tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/contemporary-dance-10798/articlesContemporary dance – The Conversation2024-01-23T18:59:17Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2128772024-01-23T18:59:17Z2024-01-23T18:59:17ZHow to watch dance<p>Watching dance is watching an extraordinary and fleeting artistic creation that uses an instrument we all have: the human body. The dancing body communicates a unique sense of being human as it speaks to us through its bones, its muscles, its skin, its cells.</p>
<p>But have you ever been to a dance performance and wondered what it was all about? Or wanted to go see some dance, but been unsure of where to start?</p>
<p>For the uninitiated, dance can be difficult because, like music, it uses a non-verbal language. These basics can open the door to enjoying the beauty and complexity of this physical art.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/im-going-to-a-classical-music-concert-for-the-first-time-what-should-i-know-195290">I'm going to a classical music concert for the first time. What should I know?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>1. Know the code</h2>
<p>There are so many kinds of dance, and all have different ways of communicating – different codes. </p>
<p>For example, in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGT4g7FHSvA">ballet</a> the body is vertical and straight and the legs and arms move around that erect centre. The emphasis is on lightness. </p>
<p>In contrast, in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IasPpe1BZ2o">contemporary dance</a>, the body contracts and bends and the movement is grounded and close to the floor.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zxnra4q1ElA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>And these are only two of the Western forms of dance. Every culture has their own dance form, and these all have their own codes. </p>
<p>Some performances are a blend of codes. For example, Bangarra Dance Theatre has created a style which blends traditional Indigenous Australian dance with Western contemporary dance and ballet.</p>
<p>Knowing the code means you know the building blocks, the rules, the frame for the performance. You have a benchmark for what to expect.</p>
<h2>2. Do your research</h2>
<p>If you’re going to see a ballet, there might be a story and you’ll be expected to know the story before you see the ballet – unlike plays where the excitement is the story being revealed on stage. Ballet companies will often publish this story on their website, or you can look up the work on Wikipedia.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ojq1KdjjIcE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>But much like conceptual art (imagine a painting with a small red splodge in the corner of a green background – what does it mean?), the ideas behind a lot of dance performances are not immediately obvious. They may be quite abstract. </p>
<p>In this case, reading what the choreographer says about the work before you see it, and knowing a bit about their other works, gives you a context and a way to make meaning of what you see. You can find interviews with choreographers in various online publications, on company websites, or look them up on YouTube.</p>
<h2>3. It’s all about the movement</h2>
<p>Story or no story, dance is ultimately about a body moving through space. The pleasure in watching dance comes in engaging with the patterns, the movement vocabulary and phrasing, and the energetic quality of the dancers.</p>
<p>You can appreciate the pattern a body makes moving high or low, traversing the whole stage or staying in one place. With more than one body on stage, you notice the patterns the group make much like noticing the changing configurations of a flock of birds.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Qdn4LELnzpQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Movement vocabulary is the collection of “body words”, or steps, that are repeated and form dance phrases. These can be unique to a performance or a choreographer. The way the vocabulary is arranged in terms of structure, space and timing creates the dance.</p>
<p>The energetic quality of the dancers – think soft, light and flowing versus powerful, attacking and weighty – can change the emotion of the dance and your interpretation.</p>
<h2>4. There are no right and wrong answers</h2>
<p>A dance performance is not a murder mystery. In watching dance, you are not trying to unlock a singular meaning. </p>
<p>Instead, you are engaging with and appreciating all the factors listed here as well as the other arts on display including the sound, the designs, the lighting and the costumes. You may find a different meaning or different elements to appreciate to other people. </p>
<p>The performance in this video from Chunky Move clearly has characters suggesting a narrative, but it is left up to the audience to interpret the action for themselves. The main meaning comes through the concept being explored which is depth of field.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/I0nJ8KwnoH4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>5. Know the etiquette</h2>
<p>Like most shows and exhibitions these days, what you wear is up to you. Even in state theatres and opera houses, some will wear ball gowns, others jeans.</p>
<p>In a traditional theatre setting, once seated, you are expected to watch the whole performance. Some dance performances might be in galleries and for these you can wander around and leave when you’re ready.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4MEVVO8E8OQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Applause is a bit tricky. Sometimes you can applaud during the performance, and sometimes not. Even seasoned dance watchers sometimes get it wrong. So, until you get the hang of it, just follow along. At the end of the performance, there may be multiple curtain calls or bows, especially if there is a large cast, and the audience is expected to continue applauding as long as the bowing continues. You can leave once the lights come up.</p>
<p>If you feel very enthusiastic about the performance, you may stand and applaud. If most of the audience does this, it’s called a standing ovation. But it also doesn’t matter if you are the only one standing.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/lets-dance-how-dance-classes-can-lift-your-mood-and-help-boost-your-social-life-197692">Let's dance! How dance classes can lift your mood and help boost your social life</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212877/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yvette Grant does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Have you ever wanted to go see some dance, but been unsure of where to start? These basics can open the door to enjoying the beauty and complexity of this physical art.Yvette Grant, PhD (Dance) Candidate and Dance History Tutor, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2039312023-05-03T05:00:53Z2023-05-03T05:00:53Z60 years of The Australian Ballet and 90 years of ‘Australian’ ballet: Identity asks us to reflect on Australian dance today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524002/original/file-20230503-28-i6gs2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=36%2C0%2C8142%2C5457&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud/The Australian Ballet</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When The Australian Ballet was founded in 1962, its charter stated that, alongside international repertoire and visiting international choreographers, it must engage Australian choreographers and produce Australian works.</p>
<p>But what does “Australian” look like in ballet? </p>
<p>In 1989, dancer, teacher, choreographer and director of The Ballet Guild (later Ballet Victoria) Laurel Martyn <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-216768786/listen?searchTerm=Laurel%20Martyn">was asked</a> about what it meant for ballet to be Australian: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s Australian because it comes out of our experience, what we think, how we do things […] It must come out of our own lives, our own way of seeing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Martyn had choreographed her first Australian ballet in 1941. The project of creating Australian ballet is not a new one.</p>
<p>In 1964, Robert Helpmann claimed his ballet The Display was the first Australian ballet, because it was the first with an Australian score, designer, story and choreographer. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/naw7IkMLO6M?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>His ballet met all those criteria with its Aussie rules football, machismo, bush picnics and lyrebirds – but there had been many much earlier than his.</p>
<p>Like Helpmann’s ballet, some focused on Australian cultural life, such as Kira Bousloff’s The Beach Inspector (1958) and Rex Reid’s The Melbourne Cup (1963).</p>
<p>Others celebrated Australian industry. Joanna Priest’s The Lady Augusta (1946) was about the maiden voyage of a steamship along the Murray River to transport wool. Valrene Tweedie’s Wakooka (1955) was about life on a sheep station.</p>
<p>Still others looked to the rich natural environment, such as Martyn’s Voyageur about Australian migratory birds (1956).</p>
<p>And there were those that appropriated Australian Indigenous culture in their attempt to create an identity of this place. The most infamous of these was Beth Dean’s Corroboree with white dancers in blackface performing for Queen Elizabeth II in 1954.</p>
<p>Since then, Australian ballet has radically transformed the way that it includes First Nations identity in its construction of what it means to be Australian. The 1989 founding of Bangarra Dance Theatre was key to this new Australian identity in dance.</p>
<p>A reflection of this transformation was The Australian Ballet’s 1997 work Rites, a creation of then Bangarra artistic director Stephen Page. Page brought the two companies together in a First Nations’ reimagining of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/84pnW-eHBjs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>At The Australian Ballet’s 30th anniversary in 1992, the company staged an Australian reimagining of The Nutcracker, choreographed by Graeme Murphy. </p>
<p>Murphy’s ballet told a story of the importance of migration to Australia: a history of how war in Europe had led many Russian dancers to stay, enriching our cultural landscape and firmly setting ballet’s roots in this country.</p>
<p>Now, for its 60th anniversary, the company is again asking what is an “Australian ballet”. This time it’s answering the question with a two-part program Identity. Identity features Wiradjuri man Daniel Riley’s THE HUM, a collaboration with Australian Dance Theatre, and Alice Topp’s Paragon, which brings back to the stage many company alumni.</p>
<p>Both works demonstrate an approach to creating an Australian ballet that, as the program suggests, “explores the community of the stage”. They each return to Martyn’s statement that for ballet to be Australian it must come from us. </p>
<p>Who is on that stage as part of that community, then, becomes critical.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-contemporary-dance-25713">Explainer: what is contemporary dance?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>THE HUM</h2>
<p>THE HUM has a powerful First Nations presence including choreographer Riley, composer Deborah Cheetham Fraillon, costume designer Annette Sax and dancer Karra Nam, and engages a conversation not only with white settler Australia but also between contemporary dance and ballet.</p>
<p>Dancers encounter each other with a deep breath in. Holding their gaze, they drop twice at the knees with two short sharp outbreaths: confrontation and common ground. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523998/original/file-20230503-20-3tvmov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Dancers on stage under a neon orange sun." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523998/original/file-20230503-20-3tvmov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523998/original/file-20230503-20-3tvmov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523998/original/file-20230503-20-3tvmov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523998/original/file-20230503-20-3tvmov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523998/original/file-20230503-20-3tvmov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523998/original/file-20230503-20-3tvmov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523998/original/file-20230503-20-3tvmov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">THE HUM brings together dancers of The Australian Ballet and Australian Dance Theatre.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud/The Australian Ballet</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Black rock formations that frame the stage are turned around and repurposed, their constructed nature exposed, a metaphor for our inherited Australian identity. </p>
<p>Neon lights and projected computer-generated images combine with the natural moon, water and tree branches, reminding us we are both of country and city in the 21st century. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524000/original/file-20230503-20-7d39uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Dancers" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524000/original/file-20230503-20-7d39uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524000/original/file-20230503-20-7d39uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524000/original/file-20230503-20-7d39uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524000/original/file-20230503-20-7d39uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524000/original/file-20230503-20-7d39uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524000/original/file-20230503-20-7d39uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524000/original/file-20230503-20-7d39uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Who is on the stage as part of a community becomes critical.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud/The Australian Ballet</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>THE HUM shows a community where members are finally facing each other but haven’t yet worked out who they are together – although they know where to begin. The audience is equally tasked with this provocation.</p>
<h2>Paragon</h2>
<p>In Paragon, Topp shows us who The Australian Ballet has been in footage, images, dance styles and in the returning dancers who carry the company’s history in their bodies. These include Marilyn Rowe, who had her debut with the company in 1965, Simon Dow, who joined in 1974, and Lucinda Dunn, who danced with the company for 24 years until 2014. </p>
<p>Topp also shows us who we might be into the future in the bodies of the company’s young dancers. </p>
<p>And in bringing these elements together on the one stage, she shows us where we are now.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524003/original/file-20230503-21-6c6ist.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="David McAllister" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524003/original/file-20230503-21-6c6ist.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524003/original/file-20230503-21-6c6ist.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524003/original/file-20230503-21-6c6ist.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524003/original/file-20230503-21-6c6ist.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524003/original/file-20230503-21-6c6ist.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524003/original/file-20230503-21-6c6ist.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524003/original/file-20230503-21-6c6ist.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paragon brings company alumni to the stage with the current crop of dancers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud/The Australian Ballet</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The work exudes a combination of strength and tenderness. Avoiding any trumpet blowing, it offers a thoughtful and sometimes playful celebratory reflection: achingly nostalgic yet its own contemporary work.</p>
<p>Divided into 12 parts, it juxtaposes lyrical <em>pas de deux</em> in Grecian white with powerful ’80s Spartacus-style male <em>corps de ballet</em> in black; almost floating 19th-century ladies in long gold ball gowns moving through elegant formations with sets of duos in studio wear moving independently or in canon.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524004/original/file-20230503-22-dytqdu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Amber Scott and Adam Bull" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524004/original/file-20230503-22-dytqdu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524004/original/file-20230503-22-dytqdu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524004/original/file-20230503-22-dytqdu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524004/original/file-20230503-22-dytqdu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524004/original/file-20230503-22-dytqdu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524004/original/file-20230503-22-dytqdu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524004/original/file-20230503-22-dytqdu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paragon is achingly nostalgic yet its own contemporary work.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud/The Australian Ballet</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ages of the dancers are highly visible. Older and younger bodies dance on the ballet stage together, demanding our attention. Much like THE HUM, Paragon is a result of this community, an honouring of ancestors and a revelation of ever-present history.</p>
<p>The Australian identity is a work in progress, but in Identity it is heartening to witness that one of our iconic cultural institutions is up for the challenge.</p>
<p><em>Identity is at the Sydney Opera House until May 20, and then at Arts Centre Melbourne June 16-24.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/5-australian-women-choreographers-you-should-know-and-where-to-see-them-in-2023-193213">5 Australian women choreographers you should know (and where to see them in 2023)</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203931/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yvette Grant receives funding from an Australian Commonwealth Scholarship.</span></em></p>The Australian Ballet’s new double-bill Identity stages the work of Daniel Riley and Alice Topp in a reflection of the identity of Australian dance – and Australia.Yvette Grant, PhD (Dance) Candidate and Dance History Tutor, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1997792023-04-04T04:10:00Z2023-04-04T04:10:00ZChoreographic legacies, human connectivity, and a psychedelic rainbow celebration: FRAME is a joyous festival of dance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518927/original/file-20230403-2571-gvrfgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C16%2C5542%2C3684&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Exposed by Restless Dance Theatre.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Roy Vandervegt/Arts House</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Staying true to its objectives of representing dance artists from across practices and lineages, the inaugural FRAME Dance Festival offered a diversity of performance styles and forms in locations around Melbourne and beyond. </p>
<p>The program included shows, films and workshops in venues ranging from courtyards to galleries to dance studios. </p>
<p>Some offerings were political and academic, some were celebratory. Some told us personal or cultural stories; some had 100 dancers, some had one. </p>
<p>FRAME felt like a community coming together after three very difficult pandemic years for dance and dancers in Melbourne. Here are my highlights of the festival.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/5-australian-women-choreographers-you-should-know-and-where-to-see-them-in-2023-193213">5 Australian women choreographers you should know (and where to see them in 2023)</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Mohini</h2>
<p>In a mesmerising queer retelling of Lord Vishnu’s transformation into the enchantress <a href="https://vedicfeed.com/mohini-female-avatar-of-lord-vishnu/">Mohini</a>, Raina Peterson – a Fiji-Indian and English dancer/choreographer – draws us into their sensual, visceral world where they shift from transgender storyteller to demon to Hindu goddess. </p>
<p>True to the classical Indian idiom, their wide-open unblinking eyes, bouncing brows and long articulate fingers lead the narrative, which begins on a dimly lit stage covered in low billowing clouds. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518928/original/file-20230403-4321-dyp05b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman dances in a sari, one nipple is exposed." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518928/original/file-20230403-4321-dyp05b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518928/original/file-20230403-4321-dyp05b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518928/original/file-20230403-4321-dyp05b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518928/original/file-20230403-4321-dyp05b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518928/original/file-20230403-4321-dyp05b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518928/original/file-20230403-4321-dyp05b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518928/original/file-20230403-4321-dyp05b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This is a mesmerising queer retelling of Lord Vishnu’s transformation into the enchantress Mohini.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anne Moffat/Arts House</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Peterson is joined by Marco Cher-Gibard, who hits long, loud notes on electric guitar to a background of tinkling chimes. </p>
<p>As the story climaxes with Mohini’s recovery of the elixir of life, there is a visual metamorphosis on stage from quiet monochrome intimacy to explosive psychedelic rainbow celebration with the projection of a spinning vortex around Peterson’s ecstatic silhouetted form. </p>
<p>It is an intense and captivating experience.</p>
<h2>Slip</h2>
<p>In Slip, dancer Rebecca Jensen, dressed as the enigmatic <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_with_a_Pearl_Earring">Girl with a Pearl Earring</a>, exposes the illusions created by technology in our everyday lives. </p>
<p>The bare stage appears like a workspace with only a sound desk and a scattering of quotidian objects. The performance begins with a demonstration of the sound-effect technique <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foley_(filmmaking)">Foley</a> from Jensen’s collaborator Aviva Endean.</p>
<p>Upon entering, Jensen sits centre stage and eats, drinks and reads a newspaper while Endean creates sounds to match her actions. When Jensen eats chips, live and synchronised Endean amusingly crunches on a celery stalk. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518965/original/file-20230403-28-ryky79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman lies on the ground." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518965/original/file-20230403-28-ryky79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518965/original/file-20230403-28-ryky79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518965/original/file-20230403-28-ryky79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518965/original/file-20230403-28-ryky79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518965/original/file-20230403-28-ryky79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518965/original/file-20230403-28-ryky79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518965/original/file-20230403-28-ryky79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Slip is an energetic and intellectual work.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sarah Walker/Darebin Arts Speakeasy</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This measured synchronicity creates a comforting rhythm – until it gradually begins to slip. </p>
<p>The sound and action become out of sync. The crunching accompanies walking. The walking sounds like water being poured. The artificiality of the sound’s relationship to the action is disturbingly laid bare. </p>
<p>The pace picks up as Jensen and Endean interact with the objects, each other and as animated dancers projected on the back screen.</p>
<p>An energetic and intellectual work, Slip keeps the audience holding on by a thread, never letting up or settling in.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ballet-dancers-in-sensor-suits-new-research-explores-how-dance-is-used-as-a-form-of-communication-200870">Ballet dancers in sensor suits: new research explores how dance is used as a form of communication</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Us and All of This</h2>
<p>In our era of social dysfunction, environmental disasters, pandemics and war, Us and All of This is choreographer Liesel Zink’s meditation on human connectivity. </p>
<p>The sound of loud humming white noise accompanies the 100 very slow-moving quiet bodies as one by one they fill the Arts Centre Melbourne forecourt. </p>
<p>They stand separate, motionless, facing different directions and gazing to the distance. They represent the breadth of our society: all ages, races, genders and abilities. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519164/original/file-20230404-26-16rzvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A crowd of people stand with their hands outstretched." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519164/original/file-20230404-26-16rzvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519164/original/file-20230404-26-16rzvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519164/original/file-20230404-26-16rzvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519164/original/file-20230404-26-16rzvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519164/original/file-20230404-26-16rzvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519164/original/file-20230404-26-16rzvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519164/original/file-20230404-26-16rzvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">These dancers represent the breadth of our society: all ages, races, genders and abilities.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mark Gambino/Arts Centre Melbourne</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A few begin to breathe their arms gently and slowly up and down like wings. They are joined by a few more until everyone is breathing together. Changes to the movement starts with a few and gradually ripples through the whole 100 dancers. </p>
<p>As momentum builds, the synchronicity breaks down. </p>
<p>Different intense movements are now distributed randomly through the crowd: a highly energetic arm winding, a desperate curling in, a spinning with arms fully stretched and a pushing down hard towards the ground. The dancers are engrossed.</p>
<p>Sometimes they move closer to each other, sometimes further apart. And while they do not acknowledge each other until the very end, in this immersive experience we as the audience are drawn in from the start with a sense we are all in this together. </p>
<h2>Exposed</h2>
<p>Directed by Michelle Ryan, Restless Dance Theatre’s diverse dancers take us on an exploration of the physical, mental and emotional vulnerability exposed in the face of global upheaval. </p>
<p>A huge screen becomes translucent and we make out the seven dancers beyond it scattered across the stage slowly getting dressed. </p>
<p>They begin to look up as if there is something there they cannot see but are afraid of; something invisible but menacing. They start slowly turning. The screen transforms into a lung breathing over their heads. Only now do they start seeing each other. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518930/original/file-20230403-3178-uf3nlb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Six bodies look up at a blue sheet above their heads." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518930/original/file-20230403-3178-uf3nlb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518930/original/file-20230403-3178-uf3nlb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518930/original/file-20230403-3178-uf3nlb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518930/original/file-20230403-3178-uf3nlb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518930/original/file-20230403-3178-uf3nlb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518930/original/file-20230403-3178-uf3nlb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518930/original/file-20230403-3178-uf3nlb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">We see the vulnerability exposed in the face of global upheaval.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Roy Vandervegt/Arts House</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They are jumpy, afraid of each other and of other things we cannot see. This fear develops into an emotional desperation in some. Others become violent. Still others show signs of physical suffering. </p>
<p>They begin to attempt to help each other. </p>
<p>The screen moves once more to become a backdrop. The dancers now move with each other, connecting, smiling, learning to give and accept care. The motifs of the breath and physical turning and rolling throughout the work, together with a serene and repetitive score, create a sense of continuation and inevitability, of a human condition that insists on struggling on, that has no choice. </p>
<p>This tender work closes as it began, the dancers separate and turn inward once more as they slowly and quietly undress.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guttered-a-joyful-immersion-and-subversion-of-expectations-between-the-bowling-lanes-156204">Guttered: a joyful immersion and subversion of expectations between the bowling lanes</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Somewhere at the Beginning</h2>
<p>Known as the mother of modern African dance, Senegalese French dancer Germaine Acogny moves us through the continual returns of inescapable pasts in a haunting post-colonial epic. </p>
<p>With direction by Mikael Serre, this multimedia bricolage shifts from the intimate corporeality of the weight of a stone on a foot to the museum-like objective formality of 20th century film footage and documentary voice over. </p>
<p>A beaded curtain which divides the stage into back and front is traversed throughout, representing the movement between different worlds, past and present, African and European. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518931/original/file-20230403-3782-y1wzv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A Black woman dances surrounded by feathers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518931/original/file-20230403-3782-y1wzv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518931/original/file-20230403-3782-y1wzv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518931/original/file-20230403-3782-y1wzv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518931/original/file-20230403-3782-y1wzv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518931/original/file-20230403-3782-y1wzv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518931/original/file-20230403-3782-y1wzv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518931/original/file-20230403-3782-y1wzv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Germaine Acogny is the mother of modern African dance.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Thomas Dorn/Arts House</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a long, grey dress, Acogny moves deliberately and heavily with only a book, a stone, a pillow and a chair to accompany her. We are confronted with a variety of stories: some deeply personal, some culturally shared and some highly academic. </p>
<p>Themes around identity relentlessly recur throughout the work imitating the insistence of the colonial legacy they illustrate. The same story of powder used to whiten faces manifests at different times in projection, voice and in its sprinkling around the stage. </p>
<p>Without lightness or relief, Somewhere at the Beginning demands we bear witness to its account of the tragedy and persistence of cultural and colonial trauma.</p>
<h2>NEWRETRO</h2>
<p>Lucy Guerin’s three-hour marathon 21st-birthday celebration is a director’s cut of 21 works reenacted by 21 dancers who, along with their audience, move in and out of all four galleries of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. </p>
<p>In this shift from blacked-out theatre to white cube, Guerin shows us a version of her works we have not seen before. We encounter the dancers on and off stage: close-up, sweaty and raw. As the audience we not only see, but are also seen. </p>
<p>The larger main gallery exhibits a built-up remix of vocabularies with different groups of dancers simultaneously performing excerpts clearly drawn from different Guerin works. The movement is at times hyper-energetic, pounding with unexpected grunts and screams, and at other times minimal, quiet and pedestrian. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518967/original/file-20230403-16-bhn2vb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A white room, an audience around the edge, a mass of dancers in black." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518967/original/file-20230403-16-bhn2vb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518967/original/file-20230403-16-bhn2vb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518967/original/file-20230403-16-bhn2vb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518967/original/file-20230403-16-bhn2vb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518967/original/file-20230403-16-bhn2vb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518967/original/file-20230403-16-bhn2vb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518967/original/file-20230403-16-bhn2vb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Close-up, sweaty and raw where we encounter the dancers on and off stage and as audience.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gregory Lorenzutti/ACCA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The more intimate and darker corner gallery has a schedule of five duets, while the other two galleries show original footage of all 21 works and a demonstration of the process undertaken by the dancers working with footage to learn the choreography. </p>
<p>With a cast of some of Melbourne’s most beloved dancers including Lilian Steiner, Deanne Butterworth and Melanie Lane, NEWRETRO is a landmark event in its memorialisation of a local woman choreographer who has not only produced 21 works in 21 years but has also supported and mentored many others as both dancers and choreographers. </p>
<p>It felt like a very satisfying way to end my FRAME journey.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-motion-picture-dancers-drive-a-cinematic-story-onstage-39105">In Motion Picture, dancers drive a cinematic story onstage</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199779/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yvette Grant works as a lecturer in Dance at The Victorian College of the Arts and as a graduate researcher and receives some funding from The University of Melbourne and a Commonwealth government scholarship.</span></em></p>Some offerings were political and academic, some were celebratory. Some told us personal or cultural stories, some had 100 dancers, some had one.Yvette Grant, PhD (Dance) Candidate and dance history tutor, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1618872021-06-15T04:10:34Z2021-06-15T04:10:34ZSinuous, sinewy and transcendent: SandSong proves Bangarra is one of Australia’s best dance companies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406311/original/file-20210615-27-imugt0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C3%2C2048%2C1361&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud/Bangarra</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: SandSong, directed and choreographed by Stephen Page and Frances Rings, Bangarra Dance Theatre</em></p>
<p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised the following article contains the name of someone who has passed. The family of Ningali Lawford-Wolf has given the media permission to use her name.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>SandSong opens in scratchy black and white images. An Australian coat of arms, colonial maps of the country deemed “Terra Nullius”, a placard with the text “Stop Black Deaths” flash and flicker against a soundscape echoing the same sense of static and interference. </p>
<p>This is a history centering the disruptions of black bodies by white others. </p>
<p>The screen gives way to a stage with a pile of rocks left of centre. An ethereal female body begins to emerge. </p>
<p>The pile of rocks, undulating human bodies, becomes a boat this woman rows, and the water beneath. Bodily extremities quiver, waterlilies rustling on the surface in response to a gentle morning breeze. The woman and the pile of flesh beneath her move as one, suggesting little difference between body and earth.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406357/original/file-20210615-19-1cs2oob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Glory Tuohy, Daniell Rika Hamaguchi and Lillian Banks" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406357/original/file-20210615-19-1cs2oob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406357/original/file-20210615-19-1cs2oob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406357/original/file-20210615-19-1cs2oob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406357/original/file-20210615-19-1cs2oob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406357/original/file-20210615-19-1cs2oob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406357/original/file-20210615-19-1cs2oob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406357/original/file-20210615-19-1cs2oob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">SandSong is a contemporary Australian ballet.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud/Bangarra</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>SandSong: Stories of the Great Sandy Desert, is a contemporary Aboriginal Australian ballet. It borrows from traditional dance stories — particularly from the Kimberley regions including Fitzroy Crossing, a community the company visited in May 2021 — and also draws on Bangarra’s signature style of Indigenous contemporary dance with hints of modern dance. </p>
<p>Stephen Page and Frances Rings have exquisitely choreographed a rich, evocative and powerful piece of contemporary dance. Sublime music by Steve Francis is perhaps the most outstanding element of the work with its melodic acoustic instrumentals overlayed with voices speaking in Language.</p>
<h2>Expressionist and visceral</h2>
<p>Movement is at times sinuous, at others, sinewy. The stumps of leafless branches materialise in the repeated image of flexed feet; men wear leaves around their calves and women hold <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coolamon_(vessel)">coolomons</a> for preparing onions to eat or digging sticks for finding potatoes in cracked earth. </p>
<p>In the most visceral scene, a mumbling masculine voice spits numbers punctuated by the crackle of a whip. Bodies contort, hands rub skin, torsos collapse sharply, joints twist and writhe. Each person looks poisoned or twitching high and stoned: a derailed existence. It is, without a doubt, an auction. Humans are not poisoned nor are they drugged, but merely expressing the dehumanising horror of slavery.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406317/original/file-20210615-15-ijzmqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Bangarra ensemble" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406317/original/file-20210615-15-ijzmqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406317/original/file-20210615-15-ijzmqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406317/original/file-20210615-15-ijzmqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406317/original/file-20210615-15-ijzmqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406317/original/file-20210615-15-ijzmqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406317/original/file-20210615-15-ijzmqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406317/original/file-20210615-15-ijzmqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Movement is at times sinuous, at others, sinewy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud/Bangarra</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In one scene, after appearing to manufacture baskets on stage, female dancers each wear their basket wrapped around their chests and under one arm, a simple yet beautiful wearable prop (costumes by Jennifer Irwin). The magic of the baskets only appears with movement. As dancers walk, reach and twirl, the baskets morph from a bearer of food, into a baby on their backs and a cage that traps them. </p>
<p>The expressionist movement in this scene, including its strong shapes and spiralling lines, echoes the spirit of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Graham">Martha Graham</a> and powerfully reinforce the shapeshifter aesthetic so palpable throughout SandSong. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406315/original/file-20210615-22-8h4dqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Bangarra ensemble" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406315/original/file-20210615-22-8h4dqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406315/original/file-20210615-22-8h4dqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406315/original/file-20210615-22-8h4dqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406315/original/file-20210615-22-8h4dqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406315/original/file-20210615-22-8h4dqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406315/original/file-20210615-22-8h4dqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406315/original/file-20210615-22-8h4dqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Woven baskets become wearable props, transforming in the hands of the dancers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud/Bangarra</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Page and Rings’ new choreography is joined by traditional dances, such as when the male dancers of the company perform Marjarrka, a dance belonging to the Lawford, Tighe, Cox and James families.</p>
<p>Each man enters the stage and stomps his feet into the ground, causing his shoulders to shake. The men all perform the routine slightly differently. Some skip onto stage. Others walk. Some bend low. Others gaze steadily ahead. Others again step to a different beat. The dance is about dispossession — a recovered totem previously stolen: recreating the original choreography gesture for gesture, exactly as it was originally performed, in order to continue telling the truth.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/firestarter-review-bangarras-story-is-a-film-of-national-and-personal-tragedies-with-light-in-the-dark-155114">Firestarter review — Bangarra's story is a film of national and personal tragedies, with light in the dark</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>A similar meditation occurs when the lithe, young female dancers transform into older women with slower movement performing Junta, a traditional bush onion dance. Their careful embodiment of the dance is transcendent.</p>
<h2>Past intertwining with present</h2>
<p>There is a discursive power in paying attention to moving Black bodies on stage at the prestigious Sydney Opera House. Bodies resist (protest), expend effort (dance) and remain present (survive). On stage, they demand our focus. </p>
<p>SandSong vividly enables these dancing figures to tell stories of First Nations Australian memories tainted by intergenerational trauma wrought by stolen lands and stolen lives.</p>
<p>It is also a tribute to the Wangkatjungka and Walmajarri people of the Kimberley. In particular, the work honours Wangkatjungka woman Ningali Josephine Lawford-Wolf, an artist and a friend of Bangarra. Ningali (as she is endearingly referred to) wished to collaborate on this work, but passed away suddenly in 2019. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406316/original/file-20210615-22-1uswxay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Baden Hitchcock and dancers" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406316/original/file-20210615-22-1uswxay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406316/original/file-20210615-22-1uswxay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406316/original/file-20210615-22-1uswxay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406316/original/file-20210615-22-1uswxay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406316/original/file-20210615-22-1uswxay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406316/original/file-20210615-22-1uswxay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406316/original/file-20210615-22-1uswxay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">SandSong is a vivid exploration of histories past and lives present.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud/Bangarra</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Composer Francis excavated old tapes with Ningali speaking and singing, and used these tapes to create “playable instruments from her hums and […] new songs using her voice”.</p>
<p>The result is poignant, reminding us to dig up the past, see what finds you and apply the lessons to your present. </p>
<p>After skin is smeared in gold — a metaphor for the value of water in the desert after rainfall — the work finds redemption for the people of the Kimberley. A backdrop reminiscent of crinkled foil (set design by Jacob Nash) reflects the warm light and conjures the cloudy mist of a new dawn. A lone woman lies down to a voiceover reciting a poem that ends with the words: “You belong to Country. You belong to Country”.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>SandSong is at the Sydney Opera House until July 10, then touring to Canberra, Bendigo, Brisbane and Melbourne.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161887/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Maguire-Rosier is affiliated with Bangarra dancer, Emily Flannery, with whom she organised an Ausdance NSW independent artist residency in 2020. </span></em></p>Embedding traditional dance stories and modern dance within Bangarra’s signature style, SandSong is a rich, evocative and powerful production.Kate Maguire-Rosier, Honorary Associate, Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, School of Literature, Art, and Media, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1551142021-02-18T02:26:58Z2021-02-18T02:26:58ZFirestarter review — Bangarra’s story is a film of national and personal tragedies, with light in the dark<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383914/original/file-20210211-19-pazy4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=33%2C33%2C4390%2C2907&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bangarra dancer Beau Dean Riley Smith in Bennelong. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud/Icon Films</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Firestarter – the Story of Bangarra, directed by Wayne Blair and Nel Minchin</em></p>
<p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Watching <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13364190/">Firestarter</a> is like being immersed in a Knowledge Story. A story that contains deep, secret knowledge at its heart, while sharing an outside, public version. If I had to sum up the outside layer of this story, I would say it is one about energy transformation. </p>
<p>The film gives insight into the emergence of contemporary Indigenous dance in 1970s Australia. It’s a story about embodied activism birthed by founding figures such as <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-13/knowledge-ground-bangarra-dance-theatre-digital-archive/11785840">Carole Y Johnson and Cheryl Stone</a> through the fusion of contemporary dance forms with ancient living ones. </p>
<p>And it’s the story of three Page brothers — choreographer Stephen, composer David and dancer Russell — who established the iconic style that is Bangarra movement. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/e3REMs9I9Tg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Three brothers. Sounds like the beginning of a story …</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since 1989, <a href="https://www.bangarra.com.au/">Bangarra Dance Theatre</a> has used dance to craft spaces in important national moments. The opening ceremony of the 2000 Olympics, for example, allowed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge of movement, music and song to be seen, heard and felt.</p>
<p>And just as a public version of a Knowledge Story helps make connections to deeper meanings, Firestarter gives you access to stories containing ancient wisdom fused with contemporary colonial trauma. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-are-message-sticks-senator-lidia-thorpe-continues-a-long-and-powerful-diplomatic-tradition-147674">What are message sticks? Senator Lidia Thorpe continues a long and powerful diplomatic tradition</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Dreaming to today</h2>
<p>If you’ve ever seen a Bangarra performance you will know that dance is a thread straight to the Dreaming. A ceremonial form with physical and metaphysical knowledge embodied by, and shared with, movement. </p>
<p>Watching the documentary, like watching a Bangarra performance, requires you to pay attention, make connections, explore possible interpretations and potentially be transformed by the telling of it.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383916/original/file-20210211-14-ys93l5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Male Indigenous dancer" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383916/original/file-20210211-14-ys93l5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383916/original/file-20210211-14-ys93l5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383916/original/file-20210211-14-ys93l5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383916/original/file-20210211-14-ys93l5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383916/original/file-20210211-14-ys93l5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1111&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383916/original/file-20210211-14-ys93l5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1111&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383916/original/file-20210211-14-ys93l5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1111&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Djakapurra Munyarryun in Ochres.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ashley De Prazer/Icon Films</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The founding of the Aboriginal Islander Dance Theatre in 1975 was a moment in this nation-state’s history that saw the hearts, minds and bodies of mobs of different Blackfellas merge together to begin to shape what would become Australia’s leading Indigenous dance movement. </p>
<p>The dance theatre’s transition into the <a href="https://naisda.com.au/">National Aboriginal and Islander Skills Development Association</a> — better known as Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Dance College — cemented the fusion of cultural knowledges, dance forms, political activism and historical events that would lead to the birth of <a href="https://www.bangarra.com.au/">Bangarra</a>, a Wiradjuri word meaning “to make fire”. </p>
<p>Bangarra has always been both a mirror and a portal. It reflects the aliveness and sentience of stories that come from different mobs and their Countries across Australia while at the same time navigating ongoing colonial trauma. </p>
<p>Through the sharing of stories — the dilemma of how we remember <a href="https://www.bangarra.com.au/productions/bennelong-perth-festival/">Bennelong</a>, a long history of cultivation through <a href="https://www.bangarra.com.au/productions/darkemu-2018/">Dark Emu</a> (based on Bruce Pascoe’s book), the yearning for cultural connection in <a href="https://www.bangarra.com.au/productions/blak/">Blak</a>, of the Stolen Generation in <a href="https://www.bangarra.com.au/productions/mathinna/">Mathinna</a> — the company allows moments of moving through the traumatic to access glimpses of love, healing, transformation and possibilities.</p>
<p>Contemporary Indigenous dance speaks to and of survival, despite 200-odd years of colonial policies aimed at ensuring cultural disconnection. </p>
<p>As the association’s co-founder Carole Y Johnson says in the film: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Australia wasn’t acknowledging Aboriginal people. They had been taken off of their land so many times and I was shocked to understand it was really within living memory of so many people. In terms of dance, Indigenous people were actually ahead and I thought they had something very unique and special to offer.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/review-warwick-thorntons-the-beach-is-a-delicate-conversation-with-country-139464">Review: Warwick Thornton’s The Beach is a delicate conversation with Country</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The cost of the challenge</h2>
<p>In telling the story of Bangarra, the film tells stories of creation, trauma, connection and hope. </p>
<p>A significant part of the telling is the influence of the three Page brothers who use music, dance and story to navigate disconnection and reconnection through grief and praise. </p>
<p>Their childhood was lived alongside 12 siblings filled with music, storytelling, laughter and the lived impacts of being cut off from language, land and culture. The brothers went on to use their powerful creative abilities to tell stories about finding your identity, connecting with cultural knowings and acknowledging violent colonial lived experiences. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383917/original/file-20210211-15-n6svpk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Photo portrait of three men." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383917/original/file-20210211-15-n6svpk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383917/original/file-20210211-15-n6svpk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383917/original/file-20210211-15-n6svpk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383917/original/file-20210211-15-n6svpk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383917/original/file-20210211-15-n6svpk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383917/original/file-20210211-15-n6svpk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383917/original/file-20210211-15-n6svpk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Brothers in arms: Russell Page, Stephen Page and David Page.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Sweeney/Icon Films</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Such service comes with a heavy responsibility. </p>
<p>The brothers don’t just carry the burden for themselves, but for any Aboriginal and Torres Islander person who knows their ancestors are there but does not know how to access them. </p>
<p>Firestarer explores how <a href="https://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/news/david-page-has-died/">the deaths</a> of Russell in 2002 and David in 2016 continues to be felt by artists and audiences, magnified by the power of their performances and music.</p>
<p>Bangarra has, time and time again, stepped up to the challenge of sharing stories through dance to create moments of access for all Australians who hold a relationship with this land’s First Nations’ peoples, its living colonial history and Country itself.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-taking-a-wrecking-ball-to-monuments-contemporary-art-can-ask-what-really-needs-tearing-down-140437">Friday essay: taking a wrecking ball to monuments – contemporary art can ask what really needs tearing down</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Light in the dark</h2>
<p>The story of Bangarra is the story of ignition: Bangarra, for 31 years, has nurtured, protected and breathed life into an ancient ember of light that is then shared with the collective consciousness of Australia — and the world. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383918/original/file-20210211-21-1oc98ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Group of dancers pose" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383918/original/file-20210211-21-1oc98ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383918/original/file-20210211-21-1oc98ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383918/original/file-20210211-21-1oc98ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383918/original/file-20210211-21-1oc98ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383918/original/file-20210211-21-1oc98ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383918/original/file-20210211-21-1oc98ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383918/original/file-20210211-21-1oc98ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bangarra today.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Stephen Page, Bangarra’s artistic director since 1991, states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… art, dance, music, they’re such good medicines. […] Storytelling is the best medicine you can have, it’s what sustains us as a society.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So I need to acknowledge and pay my respect to the heat, oxygen and fuel that is the story of Bangarra and all those who have contributed to creating the energetic and powerful being that it continues to become. </p>
<p>Thank you for carrying the responsibility of telling both living ancient stories woven with painful contemporary ones that speak of both national and personal tragedies. </p>
<p>I recognise your ceremonial medicine. </p>
<p>I am grateful for your light.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="https://www.bangarra.com.au/productions/firestarter/">Firestarter – The Story of Bangarra</a> is in cinemas now.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155114/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brooke Collins-Gearing lectures in Literature at the University of Newcastle. She has Murri heritage and grew up on Gamilaroi Country. Her research and teaching interests are in Australian Aboriginal children's literature, children's literature, Young Adult literature and decolonising pedagogies. She is on the board of studies for NAISDA, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Dance College.</span></em></p>A new film about Bangarra Dance Theatre carries the deep Indigenous knowledge and personal trauma behind its 30-year history.Brooke Collins-Gearing, Senior Lecturer, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1137302019-03-18T06:54:55Z2019-03-18T06:54:55ZWith Grand Finale, audiences bear witness to a world on the edge<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264269/original/file-20190317-28475-v7dz55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Grand Finale is a new work from Israeli-born, London-based choreographer Hofesh Shechter.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rahi Rezvani</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Grand Finale, Adelaide Festival March 15</em></p>
<hr>
<p>When we take our seats in Adelaide’s Festival Theatre the air is already thick with haze. Its density suggests something ominous, a kind of collapse. A single, melancholic musical line pierces through the darkness as a body in motion comes into focus.</p>
<p>Soon the stage is filled with the full company of ten dancers, casually attired in khaki and beige, none standing out from the crowd. We see bodies in constant motion, like cells dividing and reconfiguring endlessly when looked at through a microscope. </p>
<p>Grand Finale employs the movement vocabulary that audiences have come to associate with Israeli-born, London-based contemporary dance choreographer Hofesh Shechter. Dancers swirl, whirl, jump in place and move like human percussion machines across all dance styles. When the dancers are in motion, all is fluid and there is no rest. Everything and anything could happen. Nothing can be predicted.</p>
<p>While the work’s title might suggest something rousing and operatic with a clear narrative and heroic resolution, this is anything but that. It’s as if we’re witnessing something big, but don’t know what. We are silent spectators to something terrible unfolding, a global catastrophe, possibly a literal “grand finale” for the species. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264268/original/file-20190317-28479-6xgm8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264268/original/file-20190317-28479-6xgm8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264268/original/file-20190317-28479-6xgm8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264268/original/file-20190317-28479-6xgm8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264268/original/file-20190317-28479-6xgm8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264268/original/file-20190317-28479-6xgm8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264268/original/file-20190317-28479-6xgm8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264268/original/file-20190317-28479-6xgm8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Grand Finale draws upon movements typical of Hofesh Shechter’s works.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rahi Rezvani</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Dancers respond to forces that seem to register on their bodies but are unseen to us. They move alone and in groups, countering those provocations with different tactical moves.</p>
<p>Bodies become objects, human sacks of flesh that are dragged and pulled around the stage, arranged and posed, held, cradled, then reconfigured. We feel the weight of these human bodies that have been drained of life. It is poignant, difficult, even painful. </p>
<p>At other times dancers are pulled from heaps of bodies and become human wreckage, mute, mouths agape, unable to speak, as if they have been atomised, burned alive in an atomic blast.</p>
<p>Designer Tom Scutt’s enormous but remarkably mobile panels, which can look like giant concrete walls, are manipulated by dancers from behind, creating the spaces that shape and contain movement. They are co-actors in the unfolding drama, back drops, places of refuge and of no escape, prehistoric monoliths used for unknown rituals, even monstrous, menacing grave markers.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264270/original/file-20190317-28512-3jbokj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264270/original/file-20190317-28512-3jbokj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264270/original/file-20190317-28512-3jbokj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264270/original/file-20190317-28512-3jbokj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264270/original/file-20190317-28512-3jbokj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264270/original/file-20190317-28512-3jbokj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264270/original/file-20190317-28512-3jbokj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264270/original/file-20190317-28512-3jbokj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mobile panels designed by Tom Scutt play an essential role in the unfolding drama.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rahi Rezvani</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Like other works by Shechter, notably Political Mother and In Your Rooms, Grand Finale is highly percussive, with beats activating human movement, which at times becomes frantic, even painfully frenetic. In this work he adds an onstage string quartet with two cellos, a violin, and an acoustic guitar. The musicians seem to disappear and reappear in different areas of the stage, thanks to Tom Visser’s magical lighting. </p>
<p>The sometimes mellifluous, often melancholic musical line is contrasted with a soundscape of industrial noise: the sounds of static, metal scraping, crashes and booms, buildings falling down or a ship – the Titanic perhaps – hitting an iceberg. </p>
<p>These two sonic worlds constantly compete, with one dominating the other but never for long, as the other line is eventually born from the sonic chaos. The dancers similarly emerge from and move through a world that is unstable, chaotic, ever-changing.</p>
<p>Because of the way sound, light, movement, and percussion come together, Shechter’s choreography can be almost trance-inducing in its intensity and relentlessness. It can seem to invoke the ecstatic, as if dancers were seeking to connect with some higher power, springing up and down, arms splayed out, their hands reaching for something beyond the reach of mere mortals. </p>
<p>When the dancers advance downstage toward us, executing martial arts moves that sometimes resemble a Māori haka, freezing to briefly hold stances of power and strength, they can almost make our hair stand on end.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264271/original/file-20190317-28496-q2m7mf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264271/original/file-20190317-28496-q2m7mf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264271/original/file-20190317-28496-q2m7mf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264271/original/file-20190317-28496-q2m7mf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264271/original/file-20190317-28496-q2m7mf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264271/original/file-20190317-28496-q2m7mf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264271/original/file-20190317-28496-q2m7mf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264271/original/file-20190317-28496-q2m7mf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In the second half of Grand Finale, the dancers seem to inhabit a new world order.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rahi Rezvani</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When they reappear from the darkness in the second half of the work, they seem to inhabit not a world falling apart, but instead a brutal, new world order. The giant mobile panels now increasingly resemble the walls that cut through Jerusalem, angry, impossible to scale, closing in on the dancers and separating them from one another. </p>
<p>The dancers break apart, lonely and isolated, and the walls scatter. A feeling of urban warfare prevails, with rapid tempo shifts forcing the dancers together and driving them apart.</p>
<p>It’s as if they’re dancing in and around a ruined world. Suddenly all stop to stare at a couple kissing against a slice of the wall, an unexpected and unprecedented act of intimacy.</p>
<p>As the work draws to a crescendo, with their backs to us the dancers fall into a line running upstage, swaying out of sync with one another, delicate, broken, but still moving. Suddenly they stop, and find themselves enclosed in a sarcophagus-like structure. It opens and the dancers move into the breach, into the light, and fade from view. </p>
<p>This is a Grand Finale for which there is no known ending, only the certainty that those who survive will step into different world than the one they left behind.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113730/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Peterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Hofesh Shechter’s latest contemporary dance work is not the rousing narrative its title might suggest. Its dancers inhabit a global catastrophe and then a brutal new world order.William Peterson, Associate Professor, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1119852019-02-19T00:55:33Z2019-02-19T00:55:33ZIn Kwongkan, Indian and Australian performers convey an urgent climate change message<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259467/original/file-20190218-56204-41nc2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ian Wilkes in Kwongkan, an artistic collaboration between Australia and India.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Grant</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Kwongkan, Perth Festival 2019</em></p>
<hr>
<p>“Kwongkan” means sand in the language of the Nyoongar people, the first inhabitants of south-west Western Australia. Both Nyoongar and Indian traditional ceremonies, which are recreated in <a href="https://www.perthfestival.com.au/event/kwongkan">this collaboration</a> between Australia and India, take place on the bare earth. Dancing feet connect with the sacred earth beneath.</p>
<p>But sand also has wider cultural significance. It appears in phrases like “putting your head in the sand”, to imply someone is ignoring the obvious or not thinking. There’s also the “sands of time” and images of sand running through an hourglass, both reminding us that time may be running out.</p>
<p>These themes are all too relevant when considering the urgent global challenge of climate change, explored in this world premiere performance as part of Wendy Martin’s final and stunning 2019 Perth Festival. </p>
<p>Through ancient dance practices, contemporary live music, aerial acrobatics, sound, video and epic theatre, Kwongkan invites us to hope for change, but more importantly, to be stirred to action. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259465/original/file-20190218-56229-5f8t2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259465/original/file-20190218-56229-5f8t2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259465/original/file-20190218-56229-5f8t2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259465/original/file-20190218-56229-5f8t2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259465/original/file-20190218-56229-5f8t2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259465/original/file-20190218-56229-5f8t2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259465/original/file-20190218-56229-5f8t2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259465/original/file-20190218-56229-5f8t2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Isha Sharvani (front) and Tao Issaro, Kate Harman, Ian Wilkes (back left to right).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Grant</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Created and directed by Mark Howett of <a href="http://ochredance.org/">Ochre Contemporary Dance Productions</a>, the production grew out of a three-year collaboration with Daksha Sheth Dance Company, who are based in the western Indian state of Kerala. Like Ochre, <a href="http://www.dakshasheth.com/background">Daksha Seth</a> brings together “performing artists from diverse backgrounds who seek to bridge contemporary dance and traditional dance movements”.</p>
<p>Howett travelled with an ensemble of artists to sacred desert lands in Australia and tropical India to create this journey from the past to the present, with a weather eye on the future. The result is not just dance theatre, but a hybrid form with strong narrative strands and a political punch. </p>
<p>Performed on a large, bare wooden platform overlooked by Norfolk Pines, and extending up onto the raised sloping grass behind, there is vast space available and Howett uses it well. A film screen at the back sets the tone of the work right from the start. A video (produced by Howett and associate director Tao Issaro) flashes images of bushfires, floods, polluted oceans, falling trees and rusty cars, one after the other, demonstrating the urgency of this story of climate change and humanity’s role in it. </p>
<p>After the dramatic bushfire opening sequence, the three performers enter, each dancing in their own cultural style. We are led on a journey through colonisation, loss, forced-forgetting and consumption. The performers move beyond pure dance into a blend of movement, acting and direct presentation, demanding a range of skills from each of them.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259462/original/file-20190218-56215-12rkzgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259462/original/file-20190218-56215-12rkzgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259462/original/file-20190218-56215-12rkzgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259462/original/file-20190218-56215-12rkzgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259462/original/file-20190218-56215-12rkzgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259462/original/file-20190218-56215-12rkzgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259462/original/file-20190218-56215-12rkzgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259462/original/file-20190218-56215-12rkzgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Isha Sharvani (front), Kate Harman (middle), and Ian Wilkes (back).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Grant</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These were amply supplied by the three main dancers. Ian Wilkes, a young and very talented Nyoongar performer, is terrific. He will be known to Perth audiences through his work with Yirra Yaakin Theatre and with Ochre Contemporary Dance Productions. </p>
<p>Wilkes switches easily from traditional Nyoongar to contemporary dance, and on to dramatic performance. A highlight was the sequence where he became a kangaroo entangled in the barbed wire from a fence, then transformed into a man, subjugated by missionaries and forced to wear Western clothes. </p>
<p>Another regular Ochre performer, Kate Harmann, brings an intense emotional commitment to both the dance and the drama. When she manipulates a flimsy sheet of clear plastic, she creates beautiful yet disturbing images, ripe with metaphor. </p>
<p>Finally, Isha Shavani, the lead dancer of Daksha Sheth and a renowned aerialist, brought grace, precision and strength to her performance. She is trained in various Indian dance forms such as Kathak, Chau and Kalaripayattu, and displayed her skills in rope Mallakhamb (where acrobatic feats and poses are performed using a hanging rope). She was exceptional in the dance forms of all three cultures and is a compelling presence. </p>
<p>The intensity of these performances was supported by Tao Issaro’s compositions. He is Shavani’s brother, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uXfNZndLCA">describes himself</a> as “a son of an artistic tribe”. He performs energetically on his drums and found objects, complementing a layered instrumental music track incorporating sounds of nature. One impressive drum is hand made from a large brass biryani pot covered with hide.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259459/original/file-20190218-56220-7uhbbm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259459/original/file-20190218-56220-7uhbbm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259459/original/file-20190218-56220-7uhbbm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259459/original/file-20190218-56220-7uhbbm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259459/original/file-20190218-56220-7uhbbm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259459/original/file-20190218-56220-7uhbbm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259459/original/file-20190218-56220-7uhbbm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259459/original/file-20190218-56220-7uhbbm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lead dancer of Daksha Sheth, Isha Sharvani.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Grant</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Kwongkan builds to its climax when the performers desperately try to clear the stage of a mountain of plastic. Balancing on top of an oil drum – a fitting podium if ever there was one – Wilkes uses a megaphone to urge us to get our heads out of the sand. He recalls the quote from Native American leader <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Seattle">Chief Seattle</a>, who watched the destruction of his country following colonisation and famously said “we can’t eat money”. </p>
<p>In the context of pleas from young people around the world to adults to save their future, this final sequence has a powerful impact. </p>
<p>It is interesting to see the epic theatre techniques of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertolt_Brecht">Bertolt Brecht</a> alive and well today. Brecht used theatre to confront an audience and arouse in them the capacity to action. He wanted them to make a decision about a political issue, to question orthodoxy and become active and curious. His work aimed to awaken the audience to the realisation that they can change society for the better. </p>
<p>We are used to being empathetic with characters on stage, but in doing so we remain detached from them and uncritical. Epic theatre aims to disrupt that state. Kwongkan takes this one step further and invites onto the stage a member of <a href="https://www.millenniumkids.com.au/">Millennium Kids</a>, an organisation that works with young people to encourage action on environmental issues. </p>
<p>13-year-old Bella spoke on the night I saw the performance, and pleaded with us to take action on climate change. In light of growing global movements such as <a href="https://www.schoolstrike4climate.com">School Strike 4 Climate</a> and <a href="https://rebellion.earth">Extinction Rebellion</a>, Kwongkan uses art to reflect the zeitgeist.
It begs the question: if the art we are given is not doing that, why not? </p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.perthfestival.com.au/event/kwongkan">Kwongkan</a> is playing as part of the Perth Festival until February 20.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111985/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Vivienne Glance is affiliated with Australian Writers Guild, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance and is a member of the Australian Greens.</span></em></p>An artistic collaboration between India and Australia, playing as part of this year’s Perth Festival, stirs its audience to action on climate change.Vivienne Glance, Hon Research Fellow in Poetry and Theatre studies, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1058392018-10-29T04:07:24Z2018-10-29T04:07:24ZDancing Grandmothers offers a moment of communion<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242654/original/file-20181029-7074-ne7awy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'The biggest disco on the planet since 1979': Dancing Grandmothers take the stage in Adelaide. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Josang Young Mo Choe</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Dancing Grandmothers, Adelaide</em></p>
<hr>
<p>“Age and grow fat; dance and grow fat.” This phrase, which appears on a screen midway through Dancing Grandmothers, suggests that we can have our cake and eat it too, that whatever is inevitable, dancing will always bring us great joy. If we come out of the womb dancing, as I’ve always liked to imagine, then we must grow old dancing.</p>
<p>Korean choreographer Eun-Me Ahn’s Dancing Grandmothers, an Australian premiere which provided a thrilling opening to Adelaide’s 12th OzAsia Festival, shows us how. Ahn has travelled up and down her native land, videotaping older women dancing. In a video sequence embedded in the show we see grannies dancing everywhere, in the most improbable of spaces and while engaging in activities seemingly unsuitable for dance. They dance in parks, fish farms, forests, fields, food stalls, and in impossibly small shops.</p>
<p>But where the grannies truly amaze and delight us is when they appear onstage, following an opening sequence featuring Ahn herself and an energetic troupe of highly-accomplished younger dancers. While the younger dancers thrill us with their energetic twists, twirls, and leaps across the stage in an infinite variety of colourful clothing, it is the amateur troupe of 11 senior women, the eldest being 83, who are the stars of the show.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242657/original/file-20181029-7065-1il2y8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242657/original/file-20181029-7065-1il2y8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242657/original/file-20181029-7065-1il2y8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242657/original/file-20181029-7065-1il2y8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242657/original/file-20181029-7065-1il2y8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242657/original/file-20181029-7065-1il2y8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242657/original/file-20181029-7065-1il2y8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242657/original/file-20181029-7065-1il2y8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The amateur troupe of 11 senior women are the stars of the show.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eunji Park</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When the grannies appear they are carefully and delicately danced onto the stage, each paired with a younger dancer. The women are then seated on the floor, facing upstage, clapping to a soul number as two shirtless young men fly across the stage in moves as gymnastic as they are dancerly.</p>
<p>The women are soon up on their feet, with three dancing energetically to a Korean pop song with a 1970s vibe. Their moves are somehow distinctively Korean, perhaps because traditional Korean folk dances involve extensive, graceful use of the arms, a focal point enhanced by costumes with long sleeves that are flicked up and extend the space and expressive range of the body.</p>
<p>But here the women dance in clothes worn by women over 60 on the Seoul subway or while going shopping. These grannies are not afraid of colour or busy floral patterns, polka dots, or bold stripes. And whether wearing blouses and dresses or jackets and pants, the stage is always awash with brightly coloured clothing that demands attention.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242659/original/file-20181029-7053-pu1khp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242659/original/file-20181029-7053-pu1khp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242659/original/file-20181029-7053-pu1khp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242659/original/file-20181029-7053-pu1khp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242659/original/file-20181029-7053-pu1khp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242659/original/file-20181029-7053-pu1khp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242659/original/file-20181029-7053-pu1khp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242659/original/file-20181029-7053-pu1khp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The grandmothers are complemented by younger dancers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Josang Young Mo Choe</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Among the standout sequences were the following:</p>
<p>An elegant silver-haired woman in a bright, knit full-length kaftan-style dress, moving slowly with grace and poise to a ballad filled with longing, her expressive arm gestures swirling outward and over her head, dancing in a world of slowly falling snow.</p>
<p>Then dancing to a tango beat, another elegant woman, this one with the ubiquitous highly-permed hair-do of Korean women over 60, in a frilled white blouse and pink dress, is joined by a sexy, dapper young man in a top hat. The couple mirrors one another’s moves and in a moment of infinite connection, the young man picks up the grannie in his arms, dances, then sets her down. She seems embarrassed. Or seems to be so, which only adds to the charm of the moment.</p>
<p>Another solo, this time with another silver-haired woman, resplendent in a deep blue dress, moving with impeccable grace and fluidity while the screen behind her shows images of fish and sea creatures seemingly mirroring her movements in the water. Here the live and the virtual become one in an oddly karaoke-inflected musical and visual world. If karaoke could dance, at this moment it does so.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242660/original/file-20181029-7044-ft14lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242660/original/file-20181029-7044-ft14lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242660/original/file-20181029-7044-ft14lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242660/original/file-20181029-7044-ft14lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242660/original/file-20181029-7044-ft14lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242660/original/file-20181029-7044-ft14lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242660/original/file-20181029-7044-ft14lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242660/original/file-20181029-7044-ft14lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Young and old dance together.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Josang Young Mo Choe</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The final group dance has the grannies enter the stage holding beach-ball sized glitter balls. As smaller versions of these balls fall from above the stage, theirs are linked to hooks and raised aloft, creating a shared space between audience and stage that felt like the biggest disco on the planet since 1979. A bouncy pop song animates the group and disco inferno ensures. Suddenly, the music stops and the lights dim and we hear only the sound of bodies breathing while dancing as we all collectively sink into darkness.</p>
<p>It is a thrilling communal moment to be sure.</p>
<p>But not to end there, those of us sitting on or near the ends of aisles are compelled to join the full company of dancers onstage. I find myself dancing with one of the most graceful of the women and unconsciously I pick up her moves, feeling like we’re sharing some part of our bodies and our souls. Whether we actually dance onstage or not, surely an impossible moment of communion is the gift of the dancing grannies.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Dancing Grandmothers was staged as part of the OzAsia Festival, Adelaide.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105839/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Peterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Korean choreographer Eun-Me Ah tnravelled up and down her native land, videotaping older women dancing.William Peterson, Senior Lecturer in Drama, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/936442018-03-22T00:50:28Z2018-03-22T00:50:28ZAkram Khan and telling historical truths through dance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211266/original/file-20180320-80640-xw5col.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Akram Khan in Xenos. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jean Louis Fernandez</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A dancer, in Indian classical <em>Kathak</em> style, appears on the stage and enters into a corporeal conversation with the seated vocalist and percussionist. He wears a clean white cotton <em>kurta</em>, metallic <em>ghungroo</em> around his ankles, jingling as he moves. Watching, you think of human connection, tradition, cultural identity, stability.</p>
<p>But the idyllic scene quickly transforms. Ropes hitherto leaning innocuously against the high, backwards-angled wall begin to move, slowly pulling away the few objects of “civilised” life — chairs, tables. Lights hanging over the stage flicker. The <em>ghungroo</em> transform into <em>bandoliers</em>, bells shaped into bullets.</p>
<p>The dancer’s moves become more contemporary, while foreboding words drift across the stage: “This is not war. It is the ending of the world.” The music too transforms, now an intense relentless industrial crescendo of violin, double bass, percussion, saxophone.</p>
<p>The stage blackens, the only light revealing the musicians on a platform above, as if floating ethereal beings in despair of what is to come. You are made acutely aware of the futility of resisting the imminent descent into chaos. I am transfixed, and already sobbing.</p>
<p>This is Xenos, the latest offering from the Akram Khan Company recently performed at the 2018 Adelaide Festival. Khan is one of the foremost international contemporary dancers and this piece was commissioned by the “14–18 NOW” arts program for the first world war centenary in the United Kingdom. At a time when this war is causing so much remembering, it is extraordinary that so much remains forgotten. </p>
<p>The aim of Khan and his creative team is to make a forgotten past — the Indian sepoys of WWI — take centre stage. Around 1.3 million Indian soldiers served in the war, over 74,000 of them giving their life for that cause. They even fought alongside Australians at Gallipoli.</p>
<p>For a few moments, Khan resurrects these marginalised stories — those who fought for the colonial oppressor have become too difficult to fit into a narrative of Indian independence, too disposable for a long-disintegrated British Empire. Khan forces us to acknowledge their suffering, caused both by war and our forgetting. He does so not by demanding our pity, but by taking us on journey through war’s horror and pathos, with his own body as our guide.</p>
<p>There are few props. The gramophone at the top of the tilted wall, now a trench, exudes a spectral quality as it whispers the names of the Indian dead, rescuing them from mere statistics. Dirt is flung over the stage. Early in the piece, earth in the hand represents home. But the war alters that too. It becomes the mud of the trenches, filth covering the body, the soil in which trenches entrap, bodies are buried.</p>
<p>Many know of the terrors of that war. I am watching, not just as a lover of dance, but as a historian who wants to find answers. Can contemporary dance reveal something about the past that words alone cannot?</p>
<p>Representations of history can be controversial. Historians claim academic dominion over the past and yet historical narratives are so often the subject of fiction, of film, of art. The historian, like the dancer, is an interpreter of the past tasked with finding meaning in its traces. It is the expression of that meaning that differs.</p>
<p>Dance, however, is a form of representation with which historians are rather reluctant to engage. But with the popularity of dance theatre companies like Bangarra, with a growing repertoire that captures the complexities of colonisation from an Indigenous perspective, it is perhaps well time we started paying more attention. Bennelong, for instance, which also featured in the festival, captures the tragedy of a life lived between two worlds, while Patyegarang imagines a more beautiful and curious encounter between a Cadigal woman and Lieutenant William Dawes. </p>
<p>The main difficulties for historians are, first, that dance is ephemeral, making it difficult to analyse, and, second, that it lacks the familiarity of words. It requires developing skills to understand a new language — that conveyed by the body, an affective language that is vicariously felt rather than heard or read on a page.</p>
<p>Through his body, whether a stunning multiple pirouette or the stillness of simply lying, Akram not only allows us to think about the pain of war, but to imagine its psychological impact.</p>
<p>This is the genius of Akram: Xenos is not just a resurrection of a neglected story. As Akram the sepoy moves into the world of war in foreign lands, he transforms from that <em>Kathak</em> dancer into a killing machine, a destroyer of other bodies, his own beautiful dancer’s body mutilated by military discipline and constant shelling. He becomes increasingly alienated, from his home, from himself. He is in a strange land, a stranger to his home, a stranger to himself; he is, as they say in Greek, <em>xenos</em>.</p>
<p>Whose war?, asks an estranged voice. Who points my gun? Rather than a tourist going on a battlefield tour, Khan brings the war and its terrors to us. He takes it out of the museums, away from the commodification of the past, raises it above nationalisms, giving it a painful purity and an emotional honesty, even in its corporeal fictionalisation. Historians speak of historical truth; are there not human truths that cannot be located in archives or found in books?</p>
<p>When the lights come on, I am inconsolable. Khan, an absolute master of his body and his craft, has performed war trauma and the changes wrought by it with such an exquisite beauty that I am left breathless. I wipe my tears, can hardly speak or move. I provide a tissue to the lady beside me, a stranger who has shared in his visual poetry and who is likewise in tears.</p>
<p>That is the power of a fine dancer, choreographer, teller of stories. Akram is one sepoy from northern India. His is all soldiers, everywhere. </p>
<p>War’s greatest and most horrifying effects are corporeal ones; what better way than dance to emotionally entangle us with bodies past, albeit briefly. To remind us of our common humanity in the now.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93644/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christine de Matos does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Dance can’t literally tell history, but it can tell historical truths, as shown by Akram Khan’s Xenos at the Adelaide Festival.Christine de Matos, Senior Lecturer in History; Associate Dean of Academic Development and Research, University of Notre Dame AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/880012017-11-28T03:43:56Z2017-11-28T03:43:56ZIn Bangarra’s Ones Country, new voices show the many faces of Indigenous Australia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196591/original/file-20171128-2055-p1y1mc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ngathu, in Bangarra's Ones Country, is a brilliant combination of the contemporary and traditional, telling the story of the ngathu, or cycad, in Arnhem Land. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Daniel Boud</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.bangarra.com.au/">Bangarra</a>, Australia’s preeminent Indigenous dance theatre, has to be one of the country’s hardest working companies. In 2017, its dancers prepared and performed six different works, giving 88 public performances around Australia and overseas (excluding corporate gigs).</p>
<p>Led by Artistic Director Stephen Page since 1991, it is hard to think of another company here that has made such broad and sustained impact. It has an enormous brief to fill as “the” Indigenous company in Australia’s <a href="http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/programs-and-resources/list-of-the-major-performing-arts-companies/">major performing arts group</a>, but is relatively poorly funded in comparison to the so-called “heritage” artforms like opera and the orchestras. </p>
<p>Bangarra’s current season of three new works, <a href="https://www.bangarra.com.au/whatson/productions/ones-country-2017">Ones Country: The Spine of Our Stories</a>, while uneven in parts, is worth seeing for the opportunity to experience a diversity of Indigenous stories from some new choreographic voices. It debuted in a celebratory weekend of Indigenous dance in Sydney, which included performances by students of <a href="https://naisda.com.au/">NAISDA Dance College</a>, and <a href="https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/homeground">Homeground</a>, the Sydney Opera House’s festival of First Nations art. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196592/original/file-20171128-2021-1b74s5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196592/original/file-20171128-2021-1b74s5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196592/original/file-20171128-2021-1b74s5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196592/original/file-20171128-2021-1b74s5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196592/original/file-20171128-2021-1b74s5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196592/original/file-20171128-2021-1b74s5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196592/original/file-20171128-2021-1b74s5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196592/original/file-20171128-2021-1b74s5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Whistler in Ones Country tells of the dugong in Torres Strait.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Daniel Boud</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The flip side of Bangarra’s high-profile success is that other Indigenous choreographers and companies struggle for air. I’m thinking of Torres Strait choreographer <a href="https://baiwadancecompany.wordpress.com/about-baiwa/">Rita Pryce</a> whose work is hardly ever seen outside of Queensland, or Sydney-based <a href="http://intimatespectacle.com.au/production/long-grass/">Vicki van Hout</a> who is a stalwart of the independent contemporary dance community.</p>
<p>In nearly 30 years, many dancers have passed through the company’s doors and yet very few have gone on to maintain professional careers as choreographers. </p>
<p>A diversity of choreographic voices and artistic practices is one of the measures of a strong sector. Many voices resist presenting indigeneity and Indigenous contemporary dance as any one thing. The showcasing of new choreographers in the Ones Country program - which premieres work by former and current dancers of the company - is therefore exciting. </p>
<p>Bangarra foundation member Djakapurra Munyarryun returns to make his choreographic debut with the company with which he is so strongly associated as a performer and cultural teacher, as do current dancers Kaine Sultan-Babij, Elma Kris and Nicola Sabatino. Together, the three works explore connections to country, taking the audience on a journey from north east Arnhem Land, to the concrete city, to the waters of Torres Strait. </p>
<p>I’d like to think the missing apostrophe in the program’s title is deliberate, posing plurality and individuality as entwined ideas of Indigenous Australia - it is, after all, a nation made up of many first nations.</p>
<p>The opening piece, Munyarryun’s Ngathu, was the stand out. Inspired by the ngathu (cycad) nut, which only appears briefly before the wet season in Arnhem Land, Munyarryun works deftly with male and female groupings from the ensemble to enact the harvest, and the dance of the white cockatoo signalling the coming rains. Utilising the compact stepping movements of Yolngu traditional dance, men and women circle each other, then break into two and then more circles. </p>
<p>The formalism of this dramaturgy feels incredibly fresh — it is traditional dance, but it’s too cursory to call it “just” traditional dance. Doing so totally misunderstands the complex rule-breaking that is involved in transcribing ritual dance to its theatrical setting. </p>
<p>Sitting in the old train workshop that is Carriageworks, I am aware that I am in Redfern and at the same time transported to Arnhem Land; and aware of the important transmission of cultural knowledge taking place for the dancers and the audience.</p>
<p>The work felt modern in its minimalism and clear geometry, and yet these are also part of its continuity with tradition. It was the perfect example of how traditional cultural practices are not in temporal opposition to contemporary art. I hope we get to see more from Munyarryun in the future.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196593/original/file-20171128-2042-hapst8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196593/original/file-20171128-2042-hapst8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196593/original/file-20171128-2042-hapst8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196593/original/file-20171128-2042-hapst8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196593/original/file-20171128-2042-hapst8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196593/original/file-20171128-2042-hapst8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196593/original/file-20171128-2042-hapst8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196593/original/file-20171128-2042-hapst8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leonard Mickelo dances solo in Place, describing the experience of an indigenous gay man in the city.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Daniel Boud</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sultan-Babij’s Place explores the first-time choreographer’s own experience as a young Indigenous gay man in the city in three sections. In the first, the dancers’ limbs reach over and through the bars of several metal barricades as deep bass notes combine with motors revving.</p>
<p>In the second, they dance Sultan-Babij’s totem, the caterpillar. The work ends in a solo performed by Leonard Mickelo, which encapsulates the combination of beauty and loss that was its overall theme. Mickelo, an incredibly long-limbed dancer, struggles against a barricade, all angles, moving into controlled, deep bends in a textured palette of light. </p>
<p>I was reminded of the death of teenager T.J. Hickey a short distance away, which sparked the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Redfern_riots">2004 Redfern riots</a>, and how difficult it remains to be a young black man in Australia today. Overall Place is less successful, however. The three sections are disjointed, never adding up to more than the ideas that the final solo presents.</p>
<p>Kris and Sabatino’s Whistler, a story of the dugong, sacred in the Torres Strait, also struggled to to find its movement language — having set up movements mimicking the physicality of the dugong, I wonder what innovative choreography could have come from carrying through a commitment to the floor. </p>
<p>Having said this, the final moments in which the full ensemble sing together onstage left the audience filled with the energetic syncopation of Torres Strait movement, story and community.</p>
<p>It is a total gift that through Bangarra’s cultural work we get to share in these stories as part of our Australian heritage.</p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.bangarra.com.au/whatson/productions/ones-country-2017">Ones Country</a> will be showing at Carriageworks until December 2.</em></p>
<hr>
<p><em>Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that choreographer Rita Pryce was a former Bangarra dancer. She was not.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88001/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justine Shih Pearson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Bangarra’s current season of three new works, Ones Country, is uneven in parts but worth seeing for the diversity of Indigenous stories from some new choreographic voices.Justine Shih Pearson, Honorary Associate, Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/859842017-10-19T05:34:07Z2017-10-19T05:34:07Z7 Pleasures explores naked desire but fails to confront cliches<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190975/original/file-20171019-1048-19enzjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">7 Pleasures: to explore body politics with a troupe of muscular, lean, able bodied dancers, limits the kinds of questions one might ask. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marc Coudrais</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The promotional copy for Mette Ingvartsen’s 7 Pleasures, playing at the Arts Centre as part of the Melbourne Festival, claims the performance is “upending clichés about nudity”. But what are these cliches? Those which spring most readily to my mind centre around the “confrontational” use of nudity in contemporary dance and performance art. </p>
<p>These cliches are, perhaps, a function of time, as the performance art of the 60s and 70s is now so institutionalised it feels passé. How then, might one create contemporary performance with naked bodies that avoids revising the work of those (from Marina Abramović to Xavier Le Roi) who have come before?</p>
<p>7 Pleasures contributes by exploring the sensual and sexual connections between human and non-human, between subjects and objects. It does so through a series of sustained movements for 12 dancers, that riff on certain modes of sensual engagement.</p>
