Colour and charm collide in a night of three ambitious works

DANCE
Prism ★★★★
The Australian Ballet, Regent Theatre, until October 4

The Australian Ballet presents a triple bill showcasing three variations on the endless rainbow of contemporary concert dance. The strongest among them is William Forsythe’s Blake Works V (The Barre Project).

This fragmentary but enthralling piece opens with a duet for Isobelle Dashwood and Callum Linnane, both eloquent in Forsythe’s grammar of isolations and skewed axes. The phrasing is aerated yet exact, with extensions flicking round like compass needles.

Focus then shifts to a ballet barre upstage. Dancers turn and slide along the barre, then whirl into open space. Benedicte Bemet, in powder blue, shapes a series of gorgeous solos: speed and fastidiousness offset with voluptuous shimmies.

The bill also features Jerome Robbins’ Glass Pieces to music by Philip Glass. Robbins was as much a theatre maker as a choreographer and here we see him doing what he does best: giving maximum clarity to a series of compelling dramatic ideas.

In the first movement, 24 dancers in differently coloured costumes drift across the stage like confetti. Gleaming soloist couples then leap into their midst with arms raised, projecting an almost aggressive optimism.

In the cooler second movement, we get a silhouetted line of women moving in a slinky shuffle against a blue background. Constant variations catch the eye: circling, sidestepping, pausing. Downstage, Robyn Hendricks and Maxim Zenin perform a dreamy pas de deux.

Squeezed in between Robbins and Forsythe, there’s a world premiere from resident choreographer Stephanie Lake: a short piece called Seven Days set to a jokey homage to the Goldberg Variations by composer and company pianist Peter Brikmanis.

It has a strong opening. The dancers, arranged diagonally across the stage, carry movement like a ripple down the line, as if one day were like another, with only minor variations. Lake’s best choric effects are always like this: simple and humane.

In what follows, there’s a lot of mime and clowning. Perhaps Brikmanis’s wheezy trumpets and scurrying xylophones invite it, but the through-line seems to disappear. Episodes charm but then drift without enough sustained dancing.

Reviewed by Andrew Fuhrmann

DANCE
James Batchelor & Collaborators | Resonance ★★★
The Substation, until October 4

James Batchelor’s Resonance is an embodied testament to choreographer Tanja Liedtke: sensitive, expansive and inclusive, unfolding as a digressive meditation on legacy and the circulation of artistic influence.

Liedtke was appointed artistic director of Sydney Dance Company in 2007 but died in a traffic accident later that year at just 29, cutting short a career of considerable achievement and extraordinary promise.

The Tanja Liedtke Foundation invited Batchelor to work with her archive, collaborating with Liedtke’s former colleagues and friends, alongside artists of his own generation who may not have known her directly.

The performance begins with a dancer addressing the audience, recalling an archival moment – watching videos of Liedtke playfully striking bodybuilding poses – an evocation of the peculiar sense of intimacy encouraged by archival research. The image re-emerges later, when Batchelor, Chloe Chignell and Leah Marojevic develop a series of sculptural poses: an archival reference and an interesting sequence of movements, tethered to memory but aesthetically independent.

Elsewhere, the work drifts along on a stream of wandering bodies and airy phrases. The stage is crowded with young dancers from the VCA as reminiscences dissolve into meandering speculations.

I thought there was space here for more of a critique of the way memory functions within dance communities and in the broader cultural landscape. The habit of forgetting shadows this work, yet remains unexamined.

Batchelor’s earlier project, Shortcuts to Familiar Places, dealt with Gertrud Bodenwieser’s legacy through a more rigorous reconstruction. That work was clearly focused: he tried to inhabit a disappearing technique, learning directly from surviving exponents.

By contrast, Resonance feels more diffuse, less compelled to make sense of Liedtke’s continuing contribution, or to creatively animate her archival remains.

Still, Morgan Hickinbotham’s percussion score deserves the highest praise: the drumming lends urgency and poetry to the final scenes. There’s also a very fine program booklet to accompany the performance.
Review by Andrew Fuhrmann

MUSIC
Eddy Current Suppression Ring ★★★★★
Federation Square, September 26

While Snoop Dogg’s appearance at the AFL grand final was surely the most talked-about musical performance of this long weekend, a free gig from Eddy Current Suppression Ring (ECSR) at Fed Square was the main event for Melbourne music lovers.

Like many fans, my attempts to see this elusive band have been impeded by COVID cancellations and sold-out secret shows. Yet it was worth the decades-long wait to finally see the legendary Melbourne garage-punk outfit in this special setting.

Before ECSR hit the stage, local Afro disco duo Wrong Way Up and New York DJ/MC Edan primed the crowd. While not the line-up one would have expected at an ECSR gig 20 years ago, the eclectic programming (no doubt the handiwork of music consultant Woody McDonald, formerly of Triple R and Meredith Music Festival) was perfect for the occasion.

