Moving out

It’s common now to see dance pieces entwined with digital technology. But choreographer Lewis Major tells Lucy Ribchester that nothing can beat the pure onstage connection between audiences and bodies

Creativity always moves in mysterious ways. But rarely have there been stranger circumstances to inspire new ways of thinking than when dancers had to adapt to the restrictions of the pandemic. For an art built on close bodily contact, dependent on the immediacy of live performance, suddenly having to make work online in isolation was a radical disruption. But for some choreographers, it also led to extraordinary innovations. In the case of South Australian choreographer Lewis Major, restrictions resulted in two new works, both of which will be performed as part of this year’s Adelaide Fringe. The genesis of Unfolding, Major says, began ‘when everyone was getting stir crazy enough to start trying to make art again’. Desperate to get moving and creating, unable to access a theatre space, he teamed up with some of his long-term collaborators and began using technology to make a virtual theatre online.

Dancing around his living room in a motion capture suit, he was able to track his own movements and input them into a video game-style digital space. Major is clear: this wasn’t what he would have wanted to be doing under normal circumstances. ‘I don’t want to sit there rendering data,’ he says. ‘I’m a choreographer. All I wanted to do was be in a room with bodies. But it was a really interesting way of looking at the data inputs, the interaction.’

When things began to open up, Major had the bonus of a new insight into the differences between digital and in-person performance. The ‘unfolding’ that takes place in his show is a transformation from virtual to real. ‘It starts off very technical, very digital. Over 25 minutes it basically draws back to naked bodies onstage with a single theatre light, and that’s the only light in the entire show. It’s about visual overload and the essence of why we go to the theatre. Not to watch computers render, but that drawing back to the essence, which is bodies moving in space together.’

This is Unfolding’s second outing at the Fringe and it’s something of a homecoming for Major, who describes himself as ‘staunchly regional’, following a successful nine-city European tour. Major came to dance late, after growing up on a farm and attending a ‘bush school’. He particularly loves to hear the opinions of audiences from his part of Australia. ‘They do not bullshit you. If the work is bad they’ll tell you straight out.’ He’s adamant he does not ‘want to make dance for my dance friends’ but instead believes all good art crosses boundaries of class, gender and race: ‘It says to you what you need it to say.’ The other piece Major is presenting, Lien: One-To-One (lien meaning to bind or connect), was similarly driven by the pandemic’s isolation. Having wanted for a while to create a oneon-one piece, Australia’s social distancing rules during lockdown made it a necessity. Lien premieres at Adelaide, but its prototype was performed during the later stages of lockdown, with one performer and one audience member in an otherwise empty auditorium: ‘a very intimate personal experience’, Major says.

The first time the company presented this piece, many audience members were so overwhelmed that they cried. But despite the intense emotional pressure, Major says his performers have cited it as one of the most special moments of their careers. ‘For those ten minutes, you’re carrying around someone else’s hopes and dreams and fears. You’ve really got to take care of it, and that’s quite a lot of responsibility.’

What would he say, then, to any audience member nervous about the intensity of a one-on-one experience? ‘It’s going to be a safe place. There’s nothing bad that can happen. With art being a mirror, you’re going to have to look at yourself a little bit, and that’s a good thing, isn’t it?’

Unfolding, 26 February, 4.30pm, 28 February–4 March, 5.30pm, 5 March, 4.30pm; Lien: One-To-One, 22–25 February, every 15 minutes from 10.30am–4.15pm; both shows at Adelaide College Of The Arts, Light Square.