<p>7 Pleasures opens by separating the bodies of the performers from the collective body of the audience. Planted amongst us, they stand, undress and make their way on-stage. Their bodies fuse together, a draped assortment of bare parts; almost (but not quite) homogeneous. In silence, this organism swarms with slow, deliberate, fluidity across the floor: like ants, they formicate over a couch, around a table, arriving at last at the front of the stage, where they find one last remaining body and draw it into the fold.</p>
<p>This opening introduces the audience to the glacial pace of the work, and a modality more compositional than choreographic; a series of subtle tone paintings for flesh.</p>
<p>One could approach this work in terms of experience and sensation. However, there is strong cerebral organisation and structure to it. I was drawn to a particular sequence through the movements (or sections) in the work, as they offer one useful point of entry into what is otherwise a difficult piece to discuss.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190976/original/file-20171019-1086-ilpx3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190976/original/file-20171019-1086-ilpx3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190976/original/file-20171019-1086-ilpx3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190976/original/file-20171019-1086-ilpx3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190976/original/file-20171019-1086-ilpx3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190976/original/file-20171019-1086-ilpx3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190976/original/file-20171019-1086-ilpx3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190976/original/file-20171019-1086-ilpx3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">7 Pleasures explores the sensual and sexual connections between human and non-human, between subjects and objects.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marc Coudrais</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After the introduction, the dancers disperse, and begin to engage with the objects that populate the sparse set. A pelvis rubs sensuously against the corner of a coffee table. A shag rug is caressed. An indoor potted Yukka plant is nuzzled. These objects become objects of desire. Then, the scene suddenly shifts: a new rhythm emerges, created by the frenetic flapping of male genitalia. It spreads like a virus; the whole troupe begins to shake, pulse, flap and quiver. </p>
<p>The bodies draw together to become a locomotive orgy of touching, joining and rubbing that steams around the stage. It descends upon the potted Yukka; which also begins to shake and quiver. Then the couch. With increasing frenzy, cushions are scattered, furniture is thrown around, things are unravelled. The endurance of the dancers is remarkable, as their wild, pulsing bodies go on and on, the soundtrack of drums driving faster and faster. Finally, this section of the work crashes like a wave, leaving us with darkness and silence.</p>
<p>The next section of the work keeps us in the shadows, shifting mood entirely. The bodies again engage in sensual acts with objects, but here the objects serve to mediate human-to-human sensuality. Bowls, ropes, straps, pipes, strips of paper and metallic balls all pass between people as conduits for sensation. </p>
<p>These scenes raise a series of questions which have, in recent years, emerged as a new branch of inquiry within (or better, from) the humanities. This includes a new consideration of the agency and experience of things we categorise as “non-human”, including animals and objects. For this reason, the turn has been understood broadly by the term “post-humanities”.</p>
<p>As I watched the Yukka and the couch get roughed up, it seemed to me a violation. But how could I know? How much do we, as humans, impose our own schema of sense and experience on things? How would we ask a non-human thing for consent? The second and final section seems to answer this clearly. We don’t. We use these things selfishly, we enlist them into our battles. </p>
<p>The anthropocentric nature of relations between humans and non-humans becomes most explicit in the fourth and final section, where the bodies are divided into clothed and unclothed, and the performers build up a primal, rhythmic grunting and chanting. They come together, unified and facing us in what appears to be worship, with one of the dancers venturing to climb out into the audience. In this gesture of togetherness, the post-human concerns are replaced with an encompassing “pre-humanism” that erases difference though anthropological cliché, and shares an uncomfortable proximity to the logic of the Paleo diet.</p>
<p>It is the human body that 7 Pleasures ultimately revolves around. However, to explore body politics with a troupe of muscular, lean, able bodied dancers, with only Ligia Lewis breaking the homogeneous whiteness, limits the kinds of questions one might ask. In comparison to recent contributions such as <a href="http://www.clairecunningham.co.uk/production/give-me-a-reason-to-live/">Claire Cunningham’s Give Me A Reason to Live</a> (2015), and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIOczdZzddM">Force Majeure’s Nothing to Lose</a> (2015), 7 Pleasures struggles to confront.</p>
<p><em>7 Pleasures is at the Arts Centre Melbourne <a href="https://www.festival.melbourne/2017/events/7-pleasures/#.Wegt0BOCxBw">until October 22</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85984/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Asher Warren does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Mette Ingvartsen’s 7 Pleasures aims to upend
clichés about nudity. But the ‘confrontational’ use of nudity in dance and performance art is itself now something of a cliche.Asher Warren, Tutor and Researcher in Theatre and Performance Studies, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/825412017-08-16T17:37:37Z2017-08-16T17:37:37ZHip-hop dance vs Donald Trump: how robot moves just got political<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182210/original/file-20170816-32661-19we7tt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Strait-talkin'</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBE</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Suddenly the dancers’ bodies freeze, caught in a white rectangle of light. Reduced to a state of shivering, their faces contort until what emerges is a scream. But this is a scream we do not actually hear. We only see it in the dancers’ gaping mouths against a looping sound of white noise – and then: utter silence.</p>
<p>This is ten minutes into <a href="https://www.eif.co.uk/2017/boyblue#.WZMAFmXSffY">Blak Whyte Gray</a>, the hip-hop dance production by east London collective <a href="http://www.boyblueent.com">Boy Blue Entertainment</a> showing at the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-70-years-of-the-edinburgh-festival-has-done-for-the-arts-and-the-economy-82102">Edinburgh International Festival</a>. It is the closing moment of “Whyte”, the first part of the production, featuring three dancers in oversize straitjackets (see main image). They have been doing a robot-like dance, old-skool hip-hop style, limbs moving mechanically as if controlled by an outside force. </p>
<p>The screams feel like a reference to oppression, incarceration and the lack of safe spaces for minorities in the past and present. Think colonialism, slavery, segregation, Trump and Black Lives Matter – a powerful message in uncertain times, particularly in the wake of the recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/charlottesville-virginia-the-history-of-the-statue-at-the-centre-of-violent-unrest-82476">violent scenes</a> in Charlottesville, Virginia. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182212/original/file-20170816-32614-s8pjj3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182212/original/file-20170816-32614-s8pjj3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182212/original/file-20170816-32614-s8pjj3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182212/original/file-20170816-32614-s8pjj3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182212/original/file-20170816-32614-s8pjj3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182212/original/file-20170816-32614-s8pjj3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182212/original/file-20170816-32614-s8pjj3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182212/original/file-20170816-32614-s8pjj3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trump speaking after Charlottesville.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Michael “Mikey J” Asante, the show’s composer and artistic co-director along with choreographer Kenrick “H₂O” Sandy, later tells me that the imagery goes beyond questions of race or ethnicity, and is not a direct response to his experiences as a black man in the UK. “In our present political climate, with Trump and Brexit, there’s lots of people who can agree with the idea of their voice not being heard,” he says. </p>
<p>That can be interpreted in different ways, of course – not finding a voice, being denied a voice, not being listened to. But then political dance and theatre can often be powerful without making a clear-cut statement. As Asante puts it, politics is always a matter of perception.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182209/original/file-20170816-11616-ntot5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182209/original/file-20170816-11616-ntot5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182209/original/file-20170816-11616-ntot5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182209/original/file-20170816-11616-ntot5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182209/original/file-20170816-11616-ntot5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182209/original/file-20170816-11616-ntot5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1076&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182209/original/file-20170816-11616-ntot5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1076&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182209/original/file-20170816-11616-ntot5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1076&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Mikey J’ Asante.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBE</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While that opening segment was all about restriction set to an electronic accompaniment, the show takes us on a journey towards what Asante calls more “organic” movements and music. It culminates in a joyous celebration with eight dancers falling in and out of formation as if finally gaining control over their own lives and bodies. </p>
<p>Ghanaian masks tower over the dancers’ heads. The masks are another visually striking image, which Asante explains are used in traditional ceremonies in Ghana as vessels for ancestors. Thus it is not only repressed people in the present that are part of this movement for liberation and survival, but those from the past, too. </p>
<h2>Spectator power</h2>
<p>At other times, Blak Whyte Gray’s imagery remains intentionally abstract and cryptic. This is intended as a way of giving power to the spectators. “It is your experience in life that will determine how you see the political value in what you are watching,” says Asante. </p>
<p>In one sense, the silent scream embodies this idea: through its lack of a narrative voice, it guides spectators but does not seek to determine the outcome of their journey. It made me think of <a href="http://www.shobanajeyasingh.co.uk/works/material-men-redux/">Shobana Jeyasingh’s Material Men redux</a>, another excellent recent dance production that uses hip-hop and references colonial history. Material Men is a two-man show in which the political emerges out of the coming together of two different dance styles, classical Indian from one dancer and hip-hop from the other. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HugHZWyVe3U?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Through the use of voice over narration and film at specific moments during the performance, Material Men takes great care to explicitly embed its dance moves within a larger history of indentured labour, forced migration and being part of the Indian diaspora. </p>
<p>This is no more or less powerful than Blak Whyte Gray’s sometimes more abstract approach, and we’re not talking about absolutes in any case: Material Men’s message doesn’t completely determine spectators’ interpretations of the show, and Blak Whyte Gray still guides its audience by what they see. </p>
<p>What the two productions show is the range of possibilities for making contemporary dance political. Material Men won <a href="http://www.shobanajeyasingh.co.uk/works/material-men-redux/">high critical praise</a> for its endeavours, while Blak Whyte Gray, which originally debuted in January at the Barbican in London, was <a href="http://www.olivierawards.com/nominations/">nominated</a> for an Olivier award. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_zAeja3tuLc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Just like theatre – and maybe more so because of the focus on physical movement – dance doesn’t even need a message to be political. It is there in the history of the bodily movements, with hip-hop, for example, being a cultural expression that combines Caribbean, African, South American and other traditions. </p>
<p>It is there because of the political climate of our times: while the American president <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/15/donald-trump-press-conference-far-right-defends-charlottesville">defends</a> far-right protesters, shows have been cancelled at the Edinburgh Fringe because Syrian artists <a href="https://www.dailysabah.com/music/2017/08/11/austrias-conchita-wurst-cancels-edinburgh-show-after-syrian-musicians-denied-visas">have been</a> denied visas. And it is there because theatre, performance and dance make artists and spectators share time together, thus bearing the promise of a community. Blak, whyte or gray, it becomes impossible to ignore what is happening in front of you. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Blak Whyte Gray by Boy Blue Entertainment is at the Edinburgh International Festival on August 16-19.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82541/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Bachmann does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>East London collective Boy Blue Entertainment have taken their provocative show to the Edinburgh International Festival.Michael Bachmann, Lecturer in Theatre Studies, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/798602017-08-16T08:59:41Z2017-08-16T08:59:41ZExplainer: what is Dance Movement Psychotherapy?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181536/original/file-20170809-26073-m47kit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/dancer-hand-rise-improviseon-blurred-background-656655997?src=xyhTH4H0A7XIbNPjcwTGTg-1-0">EugeneTitov/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Dance Movement Psychotherapy (DMP) uses the body, movement and dance as a way of expressing oneself and findings ways of exploring and addressing psychological problems or difficulties. It is an approach to psychological treatment that does not rely on talking about problems as the only way of finding solutions.</p>
<p>According to the <a href="http://admp.org.uk/">Association of Dance Movement Psychotherapy UK</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>DMP recognises body movement as an implicit and expressive instrument of communication and expression. DMP is a relational process in which client and therapist engage in an empathic creative process using body movement and dance to assist integration of emotional, cognitive, physical, social and spiritual aspects of self.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is often regarded as one of the arts therapies, which also includes <a href="https://www.bamt.org/">music therapy</a> and <a href="http://badth.org.uk/">dramatherapy</a>, and a type of <a href="https://www.psychotherapy.org.uk/association-for-dance-movement-psychotherapy-uk/">embodied psychotherapy</a>, and also a relatively new profession, founded in the 1940s in the US and only in the 1980s in Britain. It is also practised in Australia and Germany. In all cases, therapists receive specific training and licence to practise in the discipline and offer their services to a wide range of vulnerable people, working in private practice, hospitals, schools, social services, charities, care homes or prisons offering one-to-one or group work.</p>
<p>In these different settings, practitioners may follow different approaches but they all adopt a specific direction based on the needs of the clients. <a href="https://www.elsevier.com/books/arts-therapies/karkou/978-0-443-07256-7">Our early research</a> outlined some of the common features of this therapy across settings and client populations.</p>
<p>• Dance: a range of different practices including breath, posture, gesture, pedestrian movement, rhythmical movement and – less often – a more technical or style-specific form of dancing. Skill is not a requirement for people to begin this therapy and learning steps isn’t what takes place within sessions.</p>
<p>• Embodiment: the connection one may have with your own physical self is of high value because it can support a “body-mind” integration.</p>
<p>• Creativity: the process that enables patients to find new solutions to problems.</p>
<p>• Imagery, symbolism and metaphor: important tools used to access unconscious or difficult feelings such as anger, shame or fear. Using these tools allows the patient to work through problematic issues indirectly.</p>
<p>• Non-verbal communication: people don’t always have the words to express what they are feeling. Sometimes it is easier to reach and communicate emotions to other people non-verbally.</p>
<h2>Does it work?</h2>
<p><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-dance-and-wellbeing-9780199949298?cc=gb&lang=en&">Our research</a> suggests that DMP can contribute to a person’s overall well-being. But, to confidently answer the question of whether it is effective as a treatment, there is a need to improve the number, size and quality of the studies in this area. Both practitioners and researchers are still exploring what are the important components of this psychological intervention that contribute towards positive change. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0197455696000275">Results</a> from systematic reviews of studies with all client groups suggest that DMP can have a relatively large impact on a wide range of symptoms. The authors conclude that the degree to which DMP can achieve therapeutic change can be compared to other forms of psychotherapy. A more <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0197455613001676">recent study</a> also suggested that this form of therapy can increase quality of life, well-being, mood, body-image and can offer substantial decrease in levels of depression. </p>
<p>Other reviews look at work with different client populations. For example, <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD009895.pub2/pdf">we found</a> that DMP is a promising intervention in the treatment of depression when compared to standard care, especially with adults.</p>
<p>Studies on effectiveness of DMP on <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006868.pub3/epdf">people with schizophrenia</a> suggest that it can reduce symptoms such as apathy, lethargy, blunted emotional responses and social withdrawal. Improved quality of life was the <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD007103.pub3/epdf">main finding</a> from the review of studies on DMP in cancer care. A <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD011022.pub2/epdf">review</a> on the treatment of dementia and a study on <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=gzcvDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA272&lpg=PA272&dq=Athanasiadou+Autism+dance+Colwyn&source=bl&ots=dRJBZP9duf&sig=Ocws_iRdFqgXBDbAxGb1pMa3oig&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwii6_6VmafVAhXiLMAKHe0uBpMQ6AEINTAC#v=onepage&q=Athanasiadou%20Autism%20dance%20Colwyn&f=false">autism</a> suggest that further research is needed. But in all cases the results seem positive, making this form of therapy a very attractive alternative to conventional psychotherapies.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79860/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vicky Karkou is a Professor of Dance, Arts and Wellbeing at Edge Hill University. She has received funding from ESRC,
the European Union and charities for conducting research in this area. She is a registered member of the Association of Dance Movement Psychotherapy UK and a practiting dance movement psychotherapist and supervisor. </span></em></p>… and does it work?Vicky Karkou, Director of Postgraduate and International Affairs, Leading the research group on Arts for Wellbeing, Edge Hill UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/554662016-03-01T04:28:30Z2016-03-01T04:28:30ZAfrican dance festival that’s been one step ahead through the decades<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113215/original/image-20160229-4087-18ffnpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Tribhangi Dance Company performs Circles and Squares at the South African Dance Umbrella in Johannesburg.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/John Hogg</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s always been easy to coin a “lucky packet” metaphor around the <a href="http://www.danceforumsouthafrica.co.za/">Dance Umbrella</a>, Johannesburg’s unique contemporary dance festival. It’s often pot luck for an audience where “sweets” – as a quality yardstick – get mixed with “sours”. This is as it should be for the discipline, which is arguably one of the most difficult for a lay audience to watch.</p>
<p>But after nearly three decades of existence, the festival has become an institution about much more than being critically fêted.</p>
<p>Similar to classical or traditional dance, <a href="http://www.contemporary-dance.org/">contemporary dance</a> has its own nonverbal language, which is not immediately accessible to everyone. Similar to theatre, it can draw in a range of elements such as lighting and sound to uplift or lend it nuance. Similar to visual art, it has the power to take on political issues and shock an audience into awareness. Blending all of these tools, it remains a field of art that fits with some difficulty into the unconditional love of a fan base. </p>
<p>But if you turn from looking at the stage to looking at the audience in any given Dance Umbrella work, you would be hard-pressed to believe this. Not only has Dance Umbrella grown dance, it has grown an audience.</p>
<h2>Physical expression</h2>
<p>It was coined as a platform for contemporary dance in Johannesburg by dance critics Marilyn Jenkins and Adrienne Sichel in conversation with Vita Promotions. Dance Umbrella debuted in 1989, showcasing the work of <a href="http://www.danceforumsouthafrica.co.za/history-of-dance-umbrella.html">just 14 choreographers</a>. It has since ticked all the proverbial boxes in terms of not only attempting to shape an audience but in giving extraordinary levels of physical expression validity and currency.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113217/original/image-20160229-4066-1shulza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113217/original/image-20160229-4066-1shulza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113217/original/image-20160229-4066-1shulza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113217/original/image-20160229-4066-1shulza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113217/original/image-20160229-4066-1shulza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113217/original/image-20160229-4066-1shulza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113217/original/image-20160229-4066-1shulza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">South African artist Steven Cohen has always pushed the boundaries.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One need not think beyond performance artist/contemporary dancer <a href="http://www.stevenson.info/artists/cohen.html">Steven Cohen</a>. Over the years he has taken the festival by storm with his outrageous and oft impromptu gestures engaging with sexuality, xenophobia and hatred head on. Cohen has done so in a manner that made it difficult for audience members or even dance administrators to side-step.</p>
<p>Dance Umbrella in 2008 featured French choreographer Dominique Boivin’s Transports <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auVy2_dnZtE">Exceptionnels</a>, which was staged on the Johannesburg Market Theatre’s parking lot. It anthropomorphosised a trench digger that “danced” to the sound of <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/maria-callas-9235435">Maria Callas’</a> voice – one of those unforgettable moments that made you open your heart to what contemporary dance is or can do.</p>
<h2>Dance firebrands</h2>
<p>The notion of “undance” was coined by choreographers of the ilk of <a href="http://eludanceco.org/portfolios/02/">Elu</a>. The audience’s role was challenged by mavericks such as <a href="http://www.robynorlin.com/about.htm">Robyn Orlin</a>, one of Dance Umbrella’s founding choreographic firebrands. From year one, Dance Umbrella enabled contemporary dance to be rich with as yet undreamed of possibilities. Effectively on several levels, the discipline became a catch-all.</p>
<p>But in juxtaposition with a stretching and a shattering of the envelope in which dance used to be able to sit comfortably, the role of Dance Umbrella was about opening doors that creative young South Africans didn’t even know existed. The time, in 1988, was ripe for a festival specialising in what contemporary dance could be in Johannesburg. </p>
<p>Many of apartheid’s punitive and violent regulations were collapsing from within. South Africa was still reeling from a <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/state-emergency-south-africa-1960-and-1980s">State of Emergency</a> and its society was ripe to start re-identifying itself.</p>
<p>Moving Into Dance <a href="http://www.midance.co.za/">Mophatong</a>, the Newtown-based dance company established by dancer-choreographer <a href="http://www.midance.co.za/dance-company/management-administration/">Sylvia Glasser</a> who enjoyed an interest in ethnodance, was then ten years old. It was rapidly developing as a multiracial platform: the first of its kind in the country when it was technically still illegal to host black and white dancers on the same stage together. It was both melting pot and incubator for new dance blood.</p>
<h2>Astonishing achievement</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113218/original/image-20160229-4110-1r04tph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113218/original/image-20160229-4110-1r04tph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113218/original/image-20160229-4110-1r04tph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113218/original/image-20160229-4110-1r04tph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113218/original/image-20160229-4110-1r04tph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113218/original/image-20160229-4110-1r04tph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113218/original/image-20160229-4110-1r04tph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">South African dancer Sonia Radebe performing at the Dance Umbrella.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/John Hogg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Fast forward 28 years, and a broad overview on what Dance Umbrella is and what it has achieved, is astonishing. Glasser recently immigrated to Australia, having retired from Moving Into Dance. She leaves in her wake choreographers such as <a href="http://www.vuyani.co.za/gregmaqoma.html">Gregory Maqoma</a>, <a href="http://www.dancewebeurope.net/index.php?id=32&detail=88">Boyzie Cekwana</a>, <a href="http://www.dance.uct.ac.za/dnc/confluen/confluences2015/overview">Vincent Mantsoe</a>, <a href="http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/entertainment/2014/09/06/mashigo-s-latest-piece-keeps-audiences-on-their-toes">Portia Mashigo</a>, <a href="http://www.artlink.co.za/news_article.htm?contentID=29401">Moeketsi Koena</a>, <a href="http://www.openlab-southafrica.co.za/Sonia.html">Sonia Radebe</a>, <a href="https://robynsassenmyview.wordpress.com/">Sunnyboy Motau</a>, <a href="http://200ysa.mg.co.za/2013/fana-tshabalala/">Fana Tshabalala</a> and many others, whose lives she touched and focused significantly. Most of them are internationally respected today.</p>
<p>But it would not be accurate to focus on MIDM only. While it was the first dance company to open its doors in Johannesburg in 1978, its existence enabled other dance companies in the city. These include PJ Sabbagha’s <a href="http://forgottenangle.co.za/">Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative</a> (established in 1995), Martin Schönberg’s <a href="http://www.artlink.co.za/news_article.htm?contentID=21157">Ballet Theatre Afrikan</a> (1996-2009), Jayesperi Moopen’s <a href="http://www.tribhangi.co.za/">Tribhangi</a> (established in 1988) and Maqoma’s <a href="http://vuyani.co.za/vdt/">Vuyani Dance Theatre Project</a> (established in 1999). Each of these companies has in turn generated new approaches to the discipline and new performers and choreographers.</p>
<p>More than all the critical success and collaborative energy Dance Umbrella generates, is the kind of audiences that traditionally each February, when the festival takes place, fill its venues. </p>
<p>Old, young, black and white, the consistently full houses represent South African’s society’s spectrum. Not necessarily comprehensively dance-savvy, it’s an audience with a buzzing curiosity. And long may they continue to be seduced by Dance Umbrella as it feeds contemporary dance’s relevance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55466/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robyn Sassen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>South Africa’s foremost contemporary dance festival is celebrating its 28th birthday in 2016. It has remained relevant, vital and – despite the format’s esoteric nature – hugely popular.Robyn Sassen, Research Fellow, African Art Centre, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/391052015-03-22T19:10:21Z2015-03-22T19:10:21ZIn Motion Picture, dancers drive a cinematic story onstage<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75454/original/image-20150320-2200-yywort.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lucy Guerin has grown to be a prominent mentor and consistently inspirational dance artist.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Arts House/Lucy Guerin.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Lucy Guerin’s <a href="http://dancemassive.com.au/program/motion-picture/">Motion Picture</a>, performed as part of Melbourne’s Dance Massive festival, was an anticipated work from one of the city’s most respected choreographers. </p>
<p>With her permanent studio space in the city, a rarity in Melbourne, Guerin has provided a consistent creative and experimental point of contact for many young dancers and choreographers. Developing many of her skills as a young choreographer/dancer (and Bessie Award Winner) in New York, Guerin has grown to be a prominent mentor and consistently inspirational dance artist. </p>
<h2>Interdisciplinary challenges</h2>
<p>Guerin’s recent work crosses disciplines and explores the potential of dance to communicate as a multifaceted art form. In Conversation Piece (2012) actors as well as dancers share text and movement, while in Untrained (2009) two professional dancers are pitted against two uninhibited non-trained movers. </p>
<p>Each work challenges the viewer to re-examine their expectations of dance and challenges the art form of dance as a means of expression. In this latest work, Motion Picture, Guerin ventures into an exploration of film and dance. </p>
<p>Conventionally the dance/film genre is concerned to translate dance onto the screen. Guerin was curious to invert the relationship, to experiment with how dance could translate film: “how would the audience respond to the dance without seeing the film?”. </p>
<p>The dramaturgical structure exhibits a voyage that takes us from the interpretation of the film through dance, to the transformation of the film into a choreography, in which the dancers become the personalities that drive the cinematic story and theatrical tension. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75455/original/image-20150320-2206-1efnjl3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75455/original/image-20150320-2206-1efnjl3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75455/original/image-20150320-2206-1efnjl3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75455/original/image-20150320-2206-1efnjl3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75455/original/image-20150320-2206-1efnjl3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75455/original/image-20150320-2206-1efnjl3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75455/original/image-20150320-2206-1efnjl3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75455/original/image-20150320-2206-1efnjl3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Photo: Sarah Walker.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Arts House/Lucy Guerin</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To start, we hear the film score live, and realise the footage is being played on a screen directly behind us. The dancers enter to enact movie motion; shuffling their feet downstage, they come close while not perceptibly moving – they dance a slow close-up. </p>
<p>As the dialogue begins, five dancers depart leaving only the versatile Alasdair Macindoe, who begins to lip-sync the voice of the main character: “I want to report a murder” he tells a policeman. “Who’s been murdered?” asks the agent, “I have”, responds Macindoe capturing the nuance and drama of the moment in his face and his body. </p>
<p>The mystery, or rather, the two mysteries of the performance begin to play out here. The narrative of the movie plot – a mystery for those that haven’t seen the 1950 classic film noir <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042369/">DOA</a> (directed by Rudolph Maté) – the other, the mystery as to what the dancers do with the information that they see on the screen. </p>
<p>Is this a reconstruction of what is on the screen? It seems that way as the dancers stare intently at the film playing on the wall behind the audience, lip-syncing the text and coordinating their movement to imitate the editing decisions, camera angles and details on screen. </p>
<p>Or are they perhaps misrepresenting what they see? Guerin manipulates the live and the mediated, throwing into question how we use our senses to construct a reading.</p>
<h2>Mis-representation</h2>
<p>Not being able to look simultaneously at the screen and the stage space, the audience is left guessing as to what the dancers are seeing and what they are exhibiting. </p>
<p>Do they really present what is on the screen or a complete distortion of the action? How does the character in the film deliver this text, what is the setting, does the girlfriend “Paula” look and act like the dancer Stephanie Lake, self-assured and haughty or like Lillian Steiner, sensual and teasing. </p>
<p>I resisted turning around, until the man next to me did so some 15 minutes into the piece. </p>
<p>The image I saw fleetingly was striking in its intensity and contrast: film noir, deep blacks, whites and sharp angles in which characters hide and lurk. By contrast the corresponding dance scenography was in shades on grey. A white dance floor and a large white screen showed different elements of film language and original footage: an expanding and contracting square within a square, film static and blurred film footage of a white line on a highway. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75458/original/image-20150320-2174-ji77rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75458/original/image-20150320-2174-ji77rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75458/original/image-20150320-2174-ji77rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75458/original/image-20150320-2174-ji77rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75458/original/image-20150320-2174-ji77rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75458/original/image-20150320-2174-ji77rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75458/original/image-20150320-2174-ji77rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Photo: Sarah Walker.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Arts House/Lucy Guerin</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As the performance builds, the dance takes distance from its representation of the “real” movie action. It develops a more abstract and classically familiar dance language in which there are group formations and unison dancing. The literal interpretation becomes an emotional one as the dancers translate their perception of the inner life of the characters on screen. </p>
<p>The contorted movements that freeze the body of Lake, the love interest of the main character, depict the emotional struggle of a woman coming to terms with the immanent death of her partner. Is this detachment from the external to the internal potentially what dance can provide that the film cannot – to expose us to a different way of communicating and empathising? </p>
<p>While the intention in the second half of the work is to gear the viewer toward the transformation of film character into dancer, I was less convinced by the development of this section and found myself still searching for connections. Why this film DOA, made some 65 years ago. Was the performance to present a contemporary version of film-noir? </p>
<p>In this digital age, the work seemed only partially modernised. The costumes are a refined, neat version of fifties casual. The set design is not over-digitalised but nevertheless abstracts real “film” footage to provide a constant moving and undefined backdrop. The dance material draws on movement language beginning with reference to fifties swing and rock and roll, but rarely reaches further than postmodern American dance language. Is this a nostalgic reminder that theatre works best as manipulation, but without challenge? </p>
<p>In this symmetrical constellation between dance; the live bodies on stage and the film; the mediated and ghostly presence of an old movie bores a hole in my imagination. I long for blacks and whites, action and drama. </p>
<p>At the end I felt somewhat stuck in the grey area between dance and film, nostalgia and modernity; not really fully immersed in either the dance or the film but nevertheless, curiously intrigued by both. </p>
<p><br>
<em>Motion Picture played at Arts House until March 22. It will tour internationally in 2015. Details <a href="http://dancemassive.com.au/program/motion-picture/">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39105/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anny Mokotow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Lucy Guerin is a consistent creative and experimental point of contact for many young dancers and choreographers – and her new work, Motion Picture explores the grey area between nostalgia and modernity.Anny Mokotow, School of Culture and Communication, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/326832014-10-13T03:15:30Z2014-10-13T03:15:30ZA radical legacy: Trisha Brown’s postmodern dance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61347/original/d3yn8mz6-1412913285.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dancers find their 'their sultry siren selves' in Spanish Dance, choreographed by Trisha Brown in 1973.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Melbourne Festival</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A retrospective of the work of American choreographer <a href="http://www.trishabrowncompany.org/?section=34">Trisha Brown</a> (1936-) will be presented at the Melbourne Festival this month. In the performance <a href="https://www.melbournefestival.com.au/trisha-brown-early-works/#.VDdbKCmSxiY">Early Works</a>, we will have a chance to revisit this experimental historical period of <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-contemporary-dance-25713">postmodern dance</a> and appreciate how these works were composed. </p>
<p>In the 1960s in New York City, Brown was a member of the infamous <a href="http://www.danceheritage.org/treasures/judsonchurch_essay_jackson.pdf">Judson Church dance group</a>, a loosely affiliated troupe of dancers, visual artists and musicians who began to experiment with chance or task-driven performance events. </p>
<p>Rejecting the virtuosic abstraction of choreographers such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merce_Cunningham">Merce Cunningham</a>, or the expressive emotion of earlier modern dancers, this group experimented with more diverse bodily practices, such as martial arts training, and new forms of improvisational structure for making movement. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61352/original/xg6hd48p-1412913835.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61352/original/xg6hd48p-1412913835.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61352/original/xg6hd48p-1412913835.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61352/original/xg6hd48p-1412913835.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61352/original/xg6hd48p-1412913835.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61352/original/xg6hd48p-1412913835.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61352/original/xg6hd48p-1412913835.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61352/original/xg6hd48p-1412913835.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Newark (1987), Trisha Brown.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Melbourne Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Brown’s signature work, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86I6icDKH3M">Accumulation</a> (1971), a dance based on repeating hand-gestures that lead into strange sideways steps and turns, the choreographer recounts a long and rambling autobiographical narrative. </p>
<p>Each action and each part of the story is seemingly inconsequential. The first gesture is composed from bent elbows, maybe a hitch-hikers’ fist held out in front, and the rotation of both wrists. </p>
<p>The movements grow in complexity, one hand veering off in another direction, the hips starting to rotate while the voice continues slowly to tell us about her father, about making the dance, or whatever else comes into consciousness.</p>
<p>Initially a four-and-a-half minute solo (perhaps a tribute to American composer <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-extreme-duration-in-the-performing-arts-28808">John Cage</a>) and performed in silence to the music of the Grateful Dead, it later became a long dance with talking, and it has also been performed by multiple dancers.</p>
<p>This piece exemplifies many of the peculiar features of American postmodern dance – minimalism, seriality, randomness, dancing with talking, and the disturbance of spectacle. </p>
<p>But Brown has made a unique contribution to this field of choreography with her rigorous methods of composing dances, based often on drawings that reposition shapes within dynamic spatial coordinates. </p>
<p>Brown took to the walls and rooftops of the downtown area of Manhattan. She directed her dancers to walk vertically down apartment blocks and in another event, to send choreographic signals like semaphores across the skyline.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61348/original/27p8fck3-1412913348.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61348/original/27p8fck3-1412913348.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61348/original/27p8fck3-1412913348.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61348/original/27p8fck3-1412913348.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61348/original/27p8fck3-1412913348.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61348/original/27p8fck3-1412913348.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61348/original/27p8fck3-1412913348.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61348/original/27p8fck3-1412913348.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Roof Piece (1971), Trisha Brown.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Melbourne Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In addition to recognising how phrases are combined and layered, one might also sense a fluid inner patterning in the dancers. I always find their feet pretty fascinating; they are barefoot but use the floor to build a momentum that uses gravity and peripheral awareness rather than outwardly directed gestures. </p>
<p>The legacy of this movement style lives on in many Melbourne choreographers who utilise various forms of “release” – such as <a href="http://www.skinnerreleasing.com/">Skinner Releasing Technique</a> – to loosen up their bodies for dancing, but few of them have the consistent rigour, politics and eloquence of Brown’s work.</p>
<p>Another work featured in Melbourne is called <a href="https://www.melbournefestival.com.au/trisha-brown-early-works/#.VDdahymSyfs">Spanish Dance</a> (1973) and was later part of a longer piece, <a href="http://www.trishabrowncompany.org/?page=view&nr=497">Line Up</a> (1976). Performed to the nostalgic tunes of Gordon Lightfoot’s song Early Morning Rain sung by Bob Dylan, five female dancers shuffle across the stage, eventually snaking into a line one behind the other. As <a href="http://writingmydancinglife2.blogspot.com.au/2011/01/learning-from-line-up.html">Lisa Kraus</a>, one of the original performers, explains on <a href="http://writingmydancinglife2.blogspot.com.au/">her blog</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was a dance for all women, simply and uniformly clad, strong and smart but reflecting the non-heroic performer ethos of its time. Its virtuosity was brainy rather than flashy; its tongue-in-cheek wit a fresh breeze. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The pleasure, and perhaps joke, of this dance is that one woman shuffles into another so that crotch cupped in crotch, knees bending at the same time, they move like a pulsing train. </p>
<p>With a great deal of seductive languor, they slowly but surely lift their arms in unison over their heads as they find <a href="http://writingmydancinglife2.blogspot.com.au/2011_01_01_archive.html">“their sultry siren selves”</a> (see main image). The choreography thus replaces the ego-eroticism of the male flamenco dancer and the self-pity of the song by transforming it into a feminist jouissance – an expression of sexual pleasure. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61357/original/x83fyz76-1412914706.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61357/original/x83fyz76-1412914706.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61357/original/x83fyz76-1412914706.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61357/original/x83fyz76-1412914706.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61357/original/x83fyz76-1412914706.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61357/original/x83fyz76-1412914706.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61357/original/x83fyz76-1412914706.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61357/original/x83fyz76-1412914706.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Early Works, Trisha Brown Dance Company - Tate Modern, 2010.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aurelien Guichard</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today, Brown’s choreography is being shown in art galleries – <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=publh5Wteu0">Documenta</a> (2007), <a href="http://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/event-detail.asp?ID=11398">Barbican</a> (2011), <a href="http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1127">MOMA NY</a> (2011), <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/dance/8070461/Trisha-Brown-Dance-Co-Southbank-CentreTate-Modern-review.html">Tate Modern</a> (2010) – as if it is really now a museum exhibit. </p>
<p>In those contexts, as with the title of the festival evening, <a href="https://www.melbournefestival.com.au/trisha-brown-pure-movement/#.VDdlZimSxiY">Pure Movement</a>, Brown’s longstanding investigation of a traditionally “<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-modernism-24534">modernist</a>” purity in line and structure is reframed and celebrated. </p>
<p>Brown’s radical legacy, however, lies in the subtle and playful differences that were built from repeating and inventing new planes for embodiment with her dancers back in the 1960s and 70s.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/32683/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Fensham receives funding from
Australian Research Council
Arts and Humanities Research Council - UK</span></em></p>A retrospective of the work of American choreographer Trisha Brown (1936-) will be presented at the Melbourne Festival this month. In the performance Early Works, we will have a chance to revisit this…Rachel Fensham, Head of School of Culture and Communication, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/257132014-06-15T20:37:05Z2014-06-15T20:37:05ZExplainer: what is contemporary dance?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/51042/original/m67hsdzk-1402639943.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It's probably easier to say what contemporary dance is _not_.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">John Hogg/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Contemporary dance is a catch-all phrase used fairly indiscriminately, meaning many things to different dance communities across a wide range of cultures. In fact, it’s probably easier to say what contemporary dance is <em>not</em> than what it is. </p>
<p>But a good place to start is by thinking of it as a genre in its own right, with different styles that can be housed under one roof.</p>
<h2>What came before?</h2>
<p>Before we had contemporary dance (1970s onwards), we had postmodern dance (1960-70s) and, prior to that, modern dance (1920s-1960s) and it is here that the styles of dance we comfortably call “contemporary” today find their genesis. </p>
<p>The European influences on American modern dance came from the German Expressionist dancers <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wigman">Mary Wigman</a> (1886-1973) and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanya_Holm">Hanya Holm</a> (1893-1992). Along with the American forerunners of modern dance, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_St._Denis">Ruth St Denis</a> (1879-1968), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isadora_Duncan">Isadora Duncan</a> (1877-1927) and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loie_Fuller">Lois Fuller</a> (1862-1928), they paved the way for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Graham">Martha Graham</a> (1894-1991) and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_Humphrey">Doris Humphrey</a> (1895-1958), in particular to develop new styles that sought to embed raw human emotion within their dances, differing from the highly stylised emotional and refined content of ballet.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48477/original/v8bvr5rd-1400050004.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48477/original/v8bvr5rd-1400050004.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48477/original/v8bvr5rd-1400050004.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48477/original/v8bvr5rd-1400050004.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48477/original/v8bvr5rd-1400050004.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48477/original/v8bvr5rd-1400050004.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48477/original/v8bvr5rd-1400050004.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48477/original/v8bvr5rd-1400050004.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Endpapers of Martha Graham by Merle Armitage. Los Angeles: M. Armitage, 1937.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Crossett Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As these explorations grew through the making of new dance works, so too did new dance training techniques in form. We know these techniques today as the Graham technique and the Limón technique. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Lim%C3%B3n">José Limón</a> (1908-1972) worked closely with Doris Humphrey and further developed her technique after her death. </p>
<p>A large number of modern dance leaders emerged from these companies and were a great influence in moving western forms of dance performance out from under the velvet cloak of ballet. They include American choreographers <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merce_Cunningham">Merce Cunningham</a> (1919-2009), Paul Taylor (1930-), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alwin_Nikolais">Alwin Nikolais</a> (1910-1993), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Louis">Murray Louis</a> (1926-), Erick Hawkins (1909-1994) and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester_Horton">Lester Horton</a> (1906-1953). </p>
<p>The Cunningham technique is alive and well today, with its emphasis on line and shape. Alongside the Graham technique it’s still one of the main modern dance techniques taught worldwide. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48478/original/3tmcmrs2-1400050314.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48478/original/3tmcmrs2-1400050314.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48478/original/3tmcmrs2-1400050314.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48478/original/3tmcmrs2-1400050314.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48478/original/3tmcmrs2-1400050314.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48478/original/3tmcmrs2-1400050314.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48478/original/3tmcmrs2-1400050314.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48478/original/3tmcmrs2-1400050314.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Merce Cunningham à la Comédie de Clermont.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ville de Clermont-Ferrand</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Dance technique challenges establishment</h2>
<p>The big shift in dance technique between ballet and modern-dance lay in the use of the torso, body weight, and the use of the floor as a valid surface to perform on with the whole body, not just the feet. These aspects shaped dramatic alterations as to how the dancer’s body was trained. </p>
<p>The torso was used with greater flexibility and the centre of gravity of the body was worked lower to the floor through deeper knee bends, giving modern dance styles a more grounded presence than ballet. </p>
<p>But as soon as these modern dance styles became as codified as ballet, the move was on again to challenge the modern dance establishment and discover new territory for the creative impetus’s of dance as an art form. </p>
<p>What we now know as postmodern dance became the next wave of influence to radically alter the face of dance and inevitably dance training. The very framework of how we viewed and understood dance and the dancer’s body was challenged from all angles and pedestrian movement entered into the realm of movement language for the dancer. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48480/original/w67y7jhn-1400050943.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48480/original/w67y7jhn-1400050943.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48480/original/w67y7jhn-1400050943.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48480/original/w67y7jhn-1400050943.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48480/original/w67y7jhn-1400050943.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48480/original/w67y7jhn-1400050943.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48480/original/w67y7jhn-1400050943.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48480/original/w67y7jhn-1400050943.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Early Works, Trisha Brown Dance Company - Tate Modern, 2010.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aurelien Guichard</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Developments from the New York-based collective <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judson_Dance_Theater">Judson Dance Theater</a>, whereby choreographers collaborated and debated the content of dance performance (and its reason for being), led a worldwide movement in the early 60s that embraced all movers as dancers, a position not agreed upon by the whole dance fraternity. </p>
<p>Improvisation was not seen as just a tool to use in the creative process but as a valid structure around which to build live performances. This included contact improvisation (devised by <a href="http://artsalive.ca/en/dan/meet/bios/artistDetail.asp?artistID=178">Steve Paxton</a>), in which two or more performers use physical contact as a medium for exploration and performance experiences. </p>
<p>The postmodernists who still have reach and influence today are Americans <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trisha_Brown">Trisha Brown</a>, [David Gordon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gordon_(choreographer), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yvonne_Rainer">Yvonne Rainer</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meredith_Monk">Meredith Monk</a>, Steve Paxton, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Hay">Deborah Hay</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucinda_Childs">Lucinda Childs</a>.</p>
<h2>Post-postmodernists</h2>
<p>Inevitably, the limited skills of non-trained dancers and the experimental nature of postmodernism worked its way through to a revival of the trained skilled dancers that modern dance had developed and we enter the period from around the mid 1970s that is referred to as “contemporary dance”. </p>
<p>The term is contentious on many levels. The Graham, Cunningham and Limón training methods were still alive and practised around the world but returning to modern dance training methods alone was not seen as a progressive pathway forwards. Hence, the word “contemporary” signalled that modern dance styles were being developed with resulting newer styles becoming more prevalent for training dancers and choreographers in the “present” time.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_06hcelswgc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Political Mother: The choreographer’s cut.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Postmodernists had, in their desire to not conform to any codified dance techniques, sought out alternative movement forms through which they could experience the connection of mind and body working together. These included Alexander, Feldenkrais, Tai Chi, Martial Arts and yoga to name a few. </p>
<p>This aspect remained attractive to the new generation of artists making dance work with the result that a more eclectic and versatile dancer was being trained, giving choreographers a broader range of skilled performers to work with. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UacylkU6OAM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Rosas Danst Rosas, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The blurring of boundaries between artforms, the result of artists seeking improved pathways for communication and also desiring to reach new audiences was helped along by advances in technology. Artistic work was having greater exposure on a global level and contemporary dance styles were rapidly being infused with new influences from both street forms of dance, cross-cultural perspectives and other forms of artistic expression. </p>
<p>This is represented in work by companies such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UacylkU6OAM">Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker</a>, <a href="https://www.cloudgate.org.tw/eng/">Cloudgate Dance Theatre</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqURBPU2IZw">Batsheva Dance Company</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9NOd5VIVo0">Hofesh Shechter Company</a> and <a href="http://chunkymove.com.au/">Chunky Move</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48476/original/htzbv3bb-1400049792.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48476/original/htzbv3bb-1400049792.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48476/original/htzbv3bb-1400049792.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48476/original/htzbv3bb-1400049792.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48476/original/htzbv3bb-1400049792.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48476/original/htzbv3bb-1400049792.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=620&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48476/original/htzbv3bb-1400049792.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=620&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48476/original/htzbv3bb-1400049792.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=620&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Batsheva Dance Company, 2007.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Shankbone, Wikimedia Commons </span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The young artist training to enter the industry as a contemporary dancer today might have a mix of a modern dance style (either Cunningham or Graham), a derivative of a modern dance style, or an eclectic mix of modern dance styles that bears no resemblance to any formal roots, plus training in one or more adjunct styles such as ballet, yoga, Pilates, Feldenkrais, Alexander, jazz, Brazilian capoeira, hip-hop, tap, tumbling, martial arts and so on. </p>
<p>It can be much harder to identify the training of contemporary dancers in the 21st century as they have not necessarily been molded by any one style of dance alone. Instead, the new work of an individual choreographer or company will be more likely to house identifiable characteristics of contemporary dance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/25713/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shaaron Boughen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Contemporary dance is a catch-all phrase used fairly indiscriminately, meaning many things to different dance communities across a wide range of cultures. In fact, it’s probably easier to say what contemporary…Shaaron Boughen, Adjunct Associate Professor, Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.