Dads danced with their embarrassed kids, leather-jacketed women boogied together, and baffled punters tried to comprehend exactly what the DJ dressed as a wizard was doing with his turntables. As a high-energy flashmob joined him onstage, the atmosphere was joyous.

Then it was time for the headliner. As ECSR singer Brendan Huntley (aka Suppression) donned his iconic black gloves and the band eased into Memory Lane, it felt like we were about to witness something special. Pacing, stagediving and climbing, Huntley worked the crowd like this was an intimate show in a dark band room and not a performance to thousands in the open air. By the time the band launched into Which Way to Go, he had whipped the audience into a frenzy.

To my surprise, the kids, teens and parents remained in the heaving mosh. My neighbour even informed me that the small woman at the barrier having the time of her life was Huntley’s mum. It felt like everyone was family. As the band wound down their generous 70-minute set with the hypnotic Rush to Relax, their deep connection was obvious. The complex mastery of musical repetition is the backbone of ECSR’s deceptively simple songs.

The quality of Fed Square’s free gigs is changing the game in terms of music accessibility – this year alone has seen Kneecap, Caribou and Sun Ra Arkestra perform in the space. While there were thousands of die-hard ECSR fans in the audience, I wonder how many people accidentally found themselves watching one of the most beloved bands in Australian music history.
Reviewed by Kelsey Oldham

MUSIC
Quartz – Schubert’s Death and the Maiden ★★★★
Quartz Quartet, Melbourne Recital Centre, September 30

Tragic elements in the lives of two very different composers gave shape to this poignant musical meditation on mortality.

Written in response to the death of a close friend from cancer, Cantilena Pacifica, the fifth movement of Australian composer Richard Meale’s String Quartet No. 2, provided a neatly judged prelude to one of Franz Schubert’s greatest works, his String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, Death and the Maiden, written with the realisation that he had but a few more years to live.

Melbourne’s Quartz Quartet, comprising first violinist Kathryn Taylor, Emily Beauchamp (temporarily replacing regular second violin Philippa West), violist Merewyn Bramble and cellist Zoe Wallace, brought a cohesive, flexible, soft-grained tone to the wide emotional trajectory of the program.

In the Cantilena, Taylor spun Meale’s wistful solo melody over a slowly pulsing accompaniment; its bittersweet harmonies alluding to the painful, dull ache of loss.

By contrast, the opening Allegro of the Schubert aptly crackled with a dramatic electrical charge. At times the players were so consumed with its visceral energy that elements of the textural foreground and background became a little blurred and could have been more clearly delineated.

Schubert’s frantic struggle against death became more pronounced in the final movements.

There were no such concerns with the rest of the work. The slow second movement with its variations on a sombre theme unfolded empathetically, with Wallace’s rich burnished tone making welcome contributions particularly in the second and fourth variations.

Schubert’s frantic struggle against death became more pronounced in the final movements. The short Scherzo packed plenty of rhythmic punch with the beautifully shaped trio section providing the only respite from the prevailing urgency. Gathering great momentum, the final, frenetic Tarantella came to a tumultuous close, reinforced by the emphatic rhythmic and artistic unity of the players.

This engaging one-hour program proved that Quartz can indeed yield veins of gold.
Reviewed by Tony Way

DANCE
Three ★★★
Narrandjeri Stadium, Thornbury, until September 27

Yuiko Masukawa is a classically trained choreographer and teacher whose work explores how ballet registers in different social contexts. In this latest work, she enlists the help of three markedly experimental dance makers to extend that inquiry.

It’s a project that is very much of the moment. In Melbourne, at least, ballet and contemporary dance are increasingly rubbing shoulders. The upcoming DanceX Festival, for example, has companies in both traditions sharing the same platform.

Much of this co-mingling – about which I have mixed feelings – is driven by The Australian Ballet. And it’s no surprise to find that the development of this production, which is based on a short dance film, was also supported by the company.

Three is performed at a suburban basketball stadium. As we take our seats in the bleachers, there’s already a game under way: five against five, full court, with the electronic scoreboard showing 15 minutes left on the clock. There’s also a large video display where we can follow the action in close-up. As the clock counts down, the three dancers – Louie Wisby, Geoffrey Watson and Benjamin Hurley – break away from the game.

The space is doubled as game and dance share the court. The cameras are used to great effect, yielding striking images – especially Watson bounding through the centre circle, the space compressing then opening around each leap.

After the game finishes, there’s a more balletic passage in the dark that veers towards parody, with costumes delivered by T-shirt cannon. I’m not sure what claim this material – which can only be gestural on these performers – is making on the space.

At such times, I wished there were a shot clock to hurry the action along. But this is nonetheless an intriguing project: a happening rather than a set piece, with an atmosphere of shared play, inviting a different sort of attention from the audience.
Reviewed by Andrew Fuhrmann

The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday.