, reclaiming folk heritage from ethnographers and anthropologists. Staged on an indoor basketball court where the report of every stomped boot and cracked whip seems to linger for a long moment, Creature is as much aural as visual pleasure. Indeed, the work also features chanted lines in Magyar (both men have Hungarian ancestry), the language that British author Patrick Leigh Fermor once described as the most dashing of all European languages: fast, incisive and distinct. Creature is an ultimately very stylish attempt to translate the exoticism of European folk materials into contemporary dance. Does this translation also fail? Yes, but there is nothing melancholy in this piece. Where there are difficulties, Trefeli and Varga offer them to the audience in the form of cheerful obscurity. It is as if the thing that is lost in translation returns to us as an enigmatical creature with a long brown snout, a kind of mascot for all future acts of choreographic conversion. Julian Wong, Ivey Wawn, Bhenji Ra, Rhiannon Newton’s Bodied Assemblies, Dance Massive

2017 photo Gregory Lorenzutti

Rhiannon Newton, Bodied Assemblies The space for Bodied Assemblies is an intimate one. The lighting is low and warm and the stage area the size of a large dinner table. The seating is in the round. In one corner there's a varied array of percussion instruments, including a gong. The three dancers, already waiting prone as we take our seats, begin to stir as the soft sound of the gong builds to a deep roar. Bhenji Ra slowly works his way around the stage on all fours, Julian Renlong Wong examines his navel and Ivey Wawn stares up into the lights. By the end of the piece, an hour later, they are all on their feet, shaking and grooving as if they were on the dance floor of a private club. Wawn is still centrestage, her platinum blonde buzz cut glowing against the dark background, smiling and whooping as she looks upward. Newton herself describes the dance as an intricately structured series of collective actions. What are these structures? The three performers creep and murmur, feeling their way into new patterns or playing little games as they move through the stages of their awakening. At one point, the dancers start describing their own bodies, the audience and the room around them in short twoword phrases. These phrases are then taken up arbitrarily as movement improvisation cues by the group. There is also a dynamic score by percussionist Bree van Reyk, performed here by Leah Scholes, a fine accompaniment to this experience of collective awakening. James Batchelor, Deepspace, Dance Massive 2017 photo Gregory Lorenzutti

James Batchelor, Deepspace The Australian Antarctic Arts Fellowship provides artists with a unique translation opportunity. Artists with a nonscience background are offered a place on a government icebreaker, and the chance to experience Antarctica. The challenge for the artist is to communicate this unique experience to others. Last year choreographer James Batchelor explored the Southern Ocean, and Deepspace is his response. This is a work that reflects more on themes of confinement and restriction than on frigidity and vastness. The long warehouse space in North Melbourne, with its white walls and polished concrete floor, is reminiscent of the closed world of a ship's hold. Sound designer Morgan Hickinbotham sits with his laptop on a mezzanine at the far end of the warehouse, overlooking the performance space. You can almost imagine that he’s on a ship's bridge. Batchelor and Chloe Chignell run their hands along the walls, dodging audience members, emphasising the fact of confinement. There are several passages depicting the constant heave of the ship, and there is a strange erotic ritual in which Batchelor stands over the kneeling Chignell, both holding large white polygonal sculptures. Is this a comment on boredom as aphrodisiac? What is perhaps missing in this translation is a sense of the unseen immensity beyond the wall of the hull. I thought I saw it once, when Chignell was standing on Batchelor's shoulders against a wall, wiggling her fingers. It looked for a moment like a black fissure in a glittering wall of ice. Deep Sea Dances, Rebecca Jensen and ensemble, Dance Massive 2017 photo Gregory Lorenzutti

Rebecca Jensen, Deep Sea Dances Seventeen dancers sweep through a warehouse space lit by streetlights outside the clerestory windows, surging and then drifting, rising and then sinking, caught up in a delicate pattern of ebb and flow. There are beautiful, quick, undulant phrases, like “grinding water” or “gasping wind,” as Wallace Stevens has it; and there are moments of poised calm. Who is this amazing choreographer and what has she done with Rebecca Jensen? It is early 20th century dance innovator Doris Humphrey and the piece is Water Study (1928). And whatever you may think of Jensen's own work, it is surely a minor bit of brilliance to begin the evening with a revival of this early experimental masterpiece. The Dance Massive festival can sometimes feel like a place where dance falls out of dialogue with its past and embraces pure contemporaneity. Wouldn't it be a good thing to see more independent artists presenting recreations alongside their own work?

Water study, 1928

This question of the relationship of contemporary dance in Australia to its history feels like an urgent one. It's a question which is raised also in Shian Law's Vanishing Point and Martin Hansen's If It's All in My Veins in the Dance Massive program. Perhaps we are approaching a turning point? It would not be a bad thing if we saw a new enthusiasm for the lost worlds of avant gardes past. The other thing to note about Water Study is how compact it is. Performed by Jensen and her team it runs for less than 10 minutes. There's more than one

work in this year's festival that would benefit from cutting and condensing, dances where a relatively small amount of material is padded with extraneous business and repetition, drawing out to tedious length something that might have been an effective 10 or 15minute show. This of course is not just a problem for independent choreographers; it is a problem for presenters and commissioning partners. Why are there no double or triple bills in the festival? Why is the independent sector obsessed with long works? In any case, Jensen should be applauded for smuggling in a second piece. (No mention is made of Humphrey in the program notes or on the festival website, perhaps because the copyright still has eleven years to run.) But Jensen's own piece is nonetheless longer than it needs to be. Where Water Study can be read as a graceful translation of the way water moves in largescale flows, in Deep Sea Dances we see the competitive interactions and chaotic dynamics in undersea ecosystems. This is a fine enough idea and leads to some interesting improvisations, and Jensen's nostalgiatinged seapunk aesthetic is not entirely unappealing, but there's no reason for inflating this piece beyond half an hour. Dance Massive 2017: Victoria Hunt, Tangi Wai…The Cry of the Water, Meat Market, 1418 March; József Trefeli and GáborVarga, Creature, Carlton Baths, 1719 March; Rhiannon Newton, Bodied Assemblies, Dancehouse, 1417 March; James Batchelor, Deepspace, Meat Market, 20 March; Rebecca Jensen, Deep Sea Dances, Meat Market, Melbourne, 2226 March RealTime issue #138 AprilMay 2017 pg. © Andrew Fuhrmann; for permission to reproduce apply to realtime@realtimearts.net Tweet

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 Hellen Sky, Michelle Ferris, Georgia Bettens in Martin Hansen's “If it's all in my veins.” Photograph by Gregory Lorenzutti Home (https://www. ordreview.com)

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“If it’s all in my veins” Concept & direction by Martin Hansen Produced by Dancehouse for Dance Massive

Dancehouse, Melbourne, Victoria, March 23, 2017 3, 2, 1, go. Beyoncé ‘borrows’ moves from the Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. She duplicates De Keersmaeker’s “Rosas Danst Rosas” (1983) in her 2011 clip “Countdown.” It isn’t plagiarism; it’s homage, it’s a tribute, darling. Besides, what’s original anyway? Revamped. Resampled. Recon gured. In luenced by. What’s mine is yours. Following in the footsteps of the dance pioneers. Patti Smith rolls her head back, looks direct to camera: ‘anything is possible.’ History, it’s in my veins. Who’s following whom? Who founded what? Origin or original? Hey, what does it matter anyway? DADA gave birth to the Situationist International gave birth to punk. No, Valeska Gert gave birth to punk. She did, didn’t she? She who danced “tra c jams, car accidents, slow movie cuts, boxers, babies, orgasms, and most radically, nothing. . . . [She who] managed to put conceptual brackets around “nothing” some thirty years before John Cage would compose his “groundbreaking” silent piece, “4’33.””1 She was proto punk, born in 1892. Modern dance is constantly evolving, absorbing what came before it, moulding what is present and pushing towards what is to come. An exploration of the self, of humanity itself, perhaps its only link is that it feels essential to the dancers, choreographers, and the audience, to the makers and the watchers. But Martin Hansen’s “If it’s all in my veins” is not a nostalgia piece. It is not an homage work either, even if it does extend its arms forward and wriggle its ngers to the likes of Kate Bush, and make like a Faun à la Vaslav Nijinsky. Just as the Sex Pistols tore into the past with “God Save the Queen,” spat on the present with “Anarchy in the U.K.,” and laid waste with ‘no future for you, no future for me,’ it is, to borrow from the Situationists’ 1964 statement, about “breaking the bounds of measurement”2 in order to examine them. Moreover, it is about having fun. Who hasn’t practised their best version of Gert’s ‘pause’ or shook their hair in replica of a little Patti Smith cool? And fun, serious fun, is exactly what the three fantastically deadpan performers, Hellen Sky, Michelle Ferris, and Georgina Bettens are cooking. “If it’s all in my veins” is not nihilistic and it is not a history lesson. And even as Sky, Ferris, and Bettens are littering the stage with chairs and you nd yourself thinking ‘ah, yes, super, I know this one too. This one’s Pina Bausch’s “Café Müller,”’ it does not lean on insider jokes for smart-alecs. It feels more communal than that. It is a collage of moving components. It knows its stu f. As Sky, Ferris, and Bettens recite in near-perfect unison and re ned comic-timing the words to Róisín Murphy’s song, “Simulation,” context is everything.

This is a simulation This is for demonstration This is a lonely illusion This is my only delusion This is the realm of my wildest dreams These are my wildest dreams If it’s all in my veins It’s all in my mind You don’t get to be unkind Commissioned and produced by Dancehouse for this year’s Dance Massive, this work is comprised of three intergenerational performers becoming abstracted images of the original through repetition. “Accompanied by animated GIFs displaying excerpts of dance iconography, re-energis[ing] the punk/DADA fantasy of ‘no future,’”3 it begins with Isadora Duncan and ends with a broom. Shown in a loop projected on a large canvas panel, Duncan is caught in a fragment of grainy footage from Film of an Outdoor Recital. And there she remains for eternity. She runs forward with her arms outstretched, executes a turn, and returns to repeat the process. In the foreground Sky, Ferris, and Bettens follow not suit but lowing robe. They too are in a loop. 3, 2, 1, go. 3, 2, 1, go. Only each time they repeat the process, the pattern alters ever so slightly—a little more to the le t, arms lung open wider, a quickening of pace. They are becoming the “image liberated from the vaults of cinemas and archives…thrust into digital uncertainty, at the expense of its own substance.” The are becoming the “poor image…an illicit

th-generation bastard of an

original image,”4 and the e fect is glorious. Poor quality, low-resolution images readily accessible through YouTube and the like has meant that there are innumerable Anna Pavlova’s “Dying Swans” loating the waves. A trace of the original, “a ghost image… distributed for free.”5 On stage, Sky’s movement’s echo Fokine’s choreography, yes, but also the resolution of media ripped and remixed. “If it’s all in my veins” asks what happens when we learn of the original artist through dilapidated source material? How do you interpret Yvonne Rainer’s “The Mind Is a Muscle” via a fuzzy upload? How do you understand Rudolf von Laban’s theory of space harmony through copy and paste? How would Oskar Schlemmer’s “Triadic Ballet” look in focus? Would you even recognise it? Can emotion still be transported and felt? What is more real: Bettens seated on the loor performing Mary Wigman’s 1926 “Witch Dance” or the projected gif? Answer: both.

If this is an imitation. If this is reality.

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1. Mara Goldwyn, “During the Pause,” (https://www.artslant.com/ny/articles/show/22078-during-the-pause) ArtSlant, March 7, 2011 2. “While present-day impotence rambles on about the belated project of “getting into the twentieth century,” we think it is high time to put an end to the ‘dead time’ that has dominated this century, and to nish the Christian era with the same stroke. Here as elsewhere, it’s a matter of breaking the bounds of measurement. Ours is the best e fort so far to ‘get out’ of the twentieth century.”Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990), 24 3. Martin Hansen,“If its all in my veins,” programme notes, Dancehouse, Melbourne, March 23, 2017 4. Hito Steyerl, “In Defence of the Poor Image,” (http://veryinteractive.net/content/4-library/32-in-defense-ofthe-poor-image/steyerl-indefenseo thepoorimage.pdf) e- lux #10, November 2009, 1 5. Steyerl, “In Defence of the Poor Image,” e- lux #10, November 2009, 1

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MONDAY, MARCH 20, 2017

ARTICLE ARCHIVE

▼ 2017 (4)

Creature and Split

▼ March (4)

Of the four Dance Massive shows I saw this past week, three were duets. And all three of those duets were contained within very strict spatial parameters. Nick Power’s Between Tiny Cities happened within a circle of audience members. ( Full review in previous blog post.) Seeing Creature by Jozsef Trefeli and Gabor Varga and then Lucy Guerin’s Split in a row, the similarity really stood out. After Between Tiny Cities a few days earlier, it was getting uncanny - all this dueting in the “round”…or in the case of Split, a square, in front of the audience. Uncanniness aside, each piece is unique and has something interesting to offer. You can’t really begin to compare them, as their intentions are completely different. In the case of Creature, Trefeli and Varga talk about their work as being about origins; about “ethnographic material under the lens of contemporary dance.” (Trefeli studied at VCA but has lived in Geneva for many years. Varga is Hungarian and also lives in Geneva). While I don’t profess to understand Creature on an archival or even socio-culture level, there was a clear sense of objects from various cultures (African, European and beyond) integrated into a movement work in perplexing and unusual ways. Creature was set in a

Anti-Gravity Chunky Move Faster - The Australian Ballet Creature and Split Between Tiny Cities ► 2013 (1) ► 2012 (11) ► 2011 (9) ► 2010 (14)

basketball court smack in the middle of the Carlton Baths. We sat in a square of chairs in very bright daylight. The exposed space, with clear glass Creature, photo by Gregory Lorenzutti walls on two sides, looks into a gym in one direction and the foyer in another. A school assembly would not be out of place in there. The men marched in with floral scarves (or perhaps Hawaiian shirts) wrapped around their whole heads and faces. One was a lot smaller than the other, but they had similar long strides and proud chests. Little cymbals on their chunky boots clanked as they arranged poles, lumpy cloth parcels and what looked like small tree trunks around the floor. They marked space and lines with the objects or by lying themselves down on the ground, as if measuring distance with their lengths. Amongst the pacing, they broke out in complex, folkloric foot sweeping, the little instruments on their shoes accompanying the strong taps of their feet. At one point they took turns cracking loud whips. Later they crawled around in the tree trunk mask/hats (which stood up quite high over their heads) like strange humped animals. By then they were wearing the lumpy parcels, now turned inside out into shaggy coats with little cloth rectangles attached like thick feathers. I was wondering if they would reveal their faces and eventually they did. The piece took on a whole new personal and intimate dimension once they were identifiable humans rather than faceless tree heads. They sang loudly (folk music of some sort, not in English) and made tight eye contact with the audience. There was a lot going on in Creature and I just succumbed to the fact that even though I didn't personally recognise all the visuals, they are culturally significant to particular populations and the men were investigating and up-ending them with both respect and a slight tongue in cheek. There is clearly method and rigour in the choreography itself the complex foot patterns, the clearly delineated floor pathways, the choice to reveal faces, to sing, to engage with particular

objects - but why those choices...I would like to know more... Creature remains, for me, a fairly cryptic piece, but one that successfully reflects the mens’ mission to “give birth to a new choreography…a “creature” abounding with codes, intentions and keys to its interpretation.” Without dissecting all the cultural meaning (that would probably require a phD), as a performance, it's definitely a new creature, confident in its difference and quite unique as a contemporary dance offering. After all the textures of Creature, Lucy Guerin’s Split is extremely sparce. I loved watching this piece in a way I haven’t enjoyed much contemporary dance in a while. Guerin has gone back to movement and space and formality (rather than the theatricality she has recently been exploring.) It all happens in a large square delineated by white tape on a stark black floor. Two women Lilian Steiner and Melanie Lane - inhabit Melanie Lane and Lillian Steiner in Split Photo by Gregory Lorenzutti the spacious square for quite a long sequence of unison movement. Gradually they bisect the square with more white tape into ever-shrinking halves until they are trapped on top of each other in a tiny square upstage. Paul Lim creates a new lighting state for each tinier square as if each is its own little chapter.

Steiner is completely naked for the whole performance while Lane wears a light blue short sleeved sweater and matching long skirt, so they appear very different to each other. What starts as precise unison movement in the big square (little jumps, tight squats, a slap of the wrist or thigh, shaking cat paws - both big and small accents with subtle shifts of weight and momentum) takes on a different, more sinister feel as the woman become more competitive and grotesque. As their square implodes, unison gives way to a more predatory dynamic with animalistic arm twisting, rough piggy backs

and sinister mauling. At one late point in the piece, Steiner mimes scooping out Lane’s guts and eating them. Yet within all this unfriendly suggestion are plenty of moments of non-antagonism not an affection per say, but at least an acceptance of each other in the same environment. Steiner and Lane are both fantastic. Steiner appears incredibly comfortable in her bareness and she’s a fluid, effortless mover, shifting between larger bodyweight changes and more micro-ripples with a muscular lightness. Lane is equally able with the intricate choreography but has a more solid, slightly heavier presence. Their unison is nearly flawless and as their relationship becomes more complex, their commitment and investment seems to grow. For all its imagery, Split still feels like a pure dance exploration with all the precision and formality that defines much of Guerin's work. It’s a simple premise, but there’s something spellbinding about its attention to detail and crisp execution. Creature Carlton Baths 17-19 March Split Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall 17 - 26 March www.dancemassive.com.au

Posted by dancereviewsmelbourne at 11:50 PM

Recommend this on Google Labels: Arts House, Creature, Dance Massive 2017, Dancehouse, Gabor Varga, Jozsef Trefeli, Lilian Steiner, Lucy Guerin, Melanie Lane, Split

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Sydney’s HMDS presents The Drowsy Chaperone , MARCH 27, 2017

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PROFESSIONAL THEATRE

Between the Streetlight and the Moon to have world premiere in Sydney

Trainspo

NICK PI

, MARCH 27, 2017

REVIEWS

CREATURE SHARE ON:

ELLEN BURGIN — MARCH 18, 2017

REVIEWER'S RATING

PEOPLE'S RATING

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4.5

CAST YOUR VOTE

A wonderfully engaging, theatrical piece by Jozsef Trefeli and Gabor Varga, Creature is a work about origins, tackling ethnographic material in a way that places the contemporary dance practice under the microscope. Using traditional Hungarian dance and song, this short, sharp 40 minute dance presentation is an unmissable performance at the Carlton Baths. One born in Australia, and one in the former USSR, the shared Hungarian heritage of Trefeli and Varga is inherit in this piece, with in centering on traditional Hungarian dance. I’d be naïve to describe it as I will, but it felt like the most wonderful combination of tap dance, the Stomp style of dance, and river dance, an exotic folk dance mixed with contemporary, in that it had a very spiritual, almost tribal feel to it while being incredibly percussive. Some movements reminded me of the style and disciple of the Cossacks. Its mesmerising footwork timed beautiful to the percussive soundtrack, with a call and response feel between the two performers. Whip bearing, spur wearing, like brilliant bright cowboys Trefeli and Varga burst into the basketball hall at the Carlton Baths, colourfully clad in costumes by Kata Toth, complete with a full-face mask each by Cristophe Kiss. Themed around oranges and browns and blues, and wild prints of their shirts and props, the show feels energetic, colourful and bold. The masks are fully oral pieces with great swathes of material wrapped around their faces, and it’s a wonder they can see and breathe through these delightful pieces. It adds another element of mystery and intrigue to the show and adds to the sense of transformation through costume. The ritualistic movement centres around the movement of objects around the space, interacting with their props and the space well and almost constantly moving, pacing, dancing. The props they brought on with them turn out to be great coats of shredded materials and head pieces, which give a deeply animalistic feel to the show, and an otherworldliness, or certainly an outside of the Australian mindset kind of feel. Trefeli and Varga transform into creatures with almost a bird like grace while dancing, putting on the coats and head pieces as part of their movements, before stripping it all o and breaking out into deeply moving, emotional Hungarian song. The pace moves to more like a battle dance, and the performers present themselves to the audience, making eye contact and proudly bearing their song to us. As the chairs are set up in a rectangle, the performers are constantly moving through this space and around it. The basketball hall felt like an odd venue at rst but actually suited the piece really well- the hardwood oors best worked with the percussive stomping and footwork, and the space allowed the sounds to echo and ring out through the room, creating an incredible energy. The lighting was natural and sunlit from the outdoors with no additional lighting required, with the late afternoon sun streaming in the centre’s long windows.

The soundtrack is full of alternating beats and sounds that creates a pace and rhythm to the show, and the

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movements are coordinated in sync with this. The energy this show creates is unbelievable, with the audience on the edge of their chairs drinking in all of the wonder and tenacity of the performance. The show truly shows us the kinship between the language of contemporary dance and the exoticism of folk dances. For three evenings only, delight in the exotic Creature at the Carlton Baths on Rathdowne Street until 19 March. Tickets at http://dancemassive.com.au/program/creature/